How the Arab World Turned against Hizballah

In 2000, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hizballah was the darling of Arabs throughout the Middle East and beyond. While most Arab rulers talked a big game about opposing Israel, the terrorist group had been fighting the IDF since the early 1980s (not to mention murdering Jews in Latin America), and had just driven it from southern Lebanon. Now, thanks to Hizballah’s blood-soaked role in maintaining Bashar al-Assad’s power in Syria, all of that has changed, and even Lebanese Shiites—the organization’s base—have begun to resent it. Lizzie Porter, drawing on a series of interviews, writes:

Though it has faded from Western television screens, the Syrian war will have raged for a decade by March next year. It has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions of people from their homes. . . . With the militants of Islamic State (IS) and their extreme form of Sunni Islam often dominating the headlines, Hizballah’s role in the conflict remains underexamined. But without its armed intervention in Syria—the exact timing is unclear, but fighters’ bodies were returning to Lebanon as early as 2012—it is unlikely the Assad regime would have survived.

Hizballah’s commanders have trained and led multiple Iran-backed forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, fighting across the Iraq-Syria border. The group’s violations of humanitarian law in the conflict may not have been as openly gruesome as those by IS, but they are real, and in combination with the propping up of a hated dictator have alienated many previously sympathetic Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians.

In the nineteen interviews conducted for this article, Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians described growing feelings of unease towards the group—and sometimes predating its Syrian intervention. In May 2008, its militants took over central Beirut by force, following a Lebanese government proposal to curb their private communications networks. . . . “They took control of streets, squares, and they prevented people from going out and protesting. It was bad behavior,” [one interviewee] recalled. “For me, that was the turning point, where I started to see the other side of Hizballah.”

Read more at Prospect

More about: Arab World, Hizballah, Lebanon, Syrian civil war

 

Yes, Iran Wanted to Hurt Israel

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.

Read more at Institute for the Study of War

More about: Iran, Israeli Security, Missiles, War in Ukraine