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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iran
Index
The Shia clergy in Iran have long had an interest in the Shia
population of Lebanon. Clergy for the Lebanese Shia communities
were trained in Iran before the Revolution, and intermarriage
between clerical families in both countries had been occurring for
several generations. Lebanon's most prominent Shia cleric, Imam
Musa as Sadr, who mysteriously disappeared in 1978 while on a trip
to Libya, was born in Iran into a clerical family with relatives in
Lebanon, a fact that facilitated his acceptance in the latter
country. Musa as Sadr was a political activist, like so many
clerics of his generation trained in Qom and An Najaf, and he
succeeded in politicizing the Lebanese Shias. Thus, it was natural
that the Shia community of Lebanon should become one of the
earliest to which Iranian advocates of exporting revolution turned
their attention. Their analysis of the political situation in
Lebanon in 1979 and 1980 convinced them that the country was ripe
for achieving an Islamic revolution and that conditions were also
favorable for eradicating Israel and recreating Palestine.
The main constraint on Iran's political involvement in Lebanon
was Amal, the political organization established by Musa as Sadr.
After Sadr's disappearance, Amal had fallen under the influence of
secularized Shias who preferred the political integration of the
Shia community within a pluralistic state and regarded the Iranian
vision of Islamic revolution as inappropriate for Lebanon. The
Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982, however, provided
Iran an opportunity to circumvent Amal's domination of the Shias.
Syria permitted a contingent of several hundred Pasdaran members to
enter Lebanon, ostensibly to help fight against Israel. The
Pasdaran established posts in the eastern Biqa Valley and from
there proselytized on behalf of Islamic revolution among poor and
uprooted Shia young people. The ideas of Islamic revolution
appealed to many of the Shias who were recruited by new political
groups such as Islamic Amal and the Hizballah, both of which
opposed the comparative moderation of Amal. The support of the
Pasdaran provided these groups with a direct link to Tehran, and
this permitted Iran to become one of the foreign powers exerting
influence in Lebanon. In 1987 an estimated 500 member of the
Pasdaran were in Lebanon.
Data as of December 1987
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