Brazil's promotion of Portuguese in the Middle East to begin in Beirut

From here in Portuguese.

Brazil is promoting the teaching of Portuguese language and culture in the Middle East. The Brazil-Lebanon Cultural Centre, opened in late April in Beirut, went into operation today. The first Portuguese class already has 100 students enrolled. 

The institute is linked to the Brazilian embassy in Lebanon and is the first of its type in the region. According to the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Brazil, the intent is to make it a centre of teacher training and the development of instructional materials for teaching Portuguese to people in the Middle East. 

The Centre will also take care of applications for the CELPE BRAS Portuguese language test.
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The Centre will work in the neighborhood of Achrafieh in Beirut, in a building of traditional Lebanese 19th-century architecture that the Brazilian government has leased.

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Apparently lots of Lebanese learning Persian

A 5 piastre coin of Greater Lebanon, 1924

Here's an article I missed from a bit over a week ago:

Iran's cultural attache in Lebanon has said that hundreds of students in the country are learning Persian language.

Speaking to IRNA on Wednesday, Mohammad Hossein Raeiszadeh added that Persian language courses have been arranged at the guidance and high school levels in Al-Mahdi schools affiliated to Hezbollah.

Persian is a language that is not only easier to learn than most think, but would be especially easy for a person from Lebanon considering the same script as well as the prevalence of French in the country, as Persian has quite a few French loanwords such as abat-jour (âbâjur, lamp), billet (belit, ticket), timbre (tambr, stamp), theatre (te'âtr), garçon (gârson), pronunciation of the Western months of the year, etc. I don't know the exact number of French loanwords but it seems to be about the same amount as those present in Turkish. I'd like to see some real numbers on the number of Lebanese learning Persian, but considering simply ease of learning vs. real use, it would probably be a pretty easy sell.

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