There had been suggestions made by some foreign policy analysts suggesting that President-elect Hassan Rouhani’s election could “provide an opportunity” to productively engage Iran regarding the critical role being played by Tehran and its Lebanese terror proxy Hezbollah in bolstering the regime. Iranian parliament member Ahmad Bakhshayesh made declarations this week that seem to indicate, more, the opposite:

“The tactics may change but the strategic aims will not change,” said Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a member of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, in a telephone interview from Tehran, describing Syria, Iran and Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hezbollah as part of a “resistance front” opposing Israel. “We don’t want Syria to leave the resistance front.”

Bakhshayesh’s comments echo those made last year by Rouhani himself. The MP also described the global implications of the Syrian civil war:

“This is mini-world war, with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah on one side and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the U.S. and Israel on the other,” Bakhshayesh said. “The Syrian civil war has become a proxy war between Iran and the U.S.”

Meanwhile, reports are emerging that Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah recently made a secret trip to Iran to request full financial and military backing from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Hezbollah forces played a key role in enabling the Syrian regime to wrest the strategic city of Qusayr from rebel control earlier this month, and Tehran has dispatched top military figures to Syria.

[Photo: FreedomHouse / Flickr]