According to Hamzeh "Iran's revolution had its greatest impact in Lebanon," even though the two countries are not adjacent, because Lebanon's long-suffering Shias were most receptive to Iran's Islamic revolutionary message(Hamzeh, 2004: 18). Shia clerics from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, in particular Khomeini, had known each other well in the Shia city of Najaf in Iraq where they participated in their "circles of learning." Soon after Khomeini's victorious return to Iran on February 1, 1979, he became the unchallenged leader and chief ideologue of the Shias inside and outside Iran." (Hamzeh, 2004: 19) He met with militant Shia clergy (e.g., Shaykh al-Tufayli, Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi) and other militants in August 1982 at the Islamic Movements conference in Tehran—the so-called First "Conference for the Downtrodden".(Hamzeh, 2004: 25)