Iranian Parliament Chairman Ali Larijani arrived in Lebanon on Monday, the second stop on a three-country tour – Syria and Iraq are the other two destinations – amid growing concerns from the Sunni world and boasts from Tehran that have the Iranians controlling four Arab capitals. Larijani, meeting with Lebanese Defense Minister Samir Moqbel, reportedly renewed an Iranian offer to provide the country’s army with weapons “unconditionally and free of charge.”
In Syria the day before, Larijani reaffirmed Iranian support for the Bashar al-Assad regime, to which it has for years provided funds, weapons, and military training. Speaking to reporters, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, per Iran’s Mehr News Agency, “stressed that Iran has played an effective and constructive role in dealing with regional issues.”
Tehran has for years been criticized by regional powers for interference in countries’ domestic affairs and for stoking regional instability – it has among other things provided funding and military training to Houthi rebels in Yemen, funded its Hezbollah proxy in Lebanon, propped up the Assad regime in Syria, and provided weapons to Palestinian terror groups operating out of the Gaza Strip.
A Jerusalem Post analysis of Iranian efforts in Yemen noted that a dynamic in which the country is controlled by Tehran-backed rebels would threaten not only the Jewish state but half a dozen other countries in the Middle East and East Africa, due to Yemen’s strategic positioning on the Arabian Peninsula.