Morocco is cutting diplomatic ties with Iran over the Islamic Republic’s support for a rebel group, Reuters reported Tuesday.

Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita told reporters that his nation was expelling the Iranian ambassador and would close its own embassy in Tehran due to Iranian support for the Polisario Front, which represents the Sahrawi people in Western Sahara. Morocco partially occupies Western Sahara.

Bourita charged, “Hezbollah sent military officials to Polisario and provided the front with … weapons and trained them on urban warfare.”

Iranian media reported that Hezbollah rejected the charges saying that Morocco cut ties with Iran due to  “American, Israeli and Saudi pressure.”

However, Reuters reported that Iran has backed the Polisario Front in the past.

Morocco previously cut ties with Iran due to Iran’s support of the Shiite opposition to the Sunni rulers of the Gulf State of Bahrain in 2009. Morocco and Iran restored diplomatic relations in 2014.

Iran supports military and rebel groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Popular Mobilization Units in Iraq, and the Houthi separatists in Yemen, which subvert the rule of the central government in those nations.

Ali Riza Zakani, who is a reported confidante of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, boasted in November 2014, after the Houthis seized the Yemen capital, Sanaa, that Iran then controlled four Arab capitals. The other three capitals referenced were Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad.

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