- Published: 13 November 2017
By INU Staff
INU -Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned from office in Riyadh last Saturday. When he declared the decision, he cited Iranian influence across the region and threats to his life, and followed a thwarted assassination attempt against him in Beirut.
According to reports, the Iranian regime called Hariri’s resignation a Saudi-backed plot, and accused Riyadh of having taken the Lebanese Premier as hostage.
The government assembled in Lebanon 11 months ago, granted premiership to Hariri but gave political advantages to Hezbollah.
According to an article in Riyadh Daily, by political analyst Shahriar Kia, “This had given Iran a seemingly legitimate political façade to increase its violent meddling in the country and to boost its intervention in neighboring Syria, where it has been propping up the Assad regime against democratic opposition forces. Without Hariri, the entire Iran-backed government loses its legitimacy and its real nature becomes clear to everyone.”
He adds that this is especially significant as Tehran faces setbacks on the international front, such as The U.S. Congress recently ratifying three measures against Hezbollah by voice vote and without opposition. The third resolution calls on the European Union to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist entity. The U.S. placed the Hezbollah in its list of foreign terrorist organizations in 1997.
Kia writes that Hezbollah was founded and nurtured by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and “has been Tehran’s main implement in its regional forays in the past four decades. It is responsible for carrying out many terrorist attacks against Iran’s opponents and has also played an active role in on fighting on Iran’s behalf Syria."
Another important factor is that last month, U.S. President Trump declared Washington’s new Iran policy which will adopt a multi-pronged approach that will counter the multitude of threats the Iran poses to regional and global peace and security.
This included imposing new sanctions against the IRGC and designating it as a terrorist organization.
“The IRGC is responsible for Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile development, coordinating its regional agendas and the crackdown on domestic dissenters and opposition members. The IRGC is the arm that funds and arms Iran’s proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. Stricter sanctions will make it considerably more difficult for the entity to carry out those functions,” writes Kia.
Inside Iran, the Iranian people are becoming bolder in voicing their protests against the regime and voicing their support for Maryam Rajavi who leads the Iranian opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
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