ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Iran’s top security official announced Tehran’s readiness to support its regional ally, the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, “at all levels” on Sunday, meeting with the group's leader in Beirut a day after attending a commemoration ceremony for his late predecessor.

“Iran stands with Lebanon and the country's resistance, based on the guidelines of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and supports it, and is ready to support the country and its resistance at all levels,” Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, said Saturday on the sidelines of a meeting with Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem in Beirut, the state-owned IRNA news agency reported.

Larijani arrived in Beirut on Saturday with a delegation to attend a special ceremony marking the first anniversary of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, who was killed on September 27, 2024, in an Israeli strike on a Beirut residential district. Nasrallah had led the group for over three decades.

Iran’s push to maintain ties with its regional allies, which include armed groups long accused of being Iranian proxies, comes as Western powers have activated a mechanism to reimpose international sanctions on Tehran for noncompliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

The death of Nasrallah, followed by the killing of Hashem Safieddine, the group’s Executive Council chief and a senior military official, almost a month later, marked a severe setback for the Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance.”

Qassem, now heading the group, stressed to Larijani that Hezbollah is ready to “cooperate with all those who stand against the Israeli enemy.”

“We will never abandon our weapons, nor will we relinquish them,” Qassem told the tens of thousands of supporters gathered at Nasrallah's tomb on Saturday. He also asserted that “the Israeli aggressor’s dominance will end in disgrace in the face of this resistance.”

Hezbollah faces mounting pressure to surrender its weapons as the Lebanese army prepares a disarmament plan starting in the south, while Lebanon comes under US demands and continued Israeli strikes.

The intensified clashes with Israel, which flared after the Gaza war began in October, led to the killings of the senior Hezbollah figures. Hezbollah had opened a “support front” from Lebanon to aid Hamas and other Palestinian factions.

Larijani on Saturday also endorsed Hezbollah’s call for repairing ties with Saudi Arabia, framing it as part of a common Islamic struggle against Israel.