Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut was struck by two missiles on Sunday in the aftermath of a fiery speech by Hassan Nasrallah. The Hezbollah chief committed the Iran-backed terror group to bringing victory to the embattled Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. The New Yorker described Nasrallah’s speech as the formal declaration of a regional war:

It’s official: the war in Syria has spread to Lebanon. In an extraordinary speech Saturday, Hassan Nasrallah, the bearded and bespectacled leader of the Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah, promised an all-out effort to keep the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria. “It’s our battle, and we are up to it,” Nasrallah said in a televised address. The war, he said, had entered “a completely new phase.” This is a terrifying development; the beginning of a regional war.

Most theories cite the rocket fire as a kind of response:

The attack in the Lebanese capital is thought to be retaliation for a speech by Hizbollah’s leader in which he pledged his militia’s unconditional backing for the Syrian regime… The attack in Beirut is believed to have been carried out by supporters of Syria’s Sunni Muslim-dominated rebel movement, which also has supporters in religiously mixed Lebanon. They are angry at the increasing role that Hizbollah’s Shia Muslim fighters are playing in the war in Syria, where they are currently helping Mr Assad’s forces to recapture the strategic city of Qusair near Lebanon’s border. The Grad rocket attacks – the first attempt to target Hizbollah’s strongholds in southern Beirut – hit a car sales yard in the Al-Shayyah district and a nearby apartment block.

The rocket attacks come after days of sectarian fighting in and around Tripoli. Thousands of mortars launched and dozens of people have killed in the clashes.

Hezbollah is acting in Syria acting at the behest of Iran – protecting a critical Iranian ally – at the cost of losing some 150 soldiers. Hezbollah officials have now become explicit about their role as Assad’s protectors:

An unnamed senior Lebanese Hezbollah commander told a Kuwaiti newspaper that… “Israel should know that from now on an attack on Syria is considered an attack on Hezbollah and an attack against Hezbollah is [considered to be] an attack against Syrian soil, and this act is evidence of Hezbollah and Syria’s unity in combating the Zionist enemy.”

The statement, and the instability that it risks introducing into Lebanon, is difficult to reconcile with foreign policy analysis asserting that Hezbollah has shifted from being an Iranian proxy to an indigenous Lebanese organization acting on behalf of Lebanese interests.

[Photo: Euronews / Youtube]