Founded as an Iran-backed Shiite political party-cum-terrorist organization in Lebanon in the early 1980s, Hizballah made its name with its devastating attack on U.S. Marines in Beirut. It then fought a fifteen-year guerrilla war against Israel, which eventually succeeded in driving the IDF from southern Lebanon, while at the same time carrying out deadly terrorist attacks on Jews wherever they could be found. Since 2006, it has also become, in Matthew Levitt’s words, the “managing partner for Iran’s network of militant proxies” throughout the Middle East. Levitt explains this transition, and provides an in-depth history of the group that now has one of the world’s largest missile arsenals pointed at Israel:

In the past few decades, the Jewish state has vastly expanded its diplomatic, economic, and sometimes military ties with South and East Asia, while doing its best to stay away from the conflicts that divide the countries in the region. Daniel Samet surveys the potential for these relationships, urging Jerusalem to avoid deepening cooperation with China and instead to focus on cultivating further its alliances-in-the-making with China’s competitors: