The Iran-Iraq was is irrelevant; the supporting of proxies of choice by both Arabs & Iranians throughout the Middle-East, South Asia, African Maghrib & even in non-muslim majority countries like Nigeria is not 'defending one's self' !
Iran's the so-called proxies has defeated israel 3 times ... they have never targeted Muslim countries or Muslims they don't blow up themselves in the middle of cities ...
Hezboallah is a political party which has got MPs in the parliament and ministers in the cabinet and is believed by Lebanese people as a resistance group,
"....While the Shias were 35 per cent of the population demographically in Lebanon, each government discriminated against and disfranchised them to unfairly show them to be 10 to 15 per cent population-wise. Then, their land of south Lebanon became occupied by the Palestinians and then the Israelis. The Shias of southern Lebanon tolerated that. However, on March 17, 1974, in Baalbek, Bekaa valley, Imam Musa delivered an important speech:
“Starting from today, we will no longer complain nor cry. Our name is no longer the Mitwalis; our name is ‘men of refusal’. ‘Men of vengeance’. ‘Men who revolt against tyranny’ even though this costs us our blood and our lives.”
Shia was oppressed in Lebanon , they chose to become strong to defend themselves and fight with tyranny ... and they did ... but they didn't attack the other countries by the name of Islam to destroy everything unlike ISIS, AL-Q and so on ...
The same for Hamas .... In Iraq Shias are in the majority around 65-70 % of Iraqi ppls are Shia and it's called democracy but someone has missed the Saddam era when a minority were ruling the country ....."
1991 uprisings in Iraq (Sha'aban Intifada, Shiite Uprising In Southern Iraq)
Casualties
The death toll was high throughout the country. The rebels killed many Ba'athist officials and officers. In response, thousands of unarmed civilians were killed by indiscriminate fire from loyalist tanks, artillery and helicopters, and many historical and religious structures in the south were deliberately targeted under orders from Saddam Hussein. Saddam's security forces entered the cities, often using women and children as human shields, where they detained and summarily executed or "disappeared" thousands of people at random in a policy of collective responsibility. Many suspects were tortured, raped, or burned alive.
Many of the people killed were buried in mass graves. Mass burial sites containing thousands of bodies have been uncovered since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Of the 200 mass graves the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry had registered between 2003-2006, the majority were in the South, including one believed to hold as many as 10,000 victims.
In Saddam era non of these Arabs condemned him for waging war against a Shia country (using chemical weapon and ...) or cracking down Shia uprising in southern Iraq ... He represented minority and governed on majority by brutality.
I'm not saying that Iranian-backed groups are innocent at allbut in comparison with AL-Q and its linked groups backed by saudis are angels ..... and what about Arabs? what have they done? in Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Lebanon? Pakistan?