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ince the start of the US/Israel-Iran War, one of the developments set to reshape the region’s political and social fabric fundamentally is unfolding in Lebanon despite a fragile and uncertain ceasefire announced by the US and Iran. At a time when the eyes of the world are focused on the Gulf, Tel Aviv is making a concerted effort to exploit opportunities and irreversibly alter the status quo on the ground, disregarding Lebanon’s sovereign rights.

Factors such as rising energy prices on the international stage, the pressure that the prolongation of the war will exert on production and supply chains, and the tendency of foreign investors in Gulf monarchies—which are beginning to lose their ‘safe haven’ status—to leave their host countries have led to all discussions and expectations regarding the war being centred around the Persian Gulf. In this process, where attention has been focused on a limited area due to potential risks whose destructive effects will be felt globally, the Zionist regime has launched a move towards the annexation of South Lebanon, in line with the aggressive expansionist strategy it has accelerated in recent years.

Following the assassination of Ali Khamenei, Hezbollah’s launch of attacks on occupied territories and its de facto intervention in the war prompted the Zionist regime to intensify its attacks on Lebanon, despite the long-standing ceasefire. Following the Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023, the occupying army implemented a strategy of diversion and securing significant gains in Lebanon through aggressive and provocative attacks on Lebanese territory, to continue the genocide in Gaza. Having gained significant psychological superiority following the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah in September 2024, Tel Aviv postponed its strategy of focusing on Lebanon, despite inflicting serious damage on Hezbollah, due to the strong resistance demonstrated by the resistance in Gaza despite limited resources.

Gaza’s realities

Given the realities on the ground in Gaza, an army severely demoralized psychologically, launching a large-scale ground operation in Lebanon could have meant facing a result far beyond the Zionist administration’s expectations. For this reason, placing Lebanon in a position where it would be constantly monitored and could be attacked if necessary was, in fact, the most reasonable option for Tel Aviv. On the other hand, Hezbollah’s reluctance to engage in an all-out war created a reality that heightened the fragility in southern Lebanon and multiplied the risks.

Despite the occupation army launching hundreds of attacks on southern Lebanon and targeting Hezbollah members following the ceasefire signed between the parties in November 2024, no retaliation was carried out against Israel. Seeking to avoid becoming the actor escalating tensions on the ground under the “Strategic Patience” approach, Hezbollah endeavored to keep its contact with Israeli forces as limited as possible, adhering as closely as possible to the rules of engagement adopted after the 2006 war.

The deep crisis unfolding in the country, driven by Lebanon’s political and economic conditions, was in fact one of the main reasons behind the strategy adopted by Hezbollah. Seeking to avoid a complete loss of its already shaken legitimacy within the country, the organization attempted to defuse the Zionist administration’s aggressive stance; however, following the commencement of attacks against Iran on 28 February, it shifted from a defense-oriented passive strategy to a military activism strategy that prioritized the offensive.

What has changed for Hezbollah in Iran since the war?

In the weeks following the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, the question of whether Hezbollah would declare war on the occupying state was the one everyone was most eager to have answered. Following the announcement on 6 November 2023 that Hassan Nasrallah would address the nation, all news agencies immediately turned their attention to Lebanon and Nasrallah’s speech. What put an end to expectations of a declaration of war was Nasrallah’s statement at the very beginning of his speech that they had gathered “to commemorate the martyrs”.

Despite the heavy blow dealt to Hezbollah by the occupying forces, the movement’s decision to limit itself to deterrence was linked not only to the sensitive conditions in Lebanon mentioned above but also to the fact that the process had been initiated by Hamas, or more specifically, the Qassam Brigades. Hizbullah, unwilling to become a part of someone else’s war, strove not to back down from the strategy it had adopted, despite losing two of its secretaries-general and founding members of its leadership cadre. The fact that the US-Israeli coalition directly targeted the Supreme Leader in its war against Iran, however, made it imperative for Hizballah to engage in the process actively.

The elimination of the highest echelons of the Iranian leadership in the opening hours of the war led the proxy forces in the region to face an existential crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Any change in Tehran would have signified, in particular, the complete collapse of Hezbollah. This new situation, arising without the movement being able to regain the ground it had lost within Lebanon’s political and social structure, compelled Hezbollah’s leadership to assess the two options and act swiftly. The movement would either adopt a stance of waiting for the process in Iran to conclude, thereby tolerating the Zionist administration’s moves, or it would choose the path of attack to weaken the occupying army, thereby enabling Iran to emerge from the process with gains and strengthen its own presence in Lebanon.

Given the risks the first scenario would pose to the organization, Hezbollah opted to enter the war directly, despite the possibility of the occupation expanding within Lebanese territory. In particular, Hezbollah’s primary expectation upon entering the war was to force the Tel Aviv administration to withdraw by inflicting the heavy losses they hoped to inflict during the occupying army’s planned ground operation. In the current situation, where Zionist leaders have escalated matters to the point of claiming sovereignty over Southern Lebanon, Hezbollah is resisting the occupiers with all the means at its disposal. Meanwhile, the Israeli army is attempting to alter Lebanon’s borders and annex them to its own territory by supporting its air strikes with ground forces.

Israel’s strategy in Lebanon

Tel Aviv, which does not hesitate to resort to any form of aggression or unlawful action to implement its political vision built on religious references, aims to apply a similar policy in Lebanon to that pursued in the Palestinian territories. Believing that a significant portion of the region has been granted to them by God, and pursuing an expansionist strategy that is difficult to contain in this context, the Zionist administration hopes to take another step towards its goal of expanding its territory by annexing South Lebanon.

Bolstered by political backing from the US and leading European states, the decision-makers of the occupying state—who deem any unlawful action permissible—are seeking to capitalize on international concern over the situation in the Gulf to engineer a major shift in the status quo in Southern Lebanon. The fact that the country does not hold a significant position within either the regional or global system, coupled with the absence of a powerful patron, is the primary reason why many parties remain indifferent to developments in Lebanon during this process. Seizing upon this environment to shape the process as it sees fit, Tel Aviv intends to establish a status quo over Lebanon that is independent of the war against Iran.

The Zionist regime, which invaded southern Lebanon in 1982 under the pretext of the country’s civil war, had not embarked on establishing settlements in southern Lebanon similar to those it had built for Jewish settlers in the West Bank, owing to regional and global dynamics. The occupying army, which remained in the region until 2000, pursued a security-focused protection strategy.

Subsequently, the withdrawal process from Lebanon was completed due to the rising political cost of maintaining a presence there. At that time, as conditions were not yet ripe, Tel Aviv did not implement its Judaization strategy in southern Lebanon; however, it is now seeking to exploit the vacuum that has emerged to extend Israel’s fluid borders as far as the Litani River. In recent days, the occupying army has continued its advance despite ground resistance, consolidating its presence in the region by seizing strategic points in the south.

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lthough discussions regarding Hezbollah’s weapons have been part of Lebanese politics since the Taif Agreement in 1989; the events of October 7, which saw Hezbollah lose its entire senior command, Israeli attacks on its weapons depots, and, particularly with the Syrian revolution, the decline of Iran’s regional influence, paved the way for negotiating Hezbollah and its weapons in such a clear and forceful manner for the first time.

From the beginning of 2025, Lebanon achieved relative stability with the election of a president and the formation of a new government, and began to chart a new course in domestic and foreign policy to determine its place in the regional equation. However, the issue of dismantling the military wing of Hezbollah, which has long been the country’s most important armed force, and disarming the group has once again brought the political deadlock in the country to the fore.

Although Hezbollah is currently weaker than ever, the failure to achieve concrete results from the negotiations, the government’s inability to manage the process well, and the continuation of Israeli attacks on Lebanon indicate that a possible weapons handover process will be more painful than expected. Accordingly, questions surrounding the issue of weapons, which involves the Lebanese state-Hezbollah-society triangle, are increasingly being raised.

Will the weapons be surrendered?

The issue of disarming Hezbollah, which was the first item on the agenda of Nawaf Salam, who became prime minister of the new government on February 8, 2025, entered a new phase when Salam accepted Tom Barrack’s proposal on August 5, and decided that there should be no armed elements in Lebanon. The transition to this new phase was significantly influenced by the expansion of the scope of the UN Security Council resolution adopted after the 2006 war within the framework of Barrack’s Hezbollah-centered disarmament project.

Indeed, as stated above, the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons began to be discussed in the 1990s and was resolved in 2006. In line with this decision, it was envisaged that there would be no armed forces other than the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon. However, after the Israel-Hezbollah war that began on October 8, 2023, Amos Hochstein, the Biden administration’s Middle East adviser, brought the UN resolution back to the agenda in the first month of the war and made statements saying that UN Resolution 1701 is not enough and that the United States is working to devise a formula to end the conflict once and for all, indicating that security strategies against Hezbollah had been determined much earlier.

At this point, it is understood that the clause in the proposal presented by Tom Barrack, which calls for the removal of Hezbollah weapons not only from southern Lebanon but also from Dahiye, Bekaa, Baalbek and all areas held by the group, had been planned by Washington and Tel Aviv for a long time.

Hezbollah’s self-restraint

Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem, who strongly opposed the draft against the Lebanese government that ratified the U.S. decision, stated that despite all of Israel’s violations after the November 26 ceasefire agreement, there had been no response from South Lebanon to Israel. He argued that Hezbollah had complied with the conditions to secure peace, but Israel had continued its occupations and attacks, stating that national security would be completely threatened by the project to disarm Hezbollah.

This situation, a clear sign that they will not comply with what Naim Qassem sees as an Israeli and U.S. plan, is bringing the tension between Hezbollah and Amal on one side and the Lebanese government and its allies on the other to a more critical point. On the other hand, Hezbollah’s continuation of its ‘Resistance: Sovereignty’ slogan indicates that the process will be stalled for some time and that no concrete progress will be made until December 2025, the deadline set for the state to take control of the weapons.

Naim Qassem’s current call for the Lebanese government to reverse its decision and for joint action against this external threat to Lebanon, developing a discourse based on national consciousness, indicates that he is seeking political support within Lebanon. Although Qassem’s statement that Lebanon’s national security is under threat has not been met with a response, his room for maneuver has been significantly reduced due to the low level of support he has received, even from Amal movement leader Nabih Berri. The Lebanese army does not have a deterrent force capable of confronting Hezbollah, besides the Lebanese government’s inability to chart a course for disarmament that would not lead to internal conflict. These are all clear signs that the group will not back down in the short term.

Another point to note at this stage is that if Israel withdraws from the occupied territories and a permanent ceasefire is achieved, it remains to be seen in what context Hezbollah will bring the issue of its weapons to the negotiating table. Indeed, the leader of Hezbollah has stated from the outset that they will not surrender their weapons by any means whatsoever. Following the permanent ceasefire expected to be signed between Israel and Lebanon, scenarios are emerging in which Hezbollah will act in cooperation with the Lebanese army and Hezbollah soldiers may be integrated into the Lebanese army. This plan, rejected by the Lebanese government and, naturally, the U.S., appears to be the only alternative offered by Hezbollah.

On the other hand, statements made by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that Israel will not withdraw from the five points it occupies in southern Lebanon leave Hezbollah with no alternative but to cooperate in order to maintain its military presence. Therefore, pressure exerted during the negotiation phase will mobilize Hezbollah’s social base, which refuses to accept coexistence with Israeli occupiers in the south and will widen the gap between society and the state.

What does Iran’s support for Hezbollah mean?

Shortly after Nawaf Salam accepted the U.S. proposal, the visit of Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, to Beirut and the tension that arose between him and President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Salam during the visit showed that Hezbollah had caused a stalemate between Iran and Lebanon. In this context, although Larijani proposed dialogue on the issue of weapons, he emphasized that his country would continue to support Hezbollah, stating that the resistance was a strategic asset and that ‘Tehran needs Hezbollah’s support at least as much as Hezbollah needs it,’ thus indicating that Iran would not abandon Hezbollah.

In contrast to Salam, who reacted harshly to Larijani’s remarks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arakchi, seeking to adopt a more moderate stance, stated that they were not interfering in Lebanon’s internal affairs but supported Hezbollah’s national security strategy, indirectly expressing their desire for Iran’s continued presence in Lebanon.

At this stage, it appears that Iran, while beginning to prioritize its internal defenses against a potential renewed conflict with Israel, is striving to maintain its influence over the Lebanese Shiites and Hezbollah, who need it more than ever. On the other hand, considering that the decline in its regional influence does not mean Iran’s withdrawal from the region, that Tehran is closely monitoring the ongoing instability in Syria, and that Saudi Arabia’s reluctance regarding Lebanon continues, it is likely that Iran will maintain its strategic support for Hezbollah.

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he nature and extent of Iran’s involvement in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood have been the subject of divergent interpretations. Some argue that Iran played a direct role in the initiation of the conflict, while others suggest that Iran’s influence was more indirect, aiming to leverage the conflict for its geopolitical interests. As the war escalated, however, Iran’s impact on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict became more discernible.

Iran has greatly improved its relations with Hamas in recent years. Tehran provides Hamas with political, military, and financial support and Iran’s role in Hamas’s ability to carry out such a sophisticated and large-scale operation is undeniable.

In this vein, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Doha a week after the clashes started. Iran also enjoys advanced relations with other armed Palestinian groups, such as Islamic Jihad. While the Hamas-Iran relationship is a marriage of convenience as Hamas seeks external support, the Islamic Jihad-Iran connection is ideologically based.

Senior Iranian government officials have vehemently denied allegations that they were involved in the planning stages of the operation. Iran’s official position seems to be to provide political support after the operation has started. In this manner, Iran seems to have avoided the risk of a direct military confrontation in legal terms and opted for a confrontation with Israel through its proxy forces.

Despite the official statements from Iranian authorities, the security bureaucracy in Iran, especially the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), acts independently of the government. It is known that Hamas has been meeting with Iranian military officials regularly before this operation. It is also true that this operation coincides with Iran’s long-term strategic interests.

At the end of the day, it would be naive to think that Hamas, with all the support it receives from Iran, would engage in something radically contrary to Iran’s regional policy. While it cannot be said that Iran is directing Hamas’s chain of command, it is also not completely out of the picture.

Iran’s aim is to target the normalization between Israel and Arab countries. Indeed, after Hamas’s attack, Ali Akbar Velayati, one of the advisors of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said that “those who are trying to normalize [relations] with Israel should take lessons from these developments.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s airstrikes in Syria have caused serious losses for Iran and the Hamas attack served as a deterrent against Israel in this sense. It is always in Iran’s interest to keep the confrontational motivation against Israel alive in the region; after all, Iran refers to Israel as “Little Satan” (the U.S. being “Great Satan”) and gives it a central position in its ideological propaganda.

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iolent non-state actors (VNSAs) become involved in multiple economic activities including illegal and organized crime to retain their political and military capabilities. In contrast to legitimate and locally and internationally responsible actors, such as states, VNSAs have more possibilities to engage in black or illicit market relations and transnational activities. This is possible because there are no strong and established international mechanisms or regional cooperation to monitor and prevent these activities. This legal vacuum and the reality of several disintegrated/collapsed states in the Middle East and North Africa further generated favorable conditions for illegal economic activities like arms and human smuggling, drug trafficking, and money laundering.

Among other drug trafficking problems, narco-terrorism is a leading endemic challenge for both states and the international order. This black-market activity provides huge economic resources for VNSAs through which they can manage their military equipment and keep their influence over their followers via the social possibilities they gain. Looking at several cases, in particular the PKK terrorist networks and Hezbollah, they try to use these black market relations and criminal networks to receive huge amounts of easy money. Cutting this critical source and monitoring VNSAs should be a top priority for states and the international public in the fight against terrorism and any illegal violence.

PKK’s Narco-terrorism Reality

Since its emergence in 1982, the PKK and its affiliated groups try to maximize their financial profits through illicit methods including transferring heroin and other types of drugs specifically to Western countries. By cooperating with local branches in the Caucasus, the Balkans, and Africa, the PKK is involved in drug transportation by taxing these transfers and directly managing drug trafficking. According to several reports unveiled by national intelligence agencies and security forces, the PKK directly or indirectly has a role in transferring almost 80 percent of the total heroin used in Europe, revealing its easy and unproblematic outreach to European countries.

To complicate matters further, the profits gained from this illicit trade are probably transferred through PKK-affiliated groups active in European countries to launch terrorist attacks against Turkey. Both European institutions and reports and U.S. institutions have unveiled reports proving the active role of the PKK in drug trafficking, once again exposing the reality in which the PKK conducts its dirty and bloody terrorism. These activities not only threaten Turkish security but also compromise European security and the social mosaic at large.

To illustrate, the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and Europol’s EU Drug Market Report published in 2019, and the decision taken by the U.S. Treasury Department to blacklist several leading figures of the PKK-affiliated Kongra-Gel such as Cemil Bayik, Duran Kalkan, Remzi Kartal, Sabri Ok, and Adem Uzun in 2011 confirmed Turkey’s long-term criticism and warnings about the PKK’s organized crime networks which are heavily involved in black market relations.

Especially with the start of the Arab Spring and the disintegration of several states like Syria and Iraq, the PKK intensified its criminal activities and extended its networks in the Middle East region as VNSAs including terrorist organizations have found new safe heavens in these collapsed states. Through its traditional networks in Iraq and Iran and new ones in Syria, the PKK intends to control this route and extend these activities to the southern Turkish borders. Eliminating the PKK terrorism is only possible by cutting its narco-terror networks which now extend to other countries. Against this background, Turkish successive operations in Syria and Iraq against the PKK terrorism not only ensure stable and secure local and regional relations and environment, but are also possibly the most strategic and deadly strikes to the cross-border drug trafficking managed by the PKK and its affiliates.

Funding “Resistance” with Illicit Instruments

Hezbollah is claimed to be involved in several different illegal enterprises like smuggling, the diamond trade, fraud, money laundering, and drug trafficking. Several reports, articles, figures, and even the U.S. and Israel often claim that Hezbollah has extensive criminal networks in several regions including North America, South America, and the Middle East to raise money through the black market. In addition to its financial resources from Iran, expatriates and donations from Shia communities living in several regions including Canada, Latin America, and several European countries, and taxation in Hezbollah-controlled areas in Lebanon, this so-called resistance group also conducts illegal activities.

Operating these activities from areas like the Beqaa Valley and South Lebanon, the group extended its activities to the Iraqi and Syrian borders following the collapse of the existing states there. Weapons smuggling to Hezbollah through Iraq and Syria became easier following the power vacuum in these countries and Iran’s direct geographical outreach to Hezbollah. It is also claimed that Iraq and Syria turn a blind eye to illicit trade relations including drug trafficking.

The serious accusations and reports on the deep illegal activities of Hezbollah-affiliated groups and figures in South America are of special interest. Considering that there are pro-Hezbollah Shia groups in several Latin American countries, which have been facing a narco-terrorism problem for a long time, Hezbollah-affiliated groups and figures have a role in these clandestine and transnational criminal activities including drug trafficking. Hezbollah affiliates earn dirty money and launder it via several charities and with the help of Hezbollah’s control of the Lebanese financial and banking system. This money comes from drug production in the Beqaa Valley which is one of the largest opium and hashish-producing regions in the world.

As a result, some analysts have gone further and identified Lebanon as a narco-state due to Hezbollah’s illicit transnational activities. In other words, Hezbollah is claimed to have transferred huge amounts of drugs and cocaine to several Latin American countries and laundered this dirty money by using its “legal” political networks in Lebanon. In this way, possibly much more than Iran’s financial assistance, the amount of which was already diminished owing to Iran’s worsening economic hardships, Hezbollah found new and more effective ways to fund its now extending military activities, economic initiatives, and social efforts.

To conclude, there are strong indications that both the PKK and Hezbollah are exceptionally active and embedded in black market relations and transnational organized crime. Actors like the PKK and Hezbollah consider the maintenance of their military-political power as a top priority irrespective of the means through which they fund this power. Therefore, they do not shy away from using black market relations to retain their status. In addition, the lack of stronger international enforcement mechanisms, regional cooperation and, more importantly, the reality of collapsed states enable these actors to intensify their illicit activities including drug trafficking.

Not having any national and international responsibility, these actors use local and transnational affiliates to carry out their illegal activities. In the case of PKK terrorism, it has been revealed that its narco-terror activities are mainly focused on controlling the European market and consolidating its narco-power in disintegrated states like Iraq and Syria. Hezbollah, the so-called resistance and anti-Western and anti-Israel actor, benefits from drug trade especially in Latin American countries by using the hashish and opium from the Beqaa Valley and by controlling smuggling between Iran and Hezbollah-controlled areas.

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srael and Lebanon are moving towards an agreement on the longstanding maritime border dispute. The dispute had been a cause of tension between the two sides for over a decade and indirect negotiations have been going on since 2020.

U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein sent the latest proposal to the two sides last week, on September 30. The draft aims to settle claims over offshore gas fields. Recent discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean have shown the disputed waters to be rich in natural gas and have raised the stakes.

Hezbollah, which had been opposing the previous drafts of the deal and had threatened Israel against utilizing offshore gas fields, seems to now be giving the green light.

On October 1, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech that the draft deal was a “very important step” and that the next few days would be “crucial.”

“We support the Lebanese position so that we safeguard our right to demarcate our maritime borders and invest in our gas,” senior Hezbollah official Mohammad Raad said.

With the Lebanese economy suffering, Hezbollah has pledged to abide by the agreement which may relieve some of the strain on the economy.

“A positive atmosphere”

On October 1, Lebanese President Najib Mikati spoke of a “positive atmosphere” on the topic and that a deal would soon be reached, possibly before his term expires on October 31.

Nabih Berri, one of Lebanon’s powerful leaders and an ally of Hezbollah, said that the draft agreement “in principle meets the Lebanese demands.”

Lebanon has submitted a list of changes that it would like to see in a proposal on how to delineate a contested maritime border with Israel to the United States.

Lebanon presented its response to the deal with modifications to the U.S. ambassador on October 4. “I think that it is now in the hands of the U.S. mediator,” deputy parliament speaker Elias Bou Saab said. Bou Saab also stated that he does not think the proposed changes would derail the deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said that they were “discussing the final details” and that it was too early to commend a done deal. While the details of the draft were not revealed to the public, Lapid stated it “safeguards Israel’s full security-diplomatic interests, as well as economic interests.”

“The security of the north will be strengthened,” he continued. “Money will flow into the state’s coffers and our energy independence will be secured.”

Iran-backed proxies are involved in almost every major crisis in the Middle East. Recently, the Houthis, or Ansar Allah, of Yemen launched another missile attack on Abu Dhabi, called on foreign companies and investors to leave the UAE, and vowed to make the country unsafe. Also, the Fatah Alliance and other Iran-backed parties affiliated with the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) rejected Iraq’s recent parliamentary election held in October 2021 and tried to further destabilize the already chaotic Iraqi politics.

Moreover, elements within the PMF such as Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq with strong ties to Iran, have been trying to hinder Turkey’s fight against PKK terror in northern Iraq as they present it as “a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty,” a point which was also made by Iraj Masjedi, Iran’s ambassador in Baghdad last year in February.

Most recently, Kata’ib Hezbollah issued a statement which threatened Turkey and demanded the withdrawal of its forces “before it’s too late.” To these Iranian proxies, the presence of Iran’s militias in Syria must also be added. In short, alongside the Hezbollah of Lebanon, Iran’s proxy par excellence, Iran-backed Shiite militant groups are active all across the Middle East.

Why does Iran need proxies?

Iran is undoubtedly a major Middle Eastern power with its geostrategic position, abundant natural resources, and significant human capital. Nevertheless, Iran’s conventional military capacity has, for decades, either fallen behind its political aspirations or remained untested with the notable exception of the tragic and devastating defensive war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1980-1988.

In the twentieth century, the country was not involved in any substantial and direct military conflict against any major enemy. For that, Iranian elites’ masterful political maneuvers and their use of the international balance of power to their advantage deserves a huge credit, but that’s a different story.

The country stayed neutral during the two World Wars, “solved” the oil nationalization crisis in the early 1950s without facing military aggression – unlike Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt which was jointly attacked by Israel, the United Kingdom, and France upon President Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 – and even got away with the Iran hostage crisis at the end of 1979 without an open military confrontation.

While doing this, Iran envisioned itself as the true leader of all the Shiites in the region and beyond. These proxies consolidated Iran’s defensive capabilities but gradually turned into a security risk for the region. Furthermore, although Iran’s short-term expectations from these proxies were mostly military, there was a strong political dimension from the beginning. In essence, Iran was reproducing, in different countries, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which were established by Ayatollah Khomeini following the revolution and in time turned into a military, economic, political, and even social power.

How do Iran’s proxies function?

From its inception, the Islamic Republic of Iran emerged as an interventionist regime that interposed in the affairs of regional states through the rhetoric and practice of exporting the revolution. This was clearly reflected in Article 154 of Iran’s constitution which declared Iran’s support for the “just struggles of the mustada‘fun [the oppressed] against the mustakbirun [the oppressor] in every corner of the globe,” while “scrupulously refraining from all forms of interference in the internal affairs of other nations.”

As it turned out, Iran cared little about the non-intervention principle of the United Nations. The hostility between the Islamic Republic, the U.S., and Israel, along with the unfavorable attitude of certain Arab regimes in the region, with the notable exception of Hafez Assad’s Syria, towards the Islamic Republic’s policies certainly added to Iran’s desire to look for non-state allies to consolidate its security in the region. Nevertheless, paradoxically these proxies caused, for all intents and purposes, Iran’s further isolation in the region.

Although the “axis of resistance,” Iran’s preferred term for the large network of proxies under its control, is anti-American, anti-Zionist, and counter-hegemonic in rhetoric, it is characterized, in fact, by two main features: Iran’s proxies grew in weak and war-torn states, and they targeted Iran’s regional enemies – not only Israel – along with the U.S. as the first and foremost global hegemonic power. Yet, the real risk for Iran’s proxies has always been their political influence rather than their military capability.

Iran’s proxies after Qasem Soleimani

Iran’s Middle East proxies have for a long time been predominantly associated with Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. There is no question that Soleimani played an immensely decisive role in coordinating Iran’s network of Middle East proxies especially after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

But, although his assassination by the U.S. in January 2020 came as a shock for Iran, his weight in in laying out Iran’s Middle East foreign policies was already put under increasing question by those such as Javad Zarif, Iran’s former minister of foreign affairs, who sought to reintegrate Iran in the international community.

In the changing landscape of today’s Middle East and Iran’s normalization attempts with its Gulf neighbors, Iran’s proxies can no longer effectively function like they did in the past as sheer militant groups. Yet their political influence in their respective countries also poses challenges to the region.

Their sectarian approaches, reliance on arms, and their close ties with Iran further complicate the possibility of their integration into national politics. In a nutshell, at best, Iranian proxies can hope to replicate the Lebanese Hezbollah, which itself suffers from these defects and acts like a state within a state.

As nuclear negotiations continue in Vienna to find a common ground between Iran and the U.S., Iran’s proxies once again became a critical issue. It goes without saying that the U.S. regards these proxies as a security risk for itself and its Middle Eastern allies, but they are primarily a regional problem.

Thus, although reaching a renewed nuclear deal which would effectively limit Iran’s nuclear capacity and undermine the security risks of its proxies must be a shared priority for the region, there needs to be a regional initiative to secure stability in the greater area.

Turkey’s attempts to normalize relations and repair broken ties with a number of states in the region can be a good starting point to deescalate tensions in the Middle East. Also, the lifting of illegal sanctions on Iran can encourage it to take part constructively in the region’s normalization process.

In order to realize this, Iran must respect the principle of “scrupulously refraining from all forms of interference in the internal affairs of other nations” as stipulated in its constitution.

In a televised interview on the Iranian Al-Alam news channel on February 8, secretary general of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, revealed that they wished the ex-Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, reconsider his bombshell decision of “suspending” his political career, announced on January 24.

Nasrallah called the decision “unfortunate,” given that Hariri was their “candidate for the premiership,” highlighting that the political landscape remains extremely opaque in a post-Hariri era and that channels of cooperation and communication with the Future Movement, Hariri’s political party, shall remain open.

Ironically, Hezbollah never named Hariri for the premiership in the custom parliamentary consultations often held by the president of the republic before a PM is designated based on a majority of votes. However, Hezbollah’s position on Hariri’s departure says a lot about the role Hariri played to the militant group’s advantage especially since 2016, despite Hezbollah basking in unrivalled power during that period.

Hariri’s exit does not necessarily imply that observers, politicians, and researchers have written him off completely; however, his decision should not be taken lightly either, in terms of the seismic shift the country is undergoing by moving completely into the “Iranian influence archipelago.”

In late January, Saad Hariri arrived in Beirut following months of speculation in the wake of yet another solitary retreat – this time in the Emirati capital, Abu Dhabi – that came into effect mid-July last year. Hariri, a PM-designate at the time, stepped down after failing to form a government for over eight months. In Beirut, Hariri met with his aides, party members, MPs from his bloc, and other sectarian leaders or figures, and proceeded to announce the unthinkable: suspending his involvement in political activities and not running in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

In third-world countries (although I have reservations regarding the term), politicians and leaders do not simply step down: they either abdicate to their heirs or die while still in office. If they ever step down, it is often a form of a relegitimization process following serious blunders. Exhibit A is Egypt’s leader Gamal Abdel Nasser’s shenanigan in 1967 following his country’s catastrophic defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Hariri is no Nasser

But Hariri is no Nasser and he might not even aspire to be one, and, Hariri was not met with waves of people flocking the streets asking him to rescind his decision as Nasser experienced back then. Hariri enjoyed a few flagship “selfies” with a handful of supporters near his Beiruti mansion and a couple of hours of chants in his name. The feeble reaction from Saad’s supporters, the ones he represents, is symptomatic of current times in Lebanon where sectarian leaders, previously holding gods-like statuses, are dealt major blows to their popularity, to a varying extent.

The Sunni community today stands at a three-way crossroad with different options to mitigate the current situation. As Saad fades into the horizon, until further notice, Sunnis can either succumb to further marginalization and disenfranchisement without devising a plan to attempt to fill Hariri’s shoes, or the main Sunni figures in the country can move towards creating a consortium that manages the transition into a post-Hariri era through cooperation, or lastly, compete amongst each other over the leadership of the sect causing further communal depression and the complete erosion of the sect’s leverage within the country’s power-sharing arrangement.

Unfortunately, Lebanon isn’t shifting into a secular state any time soon, nor will its sectarian system be altered at the moment, despite the hopeful dreams of the Lebanese youth that took to the streets during the October 2019 uprising.

It appears that the Lebanese Sunni leaders understand that now is not the time for petty politics amongst them, especially during an extremely sensitive phase where Iran sits and negotiates with the United States in Vienna not only regarding its nuclear program but also its influence in the region, and while the world is starting to show signs of reconsideration of policies towards the Syrian regime, despite its track record of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As such, a common understanding seems to be brewing for the option of a concerted effort to rally the community and block the way in face of lackluster disbursement of Sunni votes. The cornerstone of such an effort will be the mufti who already adopted a proactive approach to the situation, in addition to the club of ex-prime ministers who, alongside Mikati, can throw their weight around.

However, this does not ensure that Hariri’s shoes will be filled. After all, and despite his blunders, he remains the Sunni community’s most popular leader and no other figure enjoys the potential Saad once represented – not even the sitting billionaire PM, Najib Mikati, who has yet to come out of his localized constituency in northern Lebanon towards the country as a whole.

With the Sunni community divided, Hezbollah can now rule much easier

The recent dynamics will pave the way towards a schism between the Sunni figures of the cities and those of the peripheries, who are not aligned in politics and allegiances. In fact, peripheral figures have a bigger chance for representation today, especially since they’ve maintained good relations with the Syrian regime in Damascus and with the tides shifting in their favor.

This schism will serve as a conduit for both Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad to exercise influence over the Sunni role within the power-sharing arrangement, allowing them to break any form of unity sect leaders might work to establish. It’ll be easier for Hezbollah to rule in the wake of a divided Sunni community.

Hezbollah has lost an ally in Saad Hariri, a pro-Western PM with access to all capitals of the world who acted as a buffer between the international community and the Iran-aligned militant group and also as a whipping boy for most of the shortcomings under the pretext that “Hezbollah doesn’t rule.” Now, the group is gearing for a wider share of the pie in Lebanon as the reconfiguration of spheres of influence is underway in the region.

Hariri is obviously jumping ship, a sinking one with more holes than the current 6.5 million population can fill even if they all chipped in.

Hariri’s decision stacks up against a series of mistakes he has committed over a 17-year period, yet the decision might eventually pay off during these trying times – as in now. Saad is obviously jumping ship, a sinking one with more holes than the current 6.5 million population can fill even if they all chipped in. The economy is in shatters, the country’s relations with the outside world are collapsing, and the predominant Hezbollah-Free Patriotic Movement alliance has no competency or potential to lead the country out of the abyss.

More so, in order to secure a deal with the International Monetary Fund and other global donors, the time will come where even more difficult austerity measures will be required with harsh reforms that often come at a popularity expense. Hariri being out of the picture means he won’t be associated with those measures and will spare himself further decline in popularity.

Lebanon’s agony was compounded over the past few weeks as a result of statements made by the country’s newly appointed minister of information, George Cordahi, in a prerecorded online media interview that saw the light on September 10, 2021, but which was filmed in August 2021 and released after Cordahi was appointed in Najib Mikati’s government on September 10.

In the interview, Cordahi committed a series of blunders which highlight his very basic understanding of regional politics (or even politics, in general) and his skewed moral compass regarding what constitutes an admirable leader in his opinion (i.e., Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin). However, all of that didn’t matter and quickly became a sideshow against the backdrop of the measures that were immediately enacted by the Saudi government following the airing of the episode by the online platform of Qatari state-owned Al Jazeera.

Riyadh seemed to have taken offense in Cordahi’s statements on Yemen, where he said that the Iran-aligned Houthi group was “defending itself … against an external aggression,” adding that “homes, villages, funerals and weddings were being bombed” by the Saudi-led coalition. He also called the 7-year war in Yemen “futile” and said it was “time for it to end.”

A diplomatic crisis spiraled out of control, with Riyadh fully halting Lebanese imports and ordering the “recall of the ambassador in Lebanon for consultations, and the departure of Lebanon’s ambassador to the kingdom within 48 hours.” Other countries within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) followed suit or took other measures, but the GCC appeared united in its stance against Lebanon – the Gulf’s unity on such a negative position towards Lebanon constitutes a precedent, with Oman and Qatar taking less escalatory measures than their counterparts.

The crisis goes well beyond Cordahi’s words regarding the war in Yemen.

Yet, while the blame for what transpired is being directed towards Cordahi, with several Lebanese politicians or sectarian leaders denouncing his statements and asking him to resign – including, in an indirect way, the incumbent prime minister – the crisis goes well beyond Cordahi’s words regarding the war in Yemen.

In fact, from an observer’s point of view, the current diplomatic crisis has been a long time coming with the perfect storm brewing over the years, especially since back in 2016 the so-called presidential deal was struck between Saad Hariri, Michel Aoun (and his U.S.-sanctioned son-in-law Gebran Bassil), and Hezbollah.

The deal birthed what was dubbed a neo-troika, which represents a power-sharing arrangement reminiscent of the one that existed during the Syrian regime’s occupation of Lebanon. However, this time, the main antagonists were the top leaders of the three main sects in Lebanon: the Maronites, the Shi`a, and the Sunnis. Yet, the neo-troika does not place all three parties on an equal footing within Lebanon’s power-sharing arrangement.

The ultimate weakening of Hariri and the disintegration of the political camp that was previously perceived to balance Hezbollah’s growing power, catapulted the Iran-funded and armed group into new echelons of influence in Lebanon. May 2018 resembled the final nail in the coffin, with Hezbollah and its allies winning a majority in the parliamentary elections allowing it to exercise control over the legislative, the executive, and the presidency. This inherently meant fully controlling the country’s foreign policy too.

Two major incidents exemplified Riyadh’s waning influence and Lebanon’s break from its traditional foreign policy positioning.

Two major incidents exemplified Riyadh’s waning influence and Lebanon’s break from its traditional foreign policy positioning. Both incidents were championed by none other than Gebran Bassil, Hezbollah’s main Christian ally in Lebanon. In February 2016, U.S.-sanctioned Gebran Bassil refused to condemn attacks on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Meshhad. Bassil, at the time, was a foreign minister and his decision broke with Arab unanimity within the Arab League.

Even Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, at the time, denounced the attacks, and said that his government had opened an investigation to punish the perpetrators. Moreover, Bassil refused to condemn drone attacks that targeted two major Saudi Aramco oil installations in September 2019. Bassil justified his stance by equating the Houthi attack on Riyadh to the Saudi-led Arab coalition on Sanaa while alluding to the policy of “dissociation” to avoid taking a stance. That did not bode well with Riyadh, given the gravity of the attack which obviously crossed all the red lines between Riyadh and Tehran.

Riyadh effectively realized – the hard way – that it went from hero to zero in Beirut in a span of only 15 years. This can be viewed as a record time for a country’s shift in allegiance given the size of investments Riyadh once held in Beirut, and especially since it engineered the end of the civil war in 1990 and funded Lebanon’s postwar reconstruction drive.

While Lebanon was previously seen as a satellite state were Riyadh and Damascus shared influence, the country today rotates in the Iranian orbit despite Riyadh and other powers, like the United States, retaining considerable influence there.

In today’s regional geopolitical setup, Lebanon falls within the “Iranian influence archipelago,” a reality supported by statements made by senior Iranian officials, the current Lebanese political state of affairs, and the fact that the international community includes the Lebanese dossier whenever it intends to negotiate with Tehran. After all, Najib Mikati’s government did not see the light despite the immense effort and pressure France’s Elysée exerted over 13 months up until French President Emmanuel Macron received a nod from the Iranians following the installment of their new hardline administration in Tehran.

Nevertheless, the recent Saudi escalation towards Lebanon appears to be a last hurrah despite the Saudis framing it as them cutting their losses in Lebanon and leaving. The developments in Iraq and Lebanon over the past two years – since the uprisings of October 2019 broke out in both countries – and the growing anti-Iranian sentiments in both countries, reinvigorated the Saudi drive to try and instrumentalize the new dynamics in order to attempt to roll back Iranian influence in the region.

The results of the Iraqi parliamentary elections that were held last month and the huge blow that the Iran-aligned militias were dealt, cemented the Saudi conviction, especially as Riyadh maintains good relations with the caretaker Iraqi PM – who until now remains the most favorable candidate to be reappointed to the position– and the winner of the parliamentary elections, Muqtada al-Sadr. Iraq’s influential Shi`ite cleric, al-Sadr, made a rare visit to Saudi Arabia in July 2017 and met with Mohammed bin Salman.

With today’s intertwinement of dossiers in the region, especially due to Iran’s bloated influence in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, the Saudis as much as the Iranians, view the regional chessboard as one unit where they can put pressure on each other in different places to gain concessions. Meanwhile, both had a major interest in engaging in an Iranian-Saudi dialogue that is taking place in Baghdad, an attempt to appease the administration of President Joe Biden. From one side, the Saudis want to appear like they’re breaking away from the zero-sum approach they pursued towards Iran during the days of Donald Trump’s administration, while the Iranians benefit from a semblance of regional diplomacy to try and keep “regional matters” away from the negotiation table in Vienna.

While there always seem to be efforts to rehabilitate Iran’s image at both a regional and international level, usually attempting to make Tehran appear to be the victim rather than the victimizer, few would be naïve enough to deny the fact that Iranian ambitions can actively be classified as being imperial in nature.

However, Tehran’s clergy-cum-politicians have played the game of empires in an intelligent and subtle manner, preferring to control vassal states by proxy rather than directly imposing their rule directly. In this way, Iran can claim to simply be “providing assistance” to the people of the region that it is now actively terrorizing.

Through a strategy of clever and careful outsourcing of war to ideologically loyal militants across the Middle East, Iran has managed to carve for itself a sphere of influence that threatens peace and security in the region and beyond.

War on the cheap

As previously stated, Iran does not use direct, conventional means of control and military power projection as it knows it can be a costly endeavor, both in blood and treasure.

The last time Iran was involved in a conventional conflict was against Iraq between 1980 and 1988. In almost eight full years of grinding war, Iran was left militarily and economically broken, politically isolated, and the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, famously stated that signing a ceasefire with Iraq was like drinking from a poisoned chalice.

The Iranians learnt the lesson of the war well – no amount of Shia Islamist rhetoric was able to lead the Iranian military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to victory. After the butcher’s bill of the Iran-Iraq War, the Shia revolutionaries changed tack and began a new strategy of harboring Shia Islamist groups loyal to them, waiting for the right opportunity to install them in positions of power.

Perhaps the most famous of these groups was actually incubated during the war with Iraq and is now Iran’s leading proxy in the region. Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, now led by Hassan Nasrallah, was created, financed, and trained by the IRGC in 1985, ostensibly to resist the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. In cooperation with their Syrian ally in the Assad regime, Iran dispatched hundreds of IRGC operatives to train Lebanese Shia irregulars in guerrilla warfare.

To this end, the PMF have executed Iran’s bidding with bloody enthusiasm. Not only are they implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity during their campaigns against Daesh between 2014 and 2017 against innocent Sunni Arabs, but they have also recently targeted largely Shia Arab pro-democracy activists, killing at least 600 since 2019, and are actively involved in fighting in neighboring Syria where they have supported Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

But Iran’s proxies are not only active in the traditional “Shia Crescent” stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea, but they also have a presence on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The Yemeni Houthi militias, while not as intricately linked to Iran as Hezbollah in Lebanon or the PMF in Iraq, are in the modern day inextricably linked to Tehran’s regional ambitions.

The Yemeni Shia group not only uses similar propaganda by calling for death to America, Israel, and publicly cursing all Jews in what can only be described as anti-Semitic hatred, but has received extensive Iranian financial and military support. This has included the provision of drone technology that the Houthis have used to harass Saudi Arabia and attack its strategically vital energy sector.

The modern Iranian empire is ruled by proxy

These groups are not simply allies, but they are direct proxies of Tehran and an extension of the Iranian leadership’s strategic ambitions.

In the Houthi case, Yemen has been used as a quagmire to bleed Saudi and its allies in an unwinnable war, while simultaneously controlling the capital city and commanding a dangerous position over vital naval shipping routes. In the Iraqi and Lebanese cases, Iranian rule by proxy is so obvious and is seen as existentially vital to Iran’s strategic ambition to dominate the Middle East, far more so than their presence in Yemen.

It is no wonder, then, that senior Iranian officials occasionally allow the mask to slip and openly gloat about their new empire and how they control four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sanaa. They have also made their ambitions of a wider Shia revolutionary uprising clear, and half a decade ago announced the formation of a “Shia Liberation Army”.

Without a regional and international cooperative framework to contain Iran’s ambitions and to roll back its gains in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon especially, with Yemen of secondary importance, then Tehran will only consolidate its control over these territories that are largely populated by Sunni Arabs. This will be a recipe for disaster as majorities rarely accept being ruled minorities, and therefore there is a significant risk of the outbreak of a regional sectarian war, the results of which will be devastating and must be avoided at all costs.

The Beirut clashes on Thursday, October 14, 2021, signaled a new chapter in the Beirut blast probe.

Protests to remove Beirut blast investigation judge Tarek Bitar, who is leading the investigation on the Beirut blast that killed more than 200 people on August 4, 2020, escalated in an urban guerrilla skirmish, leaving seven people dead and more than 30 wounded.

This time, tensions over the Beirut blast probe have reached a new level, and there are fears of violent escalations.

On October 14, Muslim Shiite parties, Hezbollah and Amal, organized a protest in front of Beirut’s Justice Palace to ask for the suspension of Bitar.

Meanwhile, chaos and confusion erupted in the Tayouneh area and the Ain al-Remmaneh suburb, in the southern suburb of the capital Beirut.

Tayouneh area is not new to sectarian clashes. It was a former 1975-90 civil war front line between Shia and Christian areas. Furthermore, the Ain al-Remmaneh suburb has been the theater of several clashes since the economic crisis started in 2019.

It is still unclear how the skirmish started, but unidentified snipers likely began firing at the protesters. Bursts of gunfire and explosions could be heard from the nearby Justice Palace, scattering the angry demonstrators. Black-clad protestors suddenly moved toward the Tayouneh area, where the Amal-Hezbollah armed groups were involved in gunfire clashes. The exchanges of fire involved snipers, guns, rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

While Hezbollah and Amal accused the Christian right-wing party Lebanese Forces (LF) of being behind the sniper attack, the LF denied any involvement and condemned the violence. Its leader, Samir Geagea, also blamed the Hezbollah incitement against judge Bitar.

Chaos and confusion ruled the Beirut clashes. I witnessed Amal-Hezbollah demonstrators move from Beirut’s Justice Palace and reach the Tayouneh area, near the urban park Horsh Beirut.

Lebanese Army soldiers were deployed in the surrounding area to stop demonstrators and contain the violence. Military vehicles blocked the road and joined the epicentre of the clashes, where the shootings were ongoing.

Demonstrators approached soldiers asking them to let them pass. Meanwhile, hooded armed men, most likely Hezbollah-Amal demonstrators, appeared on the road and started to shoot in the air near the Lebanese Army, which took no action.

I also witnessed a crowd surround and attack an unidentified vehicle, and heard several other shots. It was not clear what happened as crowds obstructed the view of the vehicle. I didn’t see any wounded persons during these chaotic events. Gunfire exchanges and explosions could be heard in the immediate proximity of army deployment.

The Lebanese Red Cross reported seven dead and more than 30 wounded. Civil Defence volunteers and army soldiers evacuated people trapped in the crossfire.

The Beirut clashes have caused panic and fear among Lebanese. Gunfire and explosions echoed, the wailing sirens of ambulances and evacuations revived memories of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Four bullets fell near a private French school in Furn El Chebbak neighborhood, causing panic among children, as reported by media and confirmed by several pictures published online.

Not all of the casualties were participants in the protests. Among the seven dead, a woman was shot in the head by a stray bullet in her house, and a delivery worker on duty was shot in the crossfire.

Following the Beirut clashes, the Presidency of Lebanon declared a day of mourning. Banks, schools, and public offices were closed. The Lebanese Army increased its deployment near the area of the clashes.

The Lebanese Army arrested nine people following the violence, according to a press statement. Currently, it is also probing a soldier suspected of firing towards protesters during clashes.

The burden of pressure over the Beirut clashes unexpectedly brought the Beirut Port Explosion Victims Association’s spokesperson Ibrahim Hoteit to call for the removal of Bitar. In a video circulating last Friday, he accused the judge of politicization and the U.S. of involvement in the investigation.

The politicization of the probe has polarized public opinion and exacerbated the public debate. Whoever supports Bitar’s efforts for accountability and justice over the disastrous explosion now has to face those who want his suspension from the investigation.

Furthermore, the Beirut blast probe has led to sectarian clashes, which brought the investigation to a level of tension never touched before.

For the first time since the probe started, Hezbollah and Amal have mobilized armed militias and supporters to spark fear and pressure political institutions into removing Bitar.

It is unclear if the LF has been actively involved in the clashes, but the LF-Hezbollah’s rivalry seems to have poured into the Beirut blast investigation.

The violence that erupted at a boundary between Christian and Shiite neighborhoods added new concerns over the stability of the country. Amid such sectarian drift, the Lebanese people find themselves gripped between fear and the threat of further escalations amid an unprecedented economic crisis that is eroding the country’s social fabric.

An urgent task is awaiting us: considering the progression of events, we must quickly liberate ourselves from the limits and confines placed on the Afghanistan discourse, which have been imposed by US-centered Western propaganda for over 20 years, and counting. A first step is that we must not allow the future political discourse pertaining to this very subject to remain hostage to American priorities – successes, failures and geostrategic interests.

For this to happen, the language itself must be confronted. This is critical if we are to truly glean valuable lessons from Afghanistan and to avoid a repeat of the previous failure of comprehending the U.S. defeat in Vietnam (1955-1975), the way it should have been understood, not the way Washington wanted Americans – in fact, the whole world – to understand. Vietnam was not merely an American ‘debacle’, and did not only culminate in an American ‘defeat’. It was also a Vietnamese victory and the triumph of the will of the people over the U.S. imperialist war machine.

In U.S. mainstream media and, to a large extent, academia, the Vietnam War history was almost entirely written from an American point of view. Even the anti-Vietnam war version of that history remained American-centric.

Alas, in the case of Afghanistan, many of us, whether in journalism or academia, whether wittingly or otherwise, remain committed to the U.S.-based discourse, partly because the primary sources from which our information is gleaned are either American or pro-American. Al Akhdar al-Ibrahimi, former United Nations Peace Envoy to Afghanistan, from 1997 to 1999, and again from 2001 to 2004, had recently, in an interview with French newspaper, Le Monde, reminded us of the importance of using proper language to describe the unfolding events in Afghanistan.

The Rise and fall of the ‘Terrorists’ Discourse

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had a massive impact, not only on the geopolitical map of the world but also on relevant global political discourses. As the USSR, its Warsaw Pact and global alliances began to disintegrate, the U.S. quickly moved into action, asserting its dominance from Panama (1989) to Iraq (1991) to elsewhere. The American objective was not merely a violent declaration of its triumph in the Cold War, but a message to the rest of the world that the ‘American century’ had begun and that no form of resistance to U.S. stratagem could be tolerated.

In the Middle East, in particular, the new narrative was in full display, with clear and repeated distinctions between ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’, friends and enemies, allies and those marked for ‘regime change’. And, per this new logic, anti-colonial forces that were celebrated as liberation movements for decades fell into the category of the ‘terrorists’. This definition included Palestinian resistance groups, Lebanese and others, though these groups sought liberation from illegal foreign occupation.

Years later, the discourse on terrorism – summed up by George W. Bush’s statement in September, 2001, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” – became the yardstick in which the world, according to Washington, was to be divided: freedom-loving nations and terrorists, extremist regimes. The latter category was eventually expanded to include Iraq, Iran and Syria. On January 29, 2002, North Korea was also added to Washington’s so-called ‘axes of evil’.

Afghanistan, of course, topped the American list of terrorist states, under various pretenses: initially the harboring of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda and, later, the mistreatment of women, and so on. Eventually, the Taliban became a ‘terrorist’ group, leading an ‘insurgency’ against the ‘democratically-elected’ Afghan government in Kabul. The last 20 years were spent in the construction of this false paradigm.

In the absence of any strong voices in the media demanding an American withdrawal and defending the Afghan people’s right to resist foreign occupation, there was a near-complete absence of an alternative political discourse that even attempted to raise the possibility that the Taliban, despite all of their questionable strategies and practices, may, in fact, be a national liberation movement.

The reason we were discouraged from considering such a possibility is the same reason why U.S.-Western-Israeli propaganda insisted on removing any distinction between ISIS, Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Houthis and many other such groups. On the one hand, discussing the particularities of each movement requires real knowledge of the history and formation of these groups separately, and the political circumstances through which they continue to operate. This kind of knowledge is simply non-existent in the cliche, soundbite-driven mainstream media.

On the other hand, such understanding is inconvenient, as it complicates the deception and half-truths necessary for the U.S., Israel and others, to depict their military occupations, unlawful military interventions and repeated wars as fundamental to some imagined global ‘war on terror’ and, as some European intellectual circles prefer to dub it, a war on ‘radical Islam’.

However, unlike al-Qaeda and ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban are not trans-border militant groups fighting a global agenda, but national liberation movements which, despite their emphasis on religious discourses, are political actors with specific political objectives confined largely within the borders of their own countries – Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan, respectively.

Regarding Hamas, London-based author, Daud Abdullah wrote in his just-released volume, ‘Engaging the World: The Making of Hamas Foreign Policy’ that “Hamas sees foreign relations as an integral and important part of its political ideology and liberation strategy. Soon after the Movement emerged, foreign policies were developed to help its leaders and members navigate this tension between idealism and realism. This pragmatism is evident in the fact that Hamas was able to establish relations with the regimes of Muammar Gaddhafi in Libya and Bashar al-Assad in Syria, both of whom were fiercely opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Consequently, it was also Abdullah who became one of the first to draw the parallels between Palestine and Afghanistan as soon as the Taliban declared victory in Kabul. In a recent article in the Middle East Monitor, Abdullah wrote, “Palestine and Afghanistan are salient examples. Throughout history, their peoples have witnessed numerous invasions and occupations. After two decades the U.S. has finally run out of stamina. Similarly, they will eventually realize the futility of supporting the Zionist occupation of Palestine.”

There are many reasons why nations go to war and even more why they go to civil war. The history of Lebanon in this respect is full of examples why this small Mediterranean nation is always perceived as vulnerable to civil strife.

Lebanon’s current economic and political collapse has unfortunately been a long time coming, as its archaic and medieval political system has struggled for decades to keep itself afloat. Corruption mixed with Iran’s Lebanon proxy Hezbollah have gradually detached Lebanon from the financial safety net which the Gulf Arab states and the international community has always provided.

While many have blamed the failure of the Lebanese political system and the tendency to go to war on sectarianism and international intervention, the crux of the problem lies in Lebanon’s 18 religious sects who have failed to recognize that updating the power-sharing formula, as they did in 1989 with the Taif Agreement, is insufficient if this change is not reflected in the constitution in a manner that provides stability and ultimately paves the way for a sustainable and functional state.

As it seems, there are many indicators which lead one to assume that civil war is at the gates. But, in reality, Lebanon’s current predicament requires more than a civil war to be resolved as many of the elements needed for civil war are non-existent – if not to say meager, at least in the foreseeable future.

As it stands, the only heavily armed and militarized faction in Lebanon is Hezbollah whose involvement and fighting experience in Iran’s regional expansionist project makes it lethal if civil war were to break out in Lebanon. While the rest of Lebanon’s sects and political parties maintain their own version of Praetorian Guards, some of whom were part of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), their small weapons and limited training does not qualify them to a face-off with Hezbollah.

Perhaps more importantly and for the time being, the regional and international appetite for strife is non-existent. The regional tensions between the Arab Gulf states and Iran have shifted the former’s attention to protecting their home front, especially in Yemen and Iraq, two areas which Iran and its proxies have infiltrated and used as bases to attack foreign and Arab interests.

In practical terms, recent events which transpired on the ground confirmed that civil war in Lebanon is a zero-sum game as the sectarian composition and division brought about by the 15 years of civil war has virtually created homogenous sectarian units and thus any military action on behalf of Hezbollah at the moment will not yield any clear-cut military victory. Instead, it will further flame sectarian tensions.

Recently, Hezbollah faced off with the Arab (Sunni) tribes of Khalde, south of the capital Beirut, and the Druze inhabitants of the village of Shwaya in the area adjacent to the Lebanese-Palestinian borders, which showed the limits of Hezbollah’s Iranian weapons at least internally.

In Khalde, Hezbollah could not react to the Arab tribes avenging the death of one of their own at the hands of a Hezbollah member just like in Shwaya, where the Druze intercepted a Hezbollah rocket launcher as they refused to turn their homes into potential targets for Israeli retaliation.

Be that as it may, the abovementioned factors, or lack thereof, do not really dismiss the chances of violence breaking out in Lebanon. Any sort of civil strife, though, will not remotely resemble the 15 years of civil war the Lebanese experienced or were told about by their family. The violence which will break out will be guided by fear of famine and the collapse of social order brought about by the total erosion of the Lebanese state.

If the Lebanese do not realize that this illusion of a system they live under needs to change, sooner rather than later, they will be faced with a mutated beast of violence, a beast which their sectarian safety net will not be able to contain, nor external intervention of any kind will be able to suppress.

The specter of civil war(s) is always looming over Lebanon, but, this time around, the international community and the many regional factions are not interested or willing to invest time and money in a country which has proved to be a bigger burden than ever. As Lebanon stands, it is merely an inconvenience and no longer a model of coexistence or diversity as some claim.

For four decades, the Islamic regime in Iran has sought to gain legitimacy in the Arab world by portraying itself as a defender of the Palestinians. The latest events in May in the West Bank and Gaza, however, signal that a resurgent Palestinian resistance along the lines of nationalism, is threatening the ability of external actors — including Tehran — to co-opt the cause for its own benefit as it has in the past, including via proxy actors.

Paradoxically, while the regime in Tehran has historically sought to portray itself as working against Israel, it remains dependent on Israel’s actions to accomplish its objective of gaining moral legitimacy in the Arab world. At the same time, Israel depends on Iran to jump over the ever-lingering Palestinian question and mold ties with Arab neighbors who are paranoid of Iran’s expansionism.

A Prized Highjack

Since the Tehran regime’s founding in 1979, the question of Palestine has offered it an opportunity to extend its ideological influence into both the Islamic and Arab world. Following the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, the newly installed regime headed by Ayatollah Khomeini found in the centrality of the Palestinian cause a way to win over hearts and minds of large swaths of people in the region. It also found a springboard to grow its influence beyond borders — and indirectly fulfill its stated goal of “exporting the revolution.”

Khomeini attempted to appeal to the Umma by deliberately bypassing the leaders of the Sunni-Muslim states, but results were underwhelming. Soon after the 1979 revolution, the Iranian regime began intervening in neighboring countries, and justified this as necessary to liberate Palestine. As early as the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, the regime in Tehran raised the ingenious slogan, “The path to Jerusalem passes through Karbala.” After the war, the Quds Force, ironically, became an overreaching military and intelligence arm in neighboring countries, as it realized that it could justify maintaining a presence in Arab countries so long as it claimed to defend the Palestinians.

While the regime in Tehran raised anti-Zionist slogans as a layer of its broader anti-American doctrine, it remained – paradoxically – dependent on Israel to accomplish its objectives. Israel remained a de-facto partner of the Islamic Republic in its anti-Saddam war throughout the ’80s, bombing Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and supplying Iran with arms throughout the war. Israel’s unjust and unlawful treatment of Palestinians, also, presented Iran with a golden ticket to keep intervening.

At the same time, the claim of fighting Israel allowed Iran to extend its reach. Tehran’s rhetoric and the sectarian nature of its newly founded regime also allowed it to establish a foothold among the Shia community in south Lebanon and to set up Hezbollah, its most prized asset overseas. The heavily armed Lebanese militant group became the most advanced point of the “Iranian influence archipelago” – sharing borders with the Islamic Republic’s ultimate foe, Israel.

Iran actively worked to vilify the PLO and went as far as labeling Palestine’s most iconic leader, Yasser Arafat, a “traitor.” In a fiery speech in Beirut’s suburbs in 1998, Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, went as far as calling for the assassination of Arafat by invoking the example of Khaled Islambouli, an Islamist officer who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. “Is there no Palestinian who can do what Khaled Islambouli did and say that Arafat’s presence on the face of this Earth is shameful to Palestinians and Muslims?” Nasrallah asked.

By overcoming Iran’s strategic isolation as a Shia revolutionary regime in a Sunni-dominated conservative region and extending its security perimeter to Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, Iran managed to brand itself as a pan-Islamic force fighting, first and foremost, for the Palestinian cause. The message was that Iran-backed Shias were fighting to liberate Palestine while Sunnis had abandoned it. Nasrallah made sure to echo this rhetoric and continuously peddle it in his speeches by raising the slogan, “We, the Shia of Ali ibn Abi Talib in the world, will never abandon Palestine, nor the people of Palestine, nor the sanctities of the Ummah in Palestine.” So, for Iran, it was the Shias that carried the torch of Palestine and Jerusalem, while Sunni states normalized.

Hamas Missiles on Jerusalem

During the latest round of violence, Iran relied on its historic formula of seeking to co-opt Palestinian resistance to increase its moral standing in the Arab world. It did this in two ways: by attempting to link itself to Hamas’s action, and by rallying Hezbollah to ramp up its rhetoric. Yet these attempts instead showcased the relative independence of Hamas as a Palestinian group, and the growing complexity of the Lebanese political scene, Hezbollah’s primary field of operation. It also highlighted the rise of a uniquely Palestinian nationalism that is leading resistance against Israel.

When Hamas started lobbing missiles on Jerusalem on May 10, 2021, following through on the May 5 warning of its armed wing to Israel over its attacks on Palestinian residents in occupied East Jerusalem, Hezbollah — with the support of Iran — found itself in a bind: on the one hand, they wanted to lay claim to what was happening, but on the other, they could not easily claim credit for Hamas’ actions. In the end, though, this seemed not to matter. The streets cared less about Hamas’s relations with Tehran and mobilized in full support of the Palestinians in general, who were also engaged in a unique moment of unity.

Part of the problem, for Iran, was Hamas’s relatively autonomous moves away from Tehran’s direct objectives, and its relative independence, underpinned by diversified sources of financial and military backing, in contrast to other sectarian-aligned ideological Iranian proxies. Meanwhile, Iran actively sought to tie both Hamas and Jerusalem (al-Quds) to its so-called axis of resistance.

Hamas’ relations had soured greatly with the axis as a result of its position on the Syrian uprising and its refusal to back the Syrian regime in its bloody crackdown on its own revolting civilians. By the time the war broke out in May this year, the process of fully reintegrating Hamas into the axis and improving ties with members of the axis had not been fully accomplished despite a visit by Hamas’s leadership to Bashar Al-Assad in Syria and the Palestinian group’s honoring of high-profile Houthi official Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi in Sanaa.

Hamas had to apologize for the photo-op between its representative in Sanaa and the Houthi leader due to the uproar it caused, specifically among Yemenis who are supportive of Hamas but opponents of the Iran-backed Houthis. The incident offered an idea of how challenging it will be for Hamas to retain wide support throughout the region if it continues to play on its dichotomies thinking it can outsmart all stakeholders.

Iran has also sought to co-opt the events in Palestine by tying the missile attacks on Israel to Qassem Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guard’s ex-Quds Force commander who was assassinated in January 2020 in an American drone strike in Baghdad. It had been Soleimani’s plan to build the missile capabilities of the Iran-funded and equipped sectarian militant groups in the region with the plan to overwhelm Israeli defenses when a conflict breaks out.

Around the time of the conflict, Iran-backed Iraqi sectarian militias and the Houthis in Yemen had all ramped up their anti-Israel rhetoric, suggesting that they may be involved in a “next conflict.” But again, this rhetoric earned little traction in the Arab world, that instead remained transfixed by the mobilization of a new generation of young Palestinians, such as the Sheikh Jarrah activist twins Muna and Muhammad El-Kurd, who deployed social media to call for unified Palestinian resistance against Israel’s evictions and its bombardment of Gaza.

Mobilizing Hezbollah

Hezbollah’s response to the latest round of violence has showcased the complexity and difficulty of the situation the party finds itself in at the moment in Lebanon. Although Hezbollah is Iran’s most prized overseas asset – and the only militant group to ever give Israel a bloody nose in the 2006 July war – it was not able to make much of an impact with regard to recent events.

Following the outbreak of violence, the group resorted mostly to ramping its rhetoric to compensate for its inability to occupy center stage during the recent escalation, – something it has always sought to do, as a strategy of cooption and domination of the conflict with Israel. The party organized marches to the Lebanese-Israeli borders and called for mosques to raise prayers in support of Palestinians. Its anti-Israel statements have increased in frequency since the war in Syria was mostly concluded in favor of Bashar Al-Assad, the head of Syria’s regime, following the involvement of Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah to prop him up. Thus, Hassan Nasrallah’s speeches started emphasizing that they “are closer than ever to liberate Jerusalem.”

Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri recently completed a two-day visit to Moscow, during which he met Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and a number of Russian officials. Hariri’s visit coincides with talks of an upcoming initiative by Russian President Vladimir Putin which will break the deadlock and stagnation surrounding the Lebanese crisis and facilitate the formation of a new government, headed by Hariri.

This impossible task would be achieved after Russia summons Gebran Bassil, President Michel Aoun’s son-in-law and one of the main obstacles standing in the way to Lebanon’s political normalization.

The Russian initiative comes in the midst of the nuclear talks in Vienna and with the pressure on the Iranian regime from Israeli strikes and military operations – most recently the attack on Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz and daily airstrikes that target Iran’s militias in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

The fact that Prime Minister Hariri received a royal reception at Moscow airport, with President Putin’s special representative in the Middle East and North Africa Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, Deputy Chief of Protocol in the Russian government Ambassador Kuznetsov, and the Lebanese ambassador to Moscow in attendance, is no minor detail. A scene which stood in utter contrast to the lukewarm reception the Hezbollah delegation received a month prior when they visited Moscow which many thought would be a chance to resolve the Lebanese stalemate.

The Russian side insists on forming a government of technocrats and stressing to their Lebanese visitors that obstructing the formation of the cabinet and impeding the normalization of political life is completely unacceptable. Thus, at the moment, Russia is more or less supportive of the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron, which he announced on his visit to Lebanon after the deadly Beirut port explosion on August 4 which left the capital partially destroyed and thousands displaced.

Macron’s initiative, however, is dead in the water after the Lebanese political elite failed to honor their commitment to facilitate the formation of a so-called mission government, one which will carry out key structural reforms to allow Lebanon to receive a much-needed $10bn loan, which was supposedly heralded as a step pending the formation of the next government.

Russia’s current mindset vis-à-vis the Lebanese crisis, assumes that Gebran Bassil’s presidential chances are slim to none especially as his designation on the Global Magnitsky Act for corruption precludes him from running for president – at least in theory. Yet, Russia believes that Bassil’s political career can be salvaged if he is willing to cooperate with Russia, which will moderate the crisis and provide him and Hariri the much-needed political support and sponsorship.

Russia, formerly the supreme state in the Soviet Union, was dominant in the Lebanese political scene especially during the Civil War (1975-1990); however, with the collapse of communism it has struggled to regain its position which is partly dominated by the United States and partly by Iran via its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

Thus, Russia wishes to reenter Lebanon with noticeable vigor, and aspires to end the long period of its absence. Consequently, it aims to undermine and neutralize the United States’ historical role in Lebanon, a role which already seems in decline under the Biden administration. Naively, Russia seeks to move Lebanon from the traditional U.S. orbit to the Russian one, and with this, Russia’s greater role in Syria will be accompanied by curbing and later putting an end to Iranian expansion toward the Mediterranean.

Abandoned by his traditional Arab Gulf patron, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Hariri sees in Russia the only remaining lifeline, as Russia is in a better position than the U.S. in terms of the pressure it exerts on Iran and its militias in Syria. Russia simply has the ability to block the borders with Lebanon and Iraq, and corner Iran in Syria. By coordinating with the Israeli side, Russia can extract concessions from Iran and force Hezbollah to facilitate the formation of the Lebanese government.

Just like France before it, Russia is trying to deal with Hezbollah separately from Iran, and this is evident from it receiving the Hezbollah delegation in Moscow last month and projecting the idea that Hezbollah can decide on its own without Iranian consent. Yet, such an approach clearly demonstrates Russia’s lack of insight – not to say gullibility – about Hezbollah and Iran’s mindset. Iran, through Hezbollah and other similar proxies in the region, is in de facto control of Lebanon, and feels no need to concede to anyone at least of all to Russia.

Russia’s interest in Lebanon is beyond politics and is based on a desire to recuperate the cost of the Syrian war through their entry into future deals with the Lebanese political class in the energy and gas sector, as well as their desire to obtain the main investment of the port of Tripoli, which will play an important role in Syria’s postwar reconstruction.

Above all, Russia is interested in establishing a strong relationship with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and ultimately in replacing the United States as its main source of weapons and training. However, while the U.S. donates weapons to Lebanon, Russia will charge a high premium, and many of Lebanon’s politicians will profit from brokering such deals.

The issue of arming the LAF with eastern or even Iranian weapons is a recurrent topic which surfaces occasionally but never leads anywhere. This is because the Lebanese army is a Western-trained and -equipped organization with a solid relationship with its U.S. counterpart, and provides operational capacity for the U.S. in the Levant, a reality which cannot be changed simply by Russian wishful thinking.

Russia sends clear messages to Iran, Israel, and the United States that it is the only country capable of securing stability on the shores of the Mediterranean. While this might be true, Russia cannot claim to be a superpower by meddling in the trivial affairs of corrupt politicians like Bassil and his band of corrupters. If it truly wishes to replace the United States in Lebanon, it has to be willing to pay a very hefty price, starting, by confronting the regional expansionism of Iran, which has no constant allies or enemies, Russia might find itself a victim of Iranian aggression. In the end, opening up the Lebanese matryoshka doll might be less advantageous than President Putin thinks.

Salim Ayyash, a Lebanese citizen and a member of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, was placed on the United States Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program a month ago. A bounty amounting to $10 million dollars, for any information on his whereabouts was announced on March 29. A few claims stood out from the U.S. Rewards for Justice Department statement.

First off, that Ayyash is “a senior operative in the assassination unit—Unit 121—of the terrorist organization Lebanese Hezbollah,” as per the department’s wording. Also, the statements claimed that the “[U]nit receives its orders directly from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.” Lastly, the statement is said to be offering a reward for “information leading to preventing him from engaging in an act of international terrorism against a U.S. person or U.S. property.”

The last claim is particularly important but shall be addressed later.

In a televised interview with the American CNBC business news channel earlier this week, the 77th Maronite Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, and head of the Maronite Church, Lebanese Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros al-Rahi pulled no punches in describing Hezbollah. Al-Rahi clearly labeled the group as an “Iranian military force in Lebanon to combat Israel.”

The Patriarch went on to say that “Hezbollah shouldn’t remain free in using arms whenever and wherever he wants and shouldn’t be capable of deciding wars in Israel, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, with disregard to the government, the president and the parliament.” In recent months, al-Rahi’s rhetoric against Hezbollah has become more aggressive in congruence with the debilitated political and economic situation in the country.

While those two events are distinct, there is a vector of causality that connects what Ayyash represents and the Patriarch’s recent statements. However, a crucial caveat must be inserted in this case as the Patriarch’s statements should be taken with a grain of salt.

Avenging the Commander

While we are oblivious to the science behind the U.S.’ reward system, common sense stipulates: the heftier the reward, the more important and dangerous the operative may be. In this case Ayyash is no newcomer to the local and international political and security scene. In fact, Ayyash was unanimously sentenced in absentia, back in December 2020, by the Hague-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon to five counts of life in prison over the “intentional homicide of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri with premeditation.”

Following years of independent investigation and an international trial, Ayyash was proven guilty in intentionally assassinating Lebanon’s own ex-Prime Minister. In this context, it is important to underline that Ayyash’s reward is equal to none except that of Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abd-al-Rahman al-Mawla, the current leader of the “Islamic State.”

Even the reward of Abubakar Shekau, who is the leader of the terrorist group “Boko Haram,” responsible for scores of atrocities committed over the past year, did not amount to that of Ayyash’s—equivalent to $7 million.

In a 6-week period, Thompson accessed “dozens of files concerning human intelligence sources, including true names, personal identification data, background information,” and photographs of the sources. Meaning, Thompson’s actions took place during the escalatory trend between the administration of former U.S. president Donald Trump and the regime in Tehran, which played out on Iraq’s own soil towards the end of 2019.

Thompson was activated only a couple of days before the assassination of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps—Quds Force Commander, Qassim Soleimani on January 3, 2020.

Thompson was activated only a couple of days before the assassination of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps—Quds Force Commander, Qassim Soleimani on January 3, 2020 when a drone strike at the road leading to the Baghdad International Airport took out his convoy.

As such, the revealed information leads us to two conclusions, with the first being that Thompson’s “alleged” activation ahead of Soleimani’s killing, as per the court case, could possibly lend credence to the first justification, among the many other shifting ones, Trump’s administration gave for killing Soleimani. At the time, members of the Trump administration said that Soleimani, posed an “imminent threat” to American lives, only to be met with cynicism especially from the Democratic Party camp during the 2020 U.S. elections.

However, Thompsons’ “mission,” which spanned for 6-weeks, was meant to offer information that will allow Iran to avenge Soleimani’s killing. While the second conclusion signals Hezbollah’s clear-cut involvement in collecting the information on U.S. personnel—most probably operatives—in the Middle East, in what appears to be complicity with Iran in its attempt to avenge the killing of Soleimani.

While it isn’t clear whether Ayyash was to carry out an attack against U.S. personnel or property, as stated in the “Rewards for Justice” announcement, or whether those attacks were imminent, one cannot but pause and ponder the question of why would Hezbollah, a presumably self-styled Lebanese resistance, spy on the U.S. on behalf of Iran? How does avenging the killing of Soleimani serve the interest of Lebanon and its citizens? And why would Hezbollah get involved, while Lebanon—the group’s supposed homeland— has enough to deal with given the unprecedented economic and financial meltdown and a near full bankruptcy, which the party itself often blames on the so-called “U.S.’ siege of Lebanon.”

Of course, reasons for Lebanon’s economic demise are way more complicated than what is attributed by Hezbollah or other Lebanese sectarian parties, but what needs to be stated is that the financial collapse, is first and foremost, homemade. Meanwhile, an answer to the questions posed above lies in the organic nature of the group and its relationship with Tehran, which is often misconstrued, either due to lack of understanding or for propaganda purposes.

Intelligence Apparatus Turned Political Party

A sweeping majority of Hezbollah’s supporters often present the group to be “an ‘independent’ resistance movement that has grown into a regional power in its own right.”  The idea serves to relieve Hezbollah from the “proxy” label, which is often raised by the group’s opponents kinetically leading to questioning on the group’s allegiance and ulterior motives.

Yet, while the proxy claim holds some truth, reality is not what those supporters intend to project. The relationship between the group and Tehran is not an “interdependent symbiosis between close allies.” In fact, Hezbollah was first conceived by Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, Iran’s ambassador to Damascus in 1982, following years he had spent in Lebanon training with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) ahead of the revolution in Iran.

According to Iranian writer Arash Azizi’s book ‘The Shadow Commander’, “based on the IRGC’s model, Hezbollah was put together by merging different Shiite armed groups as part of an Iranian transnational Shiite network aimed to represent the external influence of the newly formed Islamic republic and an export-model of its revolution.

More so, Iran assumed the role of the patron, for it would decide on everything important and would arbiter differences.” Azizi adds that “[D]ebates over the degree of Iranian sponsorship of Hezbollah sometimes fail, shockingly, to mention this fact: A majority of the party’s body of leadership consisted of Iranian officials and its composition had been decided upon in Tehran, not Beirut. There was no question about who was calling the shots.”

The group’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, did not only confirm the organic nature between Dahyeh, Beirut’s southern suburb which acts as Hezbollah stronghold, and Tehran, but he doubled down on that idea back in June 2016 when he aggressively claimed in a televised speech that, “we are open about the fact that Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, are from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

According to Iranian writer Arash Azizi’s book ‘The Shadow Commander’, “[D]ebates over the degree of Iranian sponsorship of Hezbollah sometimes fail, shockingly, to mention this fact: A majority of the party’s body of leadership consisted of Iranian officials and its composition had been decided upon in Tehran, not Beirut. There was no question about who was calling the shots.”

Nevertheless, this must not be mistaken with how senior of a role Nasrallah plays in the regime’s political and theological hierarchy in Tehran. Following the assassination of Soleimani, Nasrallah is said to have been asked to play his role, especially in Iraq, and to organize the Iran-aligned Iraqi factions.

Almost forty days have passed since the assassination of Lebanese political activist and staunch Hezbollah detractor Lokman Slim, with no evidence or any leads provided by the Lebanese state on the culprits of his heinous murder.

Slim, aged 58, was found dead in his rental car on the morning of February 4, with six bullets in his body, five to his back and one to his head. He was returning from his friend’s house in the southern village of Neha, deep in Hezbollah-controlled territory, 28 km from the Lebanese-Palestinian border.

Slim’s execution-style murder and the mystery that shrouds it has led to the simple conclusion that Hezbollah is responsible for silencing this furious and uncompromising voice against the Iranian militia’s hegemony over the Shiite cultural and public sphere, a hegemonic grip which Hezbollah extended to include different aspects of Lebanon’s non-existent state.

Naturally, Hezbollah denied its involvement or even knowledge of Slim’s assassination and condemned the  crime. It asked “the judicial and security authorities concerned to work quickly to expose the culprits and punish them.” Ironically, Hezbollah’s alleged trust in the judicial system was nowhere to be found when the United Nation’s Special Tribunal for Lebanon found high-ranking members of its security apparatus guilty of killing Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.

To add insult to injury, in his latest televised speech, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, downplayed the killing of Slim speaking for over an hour without mentioning his name, claiming that the fact that Slim was killed in an area controlled by Hezbollah does not indicate their culpability, and hinted that Slim’s killing might be the work of Israel or any Western party which benefits from politically accusing Hezbollah of the murder.

If this were the case and Israel was involved in Slim’s abduction and killing, Hezbollah needs to justify why they did not impose a full lockdown on Slim’s crime scene and why they failed to provide any sort of lead or information to the Lebanese security agencies investigating the crime.

Traditionally, in all security incidents which involve Israel, like the mysterious explosion which rocked the southern village of Ain Qana, Hezbollah was swift to impose a lockdown on the area and prevented the press as well as the Lebanese security agencies from accessing the town, something which they have done multiple times before.

If one is to accept the logic of Nasrallah, or rather the lack thereof, in other words, seeking the help of the judiciary to solve the murder of Slim, it is natural to examine the three elements of any crime – motive, means, and opportunity – and apply them to the life and death of Lokman Slim.

When it comes to motive, Lokman Slim made a career of openly challenging all forms of authority starting with his establishing of UMAM Documentation and Research, an NGO which was concerned with preserving the memories of Lebanon’s 15-year-long civil war, memories which Lebanon’s ruling establishment chose to bury alongside the bodies of its fallen victims.

Additionally, as a Shiite activist and a native of the town of Haret Hreik, in the heart of the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, Slim worked diligently to reclaim and challenge the ideological grip of Persian Shi’ism as imported by Hezbollah. This earned Slim and his family daily badgering and intimidations by Hezbollah and their band of hoodlums, some of whom were his neighbors, who went as far as branding him an Israeli collaborator which in Hezbollah’s understanding of the word is a call for murder.

Hezbollah has the required skills to abduct, interrogate, and execute a civilian like Lokman Slim, while equally terrorizing any witnesses from stepping forward and exposing the group.

If we are to explore the means of the crime it would clearly confirm that Hezbollah, with its infinite security and military means, is beyond capable of carrying out a such targeted assassination deep in its controlled areas without leaving any traces or even witnesses. Hezbollah, which is fully immersed in Iran’s regional wars, in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond, has the required skills to abduct, interrogate, and execute a civilian like Lokman Slim, while equally terrorizing and preventing any witnesses from stepping forward and exposing the group.

Third, Hezbollah had the opportunity to carry out Slim’s murder simply because they knew they can get away with it – like they have done many a time before. At this particular moment, when the Biden administration and the European Union are so eagerly pursuing the reassumption of the Iranian nuclear deal talks, the killing of Lokman Slim would simply go unnoticed and would join the tens of similar political crimes that remain unsolved.

Consequently, if one is to review the aforementioned legal principles, the first suspect the Lebanese judiciary needs to summon is Nasrallah himself and hundreds of his party members who need to provide alibies and concrete evidence of their innocence. Realistically, however, this utopian judicial measure will never take place as long as Hezbollah is in possession of its Iranian arsenal of arms that grants it absolute powers and full impunity.

Lokman’s murder is simply a preemptive strike carried out by Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, that wants to send a violent message to its own Shiite constituency: Hezbollah is are no longer hesitant to kill its own Shiite “brothers” and in their own abode if needed, and any future challenge to its authority will be met with blood and iron.

The brutal assassination of Lokman Slim will continue to perplex people in terms of its timing and its ultimate objectives. Yet, anyone who is slightly familiar with Slim’s life and career does not need to look for justification of why Iran’s Lebanese militia feared Slim’s brave rhetoric and resistance to their prevailing narrative – they feared these more than Israel’s warplanes and hit squads.

To Hezbollah, which is accused of killing Lokman Slim, this might be another chapter in their ongoing drive to dominate Lebanon and the region, but in reality, this might indeed be the epilogue for a horror story which will not end well for the Lebanese villains.