Hezbollah
Ali Akbar Velayati, senior advisor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, affirmed Tehran’s support for Damascus and Hezbollah during visits to Syria and Lebanon. On May 18, Velayati met with Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Tammam Salam, and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan…
Nicholas BlanfordLebanon’s main Islamist party has undergone a profound transformation over the past three decades. Once associated with suicide bombings and hostage-taking, Hezbollah has steadily evolved from an underground movement in 1982 to the dominant political player in Lebanon in 2015.…
Mohammed Chatah, a former Lebanese finance minister, wrote the following open letter to President Hassan Rouhani in late December 2013. But Chatah was killed by a car bomb on December 27 before he could gather signatures from Lebanese lawmakers. The letter originally appeared in The…
Alireza Nader Iran has mixed feelings and conflicting interests in the Syrian crisis. Tehran has a strategic interest in opposing chemical weapons due to its own horrific experience during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq. For years, President Saddam Hussein’s military used chemical…
Hanin Ghaddar Iran has always been the element that tied Sunni Hamas and Shiite Hezbollah together. The Islamic Republic’s priority was to foster organizations that would be part of the “resistance” against Israel and the West. Hanin Ghaddar analyzes the split between the two…
On May 31, two senior U.S. officials detailed Iran’s growing role in extremist activities worldwide. Tehran was directly or indirectly involved in the planning of attacks in Europe, Southeast Asia and Africa in 2012, said the officials. The following are excerpts from the background…
Iran significantly increased its sponsorship of terrorism in 2012, according to a new report by the State Department. It claims that attacks in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and the Far East were linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force or Iran’s ally in…
The Arab uprisings have deepened ethnic and religious tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East, according to a new report by The Brookings Institution. The rise of sectarianism is being drive by three main factors: •Sunni Islamist ascendancy in Tunisia and Egypt…
Iran’s role in the Syrian conflict is “especially pernicious as it helps the Assad regime build sectarian militias,” U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Iran and its proxy Hezbollah “have increased their presence” particularly in Aleppo,…
Iran is “struggling to main influence” in Latin America, General John Kelly told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 19. The region as a whole has not been receptive to Iran’s diplomatic and economic outreach. But the head of U.S. Southern Command warned that “limited…