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.”

When independent Lebanon was established in 1943, the political structure was designed to determine the proportion of representatives in the parliament according to the density of the country’s sects. At first glance, this design, based on confessionalism, the successor of the “Mutasarrifate System” formed in 1861, was seen as the only way to ensure social justice for Lebanon.

However, in line with this understanding, political road maps drawn by sectarian concerns in Lebanon led to divisions not only amongst the political elite but also the Lebanese people who were parts of the sectarian system. While the civil war between 1975 and 1990 demonstrated the violent form of this separation, most of the actors of the civil war took part in post-war Lebanese politics and played important roles in deepening the social crisis after the war.

On October 17, 2019, the Lebanese people took to the streets with the slogan “all means all” (kullun ya’ni kullun) in order to remove the perpetrators of this crisis, and to create a new political and legal system. In the early days of the demonstrations, when no sectarian slogans were chanted and party flags were not allowed, the only thing the demonstrators wanted was the complete destruction of the sectarian political system.

So, for the Lebanese, the purpose was to rid themselves of this sect-based political system and the patterns of hegemony it had created in 150 years.

However, the existing social rifts became visible during the demonstrations and manifested themselves with the main protest locations shifting to smaller ones and different social groups raising their individual demands. Calls for a “civil state” addressing leaders of the sectarian system were ironically replaced by the retired soldiers’ reaction to salary cuts or by students’ slogans to improve the education system.

In addition to these, with the failure of Hassan Diab’s government, which was established in January 2020, the sense of unity in Lebanese society eventually disappeared.

Following the protests in Lebanon, questions began to arise such as how many of the problems resulted from the sectarian political system, and whether the problem is the system itself or the politicians who cannot run it.

It now became necessary to question the sectarian codes ingrained in Lebanese society.

It was clear that the political elite sought to dissolve any formation which defied the sectarian understanding centered on their own interest.

At the same time, it became necessary to question the sectarian codes ingrained in Lebanese society in order to understand how the country’s social segments handle the current problems.

The Shiite political factor in Lebanon

Shiites were the first to break from the October protests. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s statement had a significant impact on the Shiite community who said that the demonstrations went beyond their original intent. Many Shiite groups followed Nasrallah’s call to “leave the streets” signaling the first split in Lebanon’s protests. The instance revealed the endless trust of the Shiites in the party’s leadership; the Shiites appear to interpret sectarian identity as absolute obedience to Nasrallah’s political orders.

It is true that there is a strong threat perception by members of all sects who are afraid of being taken over by another sect. However, the walls of the Lebanese sectarian system are not that sturdy. The slogans chanted by some Shiite groups against their own sectarian courts before the October protests is a good example of this fragility.

Shiite mothers took to the streets to draw attention to how they were victimized by the rights of custody accorded to them by the Jafari court in January and February 2020.

Although they did not unite with other sects, Shiites too turned to the streets to solve their internal problems during the main protests. Shiite mothers took to the streets to draw attention to how they were victimized by the rights of custody accorded to them by the Jafari court in January and February 2020. However, they did not want to remove the courts completely, but to reform them. For them, the institutions for the preservation of Shiite identity should remain in place – these were only defects that needed to be corrected.

This is, of course, not unique to Shiites in Lebanon. After the massive seaport explosion in Beirut in August 2020, the images of support by each ethnic and sectarian group given to their community make it clear why the Lebanese return to their sectarian quarters. According to Armenian Weekly, most of the medical needs and construction materials sent from Armenia to Beirut would be transported to the city’s Armenian neighborhoods most heavily affected by the explosion.

Armenia, of course, was ready to provide tailored assistance to the country’s substantial and influential Armenian community. Similarly, footage shows the Maronite Church distributing social aid to their coreligionists. People have little choice but to take refuge in their sects.

For the majority of Sunnis, Lebanese sectarianism is more of an actor-oriented problem. If the system is not going to change, the actors should not change either. Therefore, the country’s prime minister Saad Hariri should have remained in his position since he could protect the Sunnis better than Diyab thanks to the support of the Gulf States. That was what actually happened, and Hariri took over again a year later proving that he was the leader of the Sunni community.

There are also some groups who define sectarianism on the basis of socioeconomic and cultural traditions. One of them is the Druze community, who have been zuama-landlords in Mount Lebanon for many years. Centuries ago, the structure formed by the Druze, who were among Lebanon’s influential landlords and held political power in their hands, was not focused on sectarianism.

Even though their population was limited, they managed to maintain their sectarian principles thanks to the zuama system. Today, this system is weaker in Lebanon than in the past, but it continues to maintain its strength for the Druze. The Druze political leaders Velid Canbolat and Talal Arslan maintain this system in order to protect their sectarian identity. For the Druze, sectarianism finds its way via the zuama system.

No doubt, the political order in Lebanon does not satisfy any social need today. Politicians, who believe that they can open any door with the sectarian key, do not hesitate to shut these doors in people’s faces when the circumstances allow for it. Deepening cracks cause the society-state relationship to deteriorate.