‘They Are Not Under Our Command:’ Iranian Foreign Minister Denies Control Over Proxy Terrorist Groups
Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addresses his supporters through a screen during a rally commemorating the annual Hezbollah Martyrs’ Day, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Photo: Reuters/Aziz Taher
Iran’s foreign minister on Wednesday flatly denied that the Tehran regime controls proxy terrorist groups across the Middle East, insisting that such groups act on their own volition when targeting US and Israeli interests.
Commenting on recent US airstrikes against Iranian-backed groups in Syria, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that there are “groups today in Iraq and Syria that act against the US upon their own decision. They do not get our permission. They are not under Iran’s command. We have clearly said that Iran does not have any proxy group or organization in the region.”
Interviewed by the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese broadcaster Al Mayadeen, Amir-Abdollahian added that Iran had told “the US that if you want restraint on the part of Iran, Hezbollah, and other sides … you should practically seek to stop the war [in Gaza] and not take sides with the Zionist occupation and participate in its crimes.” He also said that Iran was not seeking an expansion of the conflict, but that such an outcome was likely if the fighting in Gaza intensified.
Amir-Abdollahian’s claims fly in the face of US intelligence reports regarding the nature of Iran’s long-standing support for Islamist groups around the region. A State Department analysis in 2020 noted that Iran provides Hezbollah in Lebanon with $700 million annually, while terrorist groups in Gaza such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have received $100 million annually.
A Sept. 2023 report from the Wilson Center, a US think tank, noted that the US sanctioned 11 Iranian-backed groups in five countries between 1995 and 2022. Additionally, three US presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama – issued executive orders that empowered them to sanction Iranian proxies during their terms in office.
In the same interview, Amir-Abdollahian revived the 2014 proposal of Iran’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for a referendum on governance in “Palestine” that would follow the overthrow of the “Zionist regime” and would allow all residents to vote.
However, the foreign minister continued, “the Israeli regime showed in the last 76 days that it is the same usurping genocidal criminal entity. Democratic gestures and talk of democracy for the Israeli regime is a bitter irony of our history.”
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