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:
Hizballah’s roles in the wars in Iraq [since the U.S. invasion] and Syria [since the civil war began in that country] changed the nature of how the group’s alliance with Iran plays out in practice throughout the region, including significant deployments of Hizballah personnel beyond Lebanon’s borders and a well-organized training program to help Iran develop networks of Shiite militant fighters.
The first signs of Hizballah’s shift to a regional posture in support of Iranian interests were structural and involved moving key personnel from positions focused on Israel to those involving Iraq, Yemen, and Syria. As Hizballah trained more Shiite fighters from around the region, and then led them in battles across Syria, the group emerged as the leader and coalescing force for a broad range of Shiite militants tied to Iran and the Quds Force, the branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) primarily responsible for foreign operations. Over time, the Quds Force’s commander Qassem Suleimani personally assumed more of a command leadership position over Hizballah’s fighting forces, at times at the expense of the group’s own commanders.
Then, following the January 2020 assassination of Suleimani, . . . Hizballah assumed more of a leadership role coordinating the activities of a broad network of Shiite militant proxies—the “Resistance Axis”—on behalf of Iran’s IRGC. Taken together, these events shifted Hizballah’s center of gravity in the region from being a Lebanese militia primarily focused on activities in Lebanon and opposition to Israel to . . . playing a leadership role for Iran’s regional network of militant proxies.
Read more on Middle East Institute: https://www.mei.edu/publications/hezbollahs-regional-activities-support-irans-proxy-networks