Lebanon’s former President Emile Lahoud says the Israeli regime has benefited most from political assassinations in the country, including that of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Press TV reports.

In an exclusive interview with Press TV, segments of which were aired on Saturday, Lahoud rejected accusations that the Syrian government and Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah had a role in the 2005 assassination of Hariri.

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, who was killed in a bomb explosion in Beirut on February 14, 2005.

The Tel Aviv regime was the entity that largely benefited from Hariri’s killing and other assassinations in Lebanon, Lahoud stated.

He also cited as a proof the fact that the satellites that were watching over the area where Hariri was killed in Beirut belonged to Israel and the United States. Neither Tel Aviv nor Washington later accepted to share their data and images on the assassination, he said.

A file picture taken on February 14, 2005 shows a man fleeing the site of an explosion in Beirut in which Lebanese Premier Rafic Hariri was killed. (AFP Photo)

The former Lebanese president said the West and Israel have accused everybody in Lebanon for the killing, so that they can divert public attention from their own potential role in the incident.

Lahoud said the assassination of Hariri showed that the United States and Saudi Arabia have been doing what Israel wants them to do in the Middle East.