"We should combat and arrest the danger on the beaches of the Mediterranean so we do not have to shed blood on Iranian soil”. While many may think that this statement was pointed by theIslamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander or the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it was first pointed by GeneralPashai, head of SAVAK’s Middle East branch, in 1958. In fact,while much ink has been spilled on Iran’s foreign policy under the Shah’s reign, there has been a void in analysis of Iran’s ties with the Shia Lebanese in the pre-1979 Revolution Era. In the aftermath of the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis and the 1958 Iraqi coup, the Shah saw both Nasser and Qasim as his regional foes. Thus, to deter the threats of pan-Arabism and Communism, heordered Iran's security service, the SAVAK, to seek a strategic ally in the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, Seyyed Musa Sadr, a charismatic leader of the Shia Lebanese, emerged as a new strong religious-political actor. Sadr, whose relations with the Iranian revolutionaries were significant in the emergence of the Islamic Revolution, transformed the position of the Shia in the Lebanese polity and began crafting a complicated policy towards the regional states, including Iran. From this point of view, the present paper is an attempt to set forth a new understanding of the emergence and fluctuation of Iran’s ties with the Shia Lebanese in the Shah’s era. Here, the story of the evolution of these ties can be narrated as the unfolding of constant interaction between states and non-state forces in the Middle East. Analyzed from this perspective, the paper examines the actors, processes, and mechanisms that Iran has used to construct its ties with the Shia Lebanese from 1958 until 1979. “What actors and processes at what levels of analysis and through what mechanisms have shaped Iran’s ties with the Shia Lebanese?” This is the central question that guides the analytical narrative in the present survey. In this framework, the proposed work will trace the history of the ebbs and flows within Iran’s ties with the Shia Lebanese, and assess the broad contours of the evolutionary trajectory of these ties and its impacts on the geopolitics of the Middle East and its regional balance of power during the Cold War.