Eurasia Press & News
- Iran’s leaders are trying to prevent the disarmament of their non-state allies in an effort to rebuild the national security strategy shattered by a year of Israeli and U.S. military operations.
- Seeking to avoid being drawn into regional wars provoked by Iran’s allies, governments in the region are striving to exercise full sovereignty and a monopoly on armed force within their territories.
- A key Iranian leader, Ali Larijani, visited Beirut and Baghdad last week to dissuade leaders there from trying to disarm Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran-aligned Iraqi militias, respectively.
- Iranian officials stress that efforts to disarm Iran’s allies emanate from Washington and will render the region’s Shia Muslim populations vulnerable to Israel and Sunni jihadist organizations.
Iran’s leaders are reacting forcefully to the challenge to their carefully crafted national security architecture posed by Israeli and U.S. military action over the past year. The Israeli actions, in particular, have deconstructed Iran’s ability to utilize a vast network of regional non-state allies to deter Israel and other hostile actors from taking military action on Iranian territory. Iran’s setbacks have furthermore emboldened Washington to press regional governments, particularly Lebanon and Iraq, to exercise full sovereignty over their territories and deny Iran’s allies the potential to provoke warfare that adversely affects the economies and populations of the nation state. In doing so, U.S. President Donald Trump’s team hopes to institutionalize a new balance of power that favors Israel, the U.S., and moderate Arab capitals, while keeping Tehran weak and vulnerable.
In an effort to counter Washington’s pressure, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dispatched a top adviser Ali Larijani, who recently returned to the key position of Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, to Baghdad and Beirut last week. The trip to Beirut was a direct response to the Lebanese government’s decision on August 5 — pushed by U.S. officials — to direct the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to develop and implement a plan to disarm Hezbollah by the end of 2025. The disarmament effort is being led by President Joseph Aoun, a Maronite Christian, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, a Sunni Muslim, and Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji, a member of the Christian-based, anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces Party. Rajji boycotted Larijani’s visit to Lebanon outright. For Lebanon’s top leaders, Larijani’s visit represented an opportunity to potentially determine what Iran might be willing to consider in return for Hezbollah’s future disarmament. At the same time, Washington and Beirut assess that Iran, although publicly committed to continuing to support Hezbollah’s militia arm, wields far less leverage over Lebanon than it did during the 54 years of Assad family rule in neighboring Syria. The collapse of the Assad regime in December deprived Iran of a secure land route to resupply Hezbollah’s arsenal that was depleted by post-October 7 attacks on Israel and intensive Israeli air strikes and ground operations on Hezbollah positions since September 2024.
Iranian leaders hoped that Larijani could ease tensions with Beirut, even as he reinforced Iran’s support for Hezbollah. In the days after the disarmament decision, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Ali-Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Khamenei, publicly vowed Tehran would resist efforts to disarm Hezbollah, and claimed Hezbollah’s militia was central to forcing Israel to withdraw from the five key heights in south Lebanon that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continue to occupy. Aoun and Salam expressed outrage at what they characterized as blatant Iranian interference in Lebanon’s domestic affairs. Aoun reiterated Beirut’s determination to enforce Lebanese government sovereignty and its monopoly of legitimate armed force throughout the country and insisted government forces are capable of resisting Israeli aggression.
Even if Larijani’s meetings with top leaders failed to alter Beirut’s decision, his meetings with Lebanese Shia leaders and Hezbollah supporters demonstrated that disarming Hezbollah would have adverse consequences for government leaders. Following his meetings with parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who is also chairman of the moderate Shia-dominated Amal movement, Larijani made clear that Iran will not easily relinquish its strategic ally. He blamed the U.S. for “interfering” in Lebanese affairs, claimed the U.S. and Israel seek to achieve through political pressure what they failed to achieve through war, and called on Lebanon to cancel the disarmament plan. During the visit, Hezbollah supporters welcomed Larijani in Beirut’s southern suburbs, expressing support for Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, who denounced the government disarmament decision and asserted the Lebanese government “does not have the right to question the resistance’s legitimacy.” One expert, Nicolas Blanford, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an authority on Hezbollah, assessed: “It’s clear that Iran wants Hezbollah to remain as it is and, as far as we can tell, is helping it reorganize its ranks…It’s also clear from their statements that Hezbollah has no intention of giving up its arms. Even relatively moderate figures within the group are comparing doing so to suicide.”
Recognizing the potential for an aggressive disarmament posture to fracture Lebanon again, Trump officials have urged Israel to temper its military actions in Lebanon to give the government space to achieve a consensus on Hezbollah’s political future. According to several reports, Trump’s team has asked Israel to temporarily pause “non-urgent” military strikes in Lebanon, and to extend that pause if the LAF takes more action to prevent Hezbollah from reestablishing itself in southern Lebanon. U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack, who also serves as Trump’s envoy for Lebanon and Syria, also reportedly proposed a step-by-step withdrawal from the five outposts in response to practical steps from the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah.
Larijani’s stop in Baghdad, which preceded Beirut, received less press attention but was no less significant for messaging Tehran’s intent to try to keep its Axis of Resistance network intact. As in Lebanon, the Iraqi government is attempting to assert its sovereignty by reining in Iran-supported militias that have, at times, undertaken actions that provoked U.S. military action on Iraqi soil. The militias are outgrowths of forces that battled U.S. troops that attempted to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq, and their ranks were augmented in 2014 with a national mobilization to fight the ISIS challenge. In contrast to Lebanon, however, Iraq’s government is dominated by Shia Muslim politicians who themselves have enjoyed varying degrees of support from Tehran. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani’s drive to disarm Iran-aligned militias — or at least firmly integrate them into the national command structure — has incurred opposition from some Iraqi leaders who are nominally part of Sudani’s governing coalition. As in the case of Lebanon, Tehran has been no less vocal about its intent that the militias not be disarmed and not lose their operational autonomy. Iranian officials, as well as the Iraqi militia commanders, justify their opposition to disarmament by highlighting the threat to Iraq posed by Sunni Muslim extremist groups. Those groups are, in the view of Tehran and its allies, emboldened by the accession of Sunni Islamists to power in neighboring Syria.
Larijani messaged Tehran’s intent to retain influence in Iraq through his site visits and meetings. Iraqi National Security Advisor Qasim al-Araji welcomed him upon his arrival at the Baghdad airport, and he then proceeded to visit the site where the revered Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Quds Force (IRGC-QF) commander Qasem Soleimani was assassinated in a U.S. drone attack ordered by President Trump in 2020, toward the end of his first term. Iranian leaders have defined many of their anti-U.S. actions since as efforts to avenge Soleimani’s killing. Soleimani was widely credited with assembling Tehran’s Axis of Resistance and was viewed as the key mentor and de facto commander of the Iran-aligned militias in Iraq. According to Iraqi media, Larijani told Sudani in their bilateral meeting that Iran is thankful for Baghdad’s “balance” in foreign policy (between Iran and the U.S.), “which has brought about security and stability not only for Iraq but also other countries in the region.”
Larijani expressed Tehran’s resistance to militia disarmament in an elliptical and diplomatic manner during his trip. Still, the visit followed sharp and direct messaging from high-ranking Iranian figures in the days leading up to his arrival. A few days before Larijani’s trip, Velayati stated Iran and Iraq “firmly” reject efforts to disarm the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the force that includes the Iran-aligned militias, attributing the disarmament push to Washington’s pressure on Sudani. Velayati’s comments came in a phone call with former Iraqi Prime Minister and head of the State of Law Coalition, Nuri al-Maliki, who is Iran’s key Iraqi ally pressing against Sudani’s insistence on enforcing the government’s monopoly on the use of armed force. During the phone call, Velayati reportedly emphasized the PMF’s importance, stressing that “without it, the Americans would have swallowed Iraq.” He praised Maliki as a “brave man” for “expelling U.S. forces from Iraq during his tenure,” a reference to the U.S.-Iraq security agreement providing for the initial U.S. departure from Iraq at the end of 2011. Maliki is also the most senior Shia leader pressing to advance a parliamentary vote on a new PMF law, which would formally define the PMF’s role within Iraq’s security framework, despite strong opposition from Washington, which wants the Iran-aligned PMF groups dismantled.
