Iran and Hezbollah - Together as One?

   Should we examine Hezbollah separately from Iran, its sponsor state, or should we treat the organization as a strategically integral part of the Shiite state? In order to resolve this dilemma, it is essential to bear in mind Hezbollah’s establishment in the 1980's as both a social services organization and resistance movement.

   From the social standpoint, Iran saw in Hezbollah an opportunity to export the values of its Islamic revolution of 1979 to Lebanon. The Shiite community, which resides predominantly in southern Lebanon, was easy to influence during and following the chaotic civil war. The war left the Shiite community neglected, lacking in social services and impoverished, and the Iranian regime provided spiritual and material inspiration to the nascent Shiite groups. In 1983 the newly formed Hezbollah (“Party of God”) introduced an extensive network of social services funded by Iran, including health services, water distribution, electricity, and even garbage removal. The Lebanese government was unable to provide these services and Hezbollah used these services to build a support base in the Shiite community.

   Today, Hezbollah’s social institutions serve the Shiite community and Lebanese citizens from all religions. Unlike its initial reliance on Iranian funding, Hezbollah has developed diverse global chains of charities, mostly in the U.S. and the U.K., to support their social services in Lebanon.

   Hassan Nasrallah and Naim Qassem often refer to the “resistance society” in their public speeches. Resistance, they say, is a mission and a responsibility for every Shi’a believer in his or her everyday life. According to this outlook, resistance is part militant action, but is also political and social: it is a choice in everyday life.

   From the resistance/militaristic standpoint, Hezbollah was originally made up of recruits from the secular Shiite Amal resistance movement and other revolutionary Shiite groups that were active during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1989). These recruits were gathered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to create a more radical religious, Shiite, pro-Iranian militia that would safeguard Iran’s interests in the region. Hezbollah adheres to Iran's ideology of the velayat-e faqih (rule by the Islamic jurist) and Tehran had provided approximately $100-$200 million to the organization annually from the organization’s founding until recent economic sanctions.

   Many Western terrorism experts, from Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy to Daniel Byman of Georgetown University agree that for Iran, Hezbollah acting as its proxy army enables to strike Israel and other targets without risking direct confrontation. The organization is also Iran’s proxy in increasing its influence in the Levant.

   Politicians from Israel and the U.S. also jump on this wagon, because it is politically expedient to link these two threats. After all, Hezbollah was created by Iran, and is expected to follow its orders and function without free will. In this approach, the counter-strategy should be focused on the major threat – Iran. Conventional wisdom states that if you cut the head of the monster, the body will cease its activities; a clear-cut solution.

   However, there is another view of Hezbollah, as a creation that has taken on a life, identity and autonomy of its own, albeit with Iran's continued funding and support. The basis of this view, as argued by Lina Khatib of Stanford University, is Hezbollah’s political evolution into a democratically elected party. As a result of the Lebanonization process undergone by the organization over recent years, Hezbollah has eliminated some of its original Iranian influences and Nasrallah has had to repeatedly, publicly state his loyalty to Lebanese leadership.

   Hezbollah of 2012 is not the Hezbollah of the 1980’s. It has a strong political facet in Lebanon and has been in the governing coalition since June 2011. They have been participating in Lebanese national dialogue the last few months to bridge disagreements between political factions to try and stabilize Lebanon. As a pure resistance movement, Hezbollah would not have taken part in such national reconciliation.

   Hezbollah has also strengthened its network of social institutions within Lebanon and established branches all over the world. It has also improved its well-established group of charitable organizations for raising funds, with deep awareness that Iranian funding will not be dependable for long.

   The organization makes its own decisions, but needs to show loyalty to the concept of velayat-e faqih. That is the nature of a religious movement. Middle East politics is what makes everything so complicated. Hezbollah wants to pay respect, but wants to prove its power and strength. For instance, it is convenient for both Hezbollah and Israel, to neglect to mention that much of Hezbollah's weapons arsenal comes from Hezbollah’s wide-ranging arm smuggling network in Africa and not from Syria or Iran. Why? Israel does not want to distract the world's awareness from the Iranian problem, and Hezbollah obviously wants the world to overlook its activities in this part of the world, so this weird collaboration works for both sides.

   I believe that contrary to Nasrallah’s statements, and with the current situation in Lebanon and Syria, Hezbollah is first and foremost dedicated to maintaining its position in Lebanon rather than backing Iran. Nonetheless, Hezbollah might attack Israel following an Israeli strike on Iran, but this would not differ from the response of any ally in any military conflict. With no Israeli attack on Iran, Lebanon remains the important part of the equation.        

   The questions we should ask ourselves are as follows, and I open it to discussion with my readers:

- Is the threat posed by Hezbollah sufficiently small to justify attaching it to Iran’s greater threat?

- Has the concrete attachment that Israeli and American security agencies and politicians have created through the years failed us in the war against Hezbollah?

- If so – do we need a shift in strategy to better deal with these two different threats?

For further reading see: Lina Khatib, “Hezbollah's Political Strategy,” Survival 53, no. 2 (April-May 2011)