Hezbollah: An agent of Iran, but also a creation of Israel

HEZBOLLAH means “Party of God/Allah" in Arabic, in a part of the world where there is no shortage of groups that make a similar claim. The movement emerged in Lebanon in 1982 after that country's bloody civil war had been on for seven years, and eight years before it finally came to an end in 1990. Hezbollah was born in response to Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon – which in turn was the result of pro-Palestinian factions using Lebanon as a base to attack Israel. This chain of events can be traced back to at least the Nakba of 1948, when many of the close to 750,000 Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel found refuge in Lebanon.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps supported Hezbollah with money, weapons, and training from the outset. Their shared vision was and still is to destroy Israel and counter Western influence in the region. They also share the Shiite form of Islam (whereas Hamas is a Sunni movement).

After the end of the civil war in 1990, Hezbollah's power continued to grow, with its stated goal of driving Israel out of southern Lebanon. The next turning point was in 1992 when Hassan Nasrallah became leader of Hezbollah. His predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, was killed on February 16 of that year when American Apache helicopters from the Israeli air force fired missiles at the three vehicles in which he and his company were travelling in southern Lebanon. Al-Musawi's wife, his five-year-old son and four other people were killed in the attack. Israel said it was revenge for the kidnapping and killing of a group of Israeli servicemen in 1986 as well as the kidnapping and murder of American William Higgins in 1988.

Under Nasrallah's leadership (which continues to this day, although he is rarely seen in public), Hezbollah acquired longer-range rockets over time, allowing it to attack northern Israel with greater success. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 further promoted Hezbollah's popularity in the region and its power in Lebanon.

After Israel's withdrawal, Hezbollah continued to try to regain control of disputed areas on the border. Six years later, in 2006, another war between Hezbollah and Israel broke out. In the five weeks that it lasted, 158 Israelis and more than 1,200 Lebanese died, the latter mostly civilians.

With the outbreak of the civil war in neighbouring Syria in 2011, Hezbollah also got involved, in support of pres. Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran, against the mainly Sunni Islamist rebels. This gave Hezbollah's military capability a further boost, and ten years later Nasrallah claimed to have 100,000 soldiers under the control of the movement's military wing, the so-called Jihad Council. The actual figure is probably much lower, but Hezbollah's arsenal has grown in sophistication and nowadays includes drones, precision rockets, and even guided ballistic missiles that can strike deep inside Israel. Moreover, many of Hezbollah's soldiers have gained battlefield experience in Syria that, under the right circumstances, could be enough to hurt Israel's conscription-driven defence force.

Today, Lebanon is nominally a parliamentary democratic republic, but in practice it is a failed state where Hezbollah's influence extends far beyond the support it enjoys at the ballot box. The coalition government formed in 2018 led by Hezbollah lost its majority in 2022 and nothing has taken its place since. Yet Hezbollah effectively controls large parts of the country, especially in the south on the border with Israel, and has enough infrastructure to organise things like social services and policing in the absence of an actual government. Hezbollah controls by far the most powerful armed force in Lebanon, and also operates schools, hospitals, cultural institutions, and charities all over the country.

All of this means that Hezbollah is a source of deep division in Lebanon, yet many ordinary people have no choice but to rely on the movement for the delivery of everyday services. The country's other political parties say Hezbollah is crippling the state and contributing to Lebanon's continued instability, but they can't offer much of an alternative.

The rest of Lebanon could only look on as Hezbollah bombarded northern Israel with mortars more frequently after Hamas's attack on October 7 last year. Those attacks became fiercer as the scale of the Israeli military's destruction in Gaza became clear, and so did Israel's counterattacks.

Last week's Israeli attacks with pagers and two-way radios further exacerbated the situation. Although Hezbollah's leadership was specifically targeted, the rest of the country suffered with it. The same goes for the airstrikes of the past week, and the knowledge that Israel is getting ready to deploy troops on the ground. Many people in Lebanon suspect only Hezbollah stands between them and an Israeli military that has anything but a reputation for caring about the distinction between civilian and military targets, and with the scorched earth war on Gaza fresh in everyone's minds.

Put another way: Israel has once again managed to unite a population against it, to ensure that the moderate voices in the Arab world are not heard, and to give credibility to a movement that is officially considered a terrorist organisation not only by the U.S. and Britain, but also by several Gulf states.

Accordingly, three-time Pulitzer winner and self-proclaimed friend of Israel Thomas L. Friedman writes in The New York Times, Israel today is in its biggest existential crisis since 1948. Friedman's argument is that October 7 was a trap to try to create distance between Israel and moderate governments in the region so that Iran's influence is not dismantled: “I've argued from Day 1 that it was a trap, a trap I'm sorry to say the Biden administration was not firm enough in stopping Israel from falling into,  and not firm enough in insisting on a better road, a road not taken."

Friedman further writes:

“I repeat: Israel is in terrible danger. It is fighting the most just war in its history — responding to the brutal, unprovoked murder and abduction of women and children and grandparents by Hamas — and yet today Israel is more of a pariah state than ever.

“Why? Because when you fight a war like this with no political horizon for this long — one that denies any possibility for more moderate Palestinians to govern Gaza — the Israeli military operation there just starts to look like endless killing for killing's sake. That is just what Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran want."

♦ VWB ♦

BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Go to the bottom of this page to share your opinion. We look forward to hearing from you.