Iran is facing mounting opposition, domestically and regionally to its involvement in various countries in the region. There have been several indications of this mounting opposition, including the results of the Lebanese parliamentary elections held on May 15^th , the escalation of domestic protests in Iran due to rising commodity prices , warnings regarding expanding  Iranian presence in southern Syria, in addition to the continued political stalemate in Iraq, where Tehran has not been able to reach a settlement to which all the political factions can agree.

Iran expressed a conservative position regarding the results of the Lebanese parliamentary elections, stressing, in the words of Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh, that it “respects the will of the Lebanese people and the votes of the electorate.”  Iran apparently does not perceive the results of the elections to correspond to its own interests. While Hezbollah and the Amal Movement preserved the seats allocated to the Shiites in parliament, some of Hezbollah’s allies lost their seats. This resulted in Hezbollah losing the parliamentary majority it had in the previous session. On the other hand, its opposing forces, such as the Lebanese Forces, achieved stronger results, obtaining 18 seats, four more than the previous session. The results of these election reinforce a growing trend of opposition to Iran’s regional practices, expressed in a number of developments, including:

Elections reveal growing  political opposition to Iranian presence : The results of Lebanon’s parliamentary elections send the same message as the results of the Iraqi parliamentary elections, which were held on October 10^th. Both reveal that there is growing opposition in Lebanon and Iraq to Iran’s presence. Iran’s role in both countries was a factor in inflaming their domestic crises, triggering the protests that took place in late 2019. These resulted in the resignation of both Saad Hariri and Adel Abdul-Mahdi governments. As in Lebanon, Iran’s allies did not achieve desirable results in Iraq, with the exception of the State of Law Coalition, and did not achieve the necessary majority to form the government.

 Iran’s domestic protests send a political message: In a development similar to Iraq and Lebanon, popular protests have again broken out in Iran, as a result of economic decisions taken by the government of President Ibrahim Raisi, regarding controls on the exchange rate. The move resulted in a wide gap between the official price of the dollar, which rose to 4,200 tomans, and the black-market price, which skyrocketed to nearly 30,000 tomans. While these protests, like those before, were triggered by worsening living conditions, they have acquired a distinctly political character. Protestors once more linked the deterioration of economic and social conditions to the depletion of Iranian resources through spending on regional ventures.

The regional rise of “national sovereignty” discourse: Forces opposed to Iran’s influence in both Iraq and Lebanon have adopted a discourse based on the need to preserve national sovereignty to counter pro-Iran political forces. Forces opposed to Iran have come to realize that this issue, resisting external interference in national decision-making, is what sets them apart from their pro-Iran competitors.  The Lebanese Forces Party, for example, has sought to emphasize that its differences are not with the Shiite community, but with Shiite forces that are allied with Iran. In this context, the head of the party’s foreign relations committee, former minister Richard Koyoumjian, declared on January 3^rd that both the party and the pro- sovereignty Shiites are confronting the threat of the Iranian project and Hezbollah.

It is of note that the Sadrist movement in Iraq also adopted the same discourse in differentiating itself from the Iraqi political forces loyal to Iran. In proclaiming his movement to be “the national opposition” in a tweet on May 15^th, Muqtada al-Sadr, declared: “I was honored to have my affiliates become the largest parliamentary bloc in the history of Iraq, and I was honored to succeed in forming the largest cross-quota bloc, and I was honored to rely on myself, and not be dependent on external parties, and I was honored not to resort to the judiciary in managing the needs of the people and the requirements of forming the government.”

Opposition to an expanded Iranian presence in Syria: On May 19^th, Jordan’s King Abdullah II renewed his warnings regarding the repercussions of the Russian-Ukrainian war on Syria, warning Iran would move in to fill the vacuum left by a reduced Russian presence in Syria due to preoccupation with Ukraine. The King stressed that Russian presence in southern Syria had been a calming factor and noted that the vacuum created by the possible withdrawal of Russian troops would be filled by Iranian forces and their proxies. He warned of a possible escalation of problems on Jordan’s borders with Syria.

Growing opposition to Iran’s regional presence was also expressed by wide opposition in the US to the removal of the Revolutionary Guards from the list of foreign terrorist organizations, demanded by Iran as a condition to sign a new deal on its nuclear program. Opposition to this requested is not limited to members of the Republican and Democratic parties but has also been raised by some political and military officials. On May 10^th, the Director of US Defense Intelligence Agency, General Scott Berrier, said that removing sanctions on the Revolutionary Guards would allow them to mount more attacks on US partners in the region as well as on U.S. forces. These and other statements reveal an increasing awareness that Iran’s regional influence and interference have a negative impact on regional stability. 
It is unlikely, however, that Iran will take these various indications of opposition to its regional presence into consideration in a manner that could lead to a change of policy. It is more likely to send countering messages, to the effect that it will not make any changes to its regional policies. This stance is unlikely to be affected by the outcome of the nuclear negotiations in Vienna, as Iran continues to argue that its regional presence is a distinct and separate issue from the nuclear negotiations. This overlooks the fact that Iran’s demand for removing the Revolutionary Guards from the list of foreign terrorist organizations, as a condition for concluding a nuclear agreement, is directly linked to its regional presence.