Meshal had previously pointedly met with Iran's nuclear negotiator, indicating that Islamic terror groups are a specific part of Iran's strategy of controlling the Middle East by terror.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Lebanon, as the Lebanese parliament just reiterated its support for Hezbollah keeping its own independent army and, effectively, supporting Hezbollah against UN resolution 1701 which called for all non-government groups to give up any weapons in southern Lebanon.
This all makes President Obama's praise for Lebanese president Michel Suleiman appear somewhat tone-deaf:
"What [the US and Lebanese governments] do share is a commitment to resolve these issues through dialogue and negotiations, as opposed to through violence."One can sympathize with Lebanon's difficulties in maintaining any sort of government altogether, but the reality is that there is a direct line between Iran and Hezbollah, and Lebanon's government supports the Iranian side, not only tolerating Hezbollah but tacitly supporting it.
All but forgotten is the smoking gun of a huge weapons ship that proved conclusively that Iran is arming Hezbollah on a massive scale and tried mightily to hide it. Obama noted the US concern with Lebanon not stopping such arms smuggling but that severely understates Lebanon's undeclared role in supporting such smuggling.
The result is that Iran can confidently rely on Hezbollah to act as a proxy army for it, much as Syria has done in the past. Its support for terror groups is open and unapologetic, and most of those terror groups are singlemindedly focused on Israel.