Foreign policy analysis suggesting that Hezbollah has morphed from being an Iranian proxy into being a Lebanese national movement has not held up well in recent months. There are the overarching dynamics that situate the group within intra-Iranian politics and put them on one side of the regional Sunni-Shiite divide. Their soldiers are currently battling on behalf of Iran and its proxies in Syria. Those two are not unrelated:
People tend to misunderstand the relationship between Hezbollah and Iran, which has changed over time but is now extremely close. The U.S. intelligence community has publicly described this as a “strategic partnership.” But people don’t fully appreciate Hezbollah’s ideological commitment to the concept of “velayat-e faqih,” or guardianship of the jurists, which holds that a Shiite Islamic cleric should also serve as supreme head of government. For Hezbollah, this means the Iranian leadership is also their leader – not for every foot soldier, but for Hezbollah’s senior leaders absolutely.
There is a direct line between Tehran’s agenda and the policies of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Tehran has sought to bolster its Syrian allies, and U.S. officials have identified Nasrallah as the one coordinating those efforts. Iran’s leaders openly declare their intention to eradicate Israel, and Nasrallah – as conveyed by Iranian media outlets – recently echoed those religiously-inspired calls:
In the school of martyred leaders, Sayyed Nasrallah said, the priority was the resistance because the correct diagnosis of the biggest risk points to the Israeli enemy and the Zionist project. “When we think deeply on Islamic and national levels we find that the most danger threatening the nation is ‘Israel’, and the only logic choice is the popular resistance.”
Hezbollah leaders including Nasrallah have taken to boasting that they can and will bombard Israeli civilian installations in order to paralyze the country. The group’s arsenal is thought to include almost 70,000 rockets and missiles.
Hezbollah’s threats and capabilities are behind long-term changes in how Israeli military forces have positioned themselves for a future Lebanese war. Rather than give the group time to successfully target Israeli population centers and civilian infrastructure, the Israelis have prepared battle plans revolving around an all-out assault on Hezbollah’s arsenals, command centers, commercial assets, and strongholds.
[Photo: Komeil 4life / Flickr]
