Hossein Amir Abdollahian. Photo: The Iran Project.

Iran has used its “great influence” in the Middle East to amass wealth, spread the Islamic Revolution and gain major concessions from the West, a parliamentary official said on Monday, the regime-aligned Tasnim News Agency reported.

According to the report, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, director general of international affairs at the Iranian Majilis, made this assertion during a speech he delivered in Tehran.

One source of empowerment, asserted Abdollahian, was the “discourse of the Islamic Revolution,” which — when viewed from outside the country’s borders — could be seen to have “a formative…impact on the security of the region and Iran.”

Abdollahian also stressed that Tehran has been able to accomplish this feat despite “obstructionist moves” on the part of the United States in relation to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal reached last year between six world powers and Iran and implemented in January.

According to Tasnim, this echoed what other Iranian officials — chief among them Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — have been claiming: that the US has failed to live up to its commitments under the deal. Khamenei’s more specific complaint is that not all banking sanctions on Iran have been lifted and some of its assets remain frozen.

Abdollahian’s simultaneous boasts and anti-West finger-pointing were made the day before the US Congress was set to consider proposed legislation that would block the Obama administration from awarding Iran billions of US taxpayer dollars in “ransom” for American hostages held captive by the mullah-led regime.

As reported in The Algemeiner, Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) introduced the bill – that would also force the Islamic Republic to return billions of dollars that have already been delivered to Tehran by the White House — on Tuesday. This move is due to the view on the part of JCPOA opponents, and those disillusioned in its aftermath, that Iran has been violating the agreement from the get-go by flaunting ballistic-missile tests and issuing threats against America and Israel.

Last week, Iranian state television broadcast live images of Russian-made, highly-advanced S-300 surface-to-air missiles being transported by trucks to the Fordo nuclear facility south of Tehran. According to a report in The Algemeiner, this has led to questions over the true purpose of the site, which Iran has argued was designed for peaceful “civilian” use.

Meanwhile, as The Algemeiner reported on Sunday, one of Khamenei’s top advisers declared that Tehran’s backing of “resistance groups” — the name the Islamic Republic uses to describe terrorist organizations, such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — will remain steadfast.