Iran’s Senior Advisor to the Supreme Leader in Military Affairs, Yahya Rahim Safavi, recently emphasized his country’s powerful influence across the Middle East. The Iranian official claimed military successes in Syria and asserted that Lebanon’s border with Israel has become Iran’s front line of defense.

Speaking to a group of veterans from the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) last Friday, Safavi stated that Iran’s “frontmost line of defense is…now in southern Lebanon [on the border] with Israel, and our strategic depth now reaches to the Mediterranean coast and north of Israel.”

His statement highlights the strong link between Iran and Hezbollah, the internationally-recognized terror organization based in Lebanon. Iran uses Hezbollah as a proxy, a tool to threaten and intimidate Israel and its citizens from Lebanon’s southern border.

Hezbollah terrorists have murdered civilians all over the world. It is sponsored, armed and funded by Iran.

On July 12, 2006 Hezbollah terrorists abducted two IDF soldiers in an unprovoked assault on Israel’s border with Lebanon. The attack sparked the Second Lebanon War, a month-long conflict in which Hezbollah fired over 4,000 rockets at Israeli civilians. Since then and with the help of Iran, Hezbollah’s military capability has grown in size. Today, according to IDF intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Hezbollah maintains a stockpile of 100,000 rockets and missiles pointed at Israel.

The extraordinary size of this stockpile redefines Hezbollah’s capabilities, placing it in the category of a “semi-military” organization. “Hezbollah is no longer a terrorist organization in the most basic sense of the term,” the intelligence chief stated during a security assessment last January. “An organization that has more than 100,000 rockets resembles a military more than a terrorist organization.”