Hezbollah
Creature of Iran
Since the early 1980s, Hezbollah has been one of the most powerful and prominent terrorist groups in the world. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Hezbollah quickly established its strength and prominence through a string of major terrorist attacks in the region, including the suicide truck bombings of the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the 1984 car bombing of the U.S. embassy annex in Beirut, and the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985. Hezbollah, often working with Iran, also launched terrorist attacks on France and U.S. Arab allies.”
Hezbollah also played a key role in the kidnapping of more than 100 American and Western European hostages between 1982 and 1992. Among the more than two dozen American hostages taken were CIA Bureau Chief William Buckley and Marine Colonel William Higgins, who were both killed. This led to the arms for hostages program where the Reagan Administration provided weapons to Iran through Israel, in exchange for which three of the American hostages were released.
Following the conclusion of the Israel-Lebanon War in 1985, Hezbollah played a key role in the Lebanese Civil War. They partnered with the Assad dictatorship in Syria to gain effective control over the country. They branched out from paramilitary and terrorist activities into politics, becoming one of the most powerful parties in the Lebanese government. Despite only holding ten percent of the seats in Parliament, Hezbollah has used their influence to prevent the replacement of Lebanon’s president whose term expired in 2022. Their ally Najib Mikati has been acting as president ever since.
The terrorist roots of Hezbollah cannot be denied. The CSIS noted, “Hezbollah is a radical Shia organization, embracing the teachings of Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Since its founding, Hezbollah has subscribed to the doctrine of wilayat al-faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists), which advocates a guardianship-based political system centered on one qualified Islamic jurist, the supreme leader of Iran.”
The BBC described Hezbollah as “one of the most heavily-armed, non-state military forces in the world.” It is funded and equipped by Iran. Its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has claimed that Hezbollah has 100,000 fighters. Estimates of the stockpiles of missiles and rockets provided by Iran for use against Israel vary widely, but it is believed that they have at least 150,000 hidden and ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Iran has invested heavily in setting up manufacturing operations in both Lebanon and Syria to provide even more weapons for the war against Israel.
The weapons Iran has provided Hezbollah are far more sophisticated than those possessed by Hamas. Iran’s proximity to Lebanon and its partnership with Syria make it far easier for them to supply advanced missiles to Hezbollah. Despite Israel’s best efforts to halt these shipments, Hezbollah’s rocket stockpiles continue to grow.
It is estimated that they have fired more than 1,500 rockets and missiles into Israel since the Hamas invasion in October of last year. Most of these have been fairly short range, unguided weapons. But they have much more deadly weapons in their arsenal. Virtually the entire country of Israel is in range of Hezbollah rocket attacks.
And Hezbollah is not just a threat to Israel. In testimony before Congress in 2023, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated, “FBI arrests in recent years also indicate that Hezbollah has tried to seed operatives, establish infrastructure, and engage in spying here domestically—raising our concern that they may be contingency planning for future operations in the United States.” A 2024 Treasury Department report said that Hezbollah “members and sympathizers have long been involved in an array of large-scale criminal schemes, including sophisticated money laundering, smuggling, and trafficking networks that have involved the U.S. financial system.”
Lebanon
Nation of Sorrows
There was a time when Lebanon, and especially Beirut were renowned for their beauty and culture. Lebanon’s capital was often referred to as the “Paris of the Middle East.” The nation had come under French control following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The victorious British and French governments divided much of the region and took responsibility for the establishment of new governments in the nations they oversaw.
Because the population of Lebanon was divided among Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shia Muslims, a power-sharing agreement was put into place whereby the president of the country would be a Christian, the prime minister would be Sunni, and the speaker of parliament would be Shi’ite. This arrangement worked relatively well until the influx of Palestinians in the 1960s and 1970s following their expulsion from Jordan after a failed attempt to overthrow the government there.
The Palestinians under Yasser Arafat allied with radical elements trying to overthrow the Lebanese government and seize power. In 1975, a civil war began that would devastate the nation. For the next 15 years, rival groups fought a bitter and brutal war that saw at least 150,000 killed and more than a million people flee the country.
In addition to rival religious groups, there were also a number of secular militias with allegiance to different foreign countries. Rather than a war fought between armies on a battlefield, the Lebanese Civil War was waged from town to town and street to street. Simply living in the wrong place became a death sentence for many.
In 1976, thousands of Syrian troops crossed the border to intervene in the war on behalf of their favored groups. Eventually Syria would have 40,000 soldiers in Lebanon, giving them effective control over most of the country. Fighting continued in Beirut along the “Green Line,” which divided the Muslim and PLO controlled western part of the city from the Christian controlled east.
Along with their fighting in Lebanon, the PLO continued attacks against Israel, leading to the creation of a security zone along the border by Israeli forces. IDF soldiers crossed the border in force in 1982 as part of Operation Peace for Galilee. They were not fighting the Lebanese army, but the PLO.
In 1982, the Islamic Republic of Iran established a base in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. Marine Col. Timothy Geraghty in his book Peacekeepers at War recalled that from that base, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “founded, financed, trained and equipped Hezbollah to operate as a proxy army” for Iran. Hezbollah quickly became the iron fist of the Islamic regime, carrying out the war against Israel and the West.
