Angry Planet - How Iran Outsourced Regional War to the Party of God

Episode Date: September 18, 2017

The Party of God, Hezbollah, is reaching out far beyond its Lebanese roots as they work with Iran to spread their joint vision of holy war. Working with money and equipment from Iran, the Shi’ite militia now operates in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The party dedicated to the destruction of the Israel is doing a lot of work in countries east of its target.Don’t get them wrong, Hezbollah still hates Israel and wants to destroy it, but it’s lending its expertise—and soldiers—to faraway battles. This week on War College, New York Times journalist Ben Hubbard takes us through what’s changed for the Shi’ite militia group and why they’re fighting so far from home and what Iran gets by supporting it.Read Hubbard’s article on Hezbollah here.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. You can reach us on our new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. If Iran wants to strike Israel, it has to fly its jets over a certain number of countries to get there. Many of those countries probably wouldn't be very happy about it. But instead, they basically helped create a military force smack on the border that can attack Israel whenever there are new hostilities. You're listening to war.

College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Matthew Galt and Jason Fields. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Galt. Ben Hubbard from the New York Times is here to talk with us today about the party of God, Hezbollah. They've been a force in the Middle East for decades, but their role is changing. The group's mission is no longer solely focused on destroying Israel. Instead, they're working with and for Iran becoming a regional force. Thanks for joining us, Ben. Thank you. Do you mind starting with the basics? You know, what is Hezbollah, and what's their goal? Well, Hezbollah, I mean, I think their goals have changed over time.

Hezbollah has started out as a Lebanese militant group in the 80s, founded sort of with Iranian guidance during the Lebanese civil war. But it was, you know, when you had a very messy civil war going on among many of the different fighting groups. You had different sort of disparate Shiite religious militias that were involved in war. And Iran got involved and gave them some sort of advice and guidance. And, you know, eventually, Hezbollah emerged sometime in the mid-80s. There were differences on exactly when it happened. I believe they announced themselves publicly in 1985, although they've been around for a few years before that.

And since then, they've just kind of grown and changed in different ways. For a long time, they were, I mean, at that time, Israel was still occupying a good chunk of South Lebanon, and so their first mission was to be a resistance force against the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon, which they did through classic insurgency tactics, attacking convoys, roadside bombs, things like that, very effective, also worked a lot with, you know, many other different groups that were involved in the same kinds of resistance activities, and so they did that up until Israel withdrew in 2000. And then since 2000, they've kind of involved in various ways.

at a certain point they decided that they were, in addition to being a militant group, were going to be a political party, so they joined the Lebanese political system. So now they have a number of ministries that they, you know, they have ministers in the cabinet, they have a number of people in the parliament, they have political allies, and they're very active publicly in the Lebanese political system, then they still have their military activities. So they're a group that's been around, you know, they've been around 30, 35 years now, depending on when exactly you marked their beginning.

They've been around for a very long time. And what really struck me when I started looking at the, I mean, I've been covering the Syrian Civil War since early on. And, you know, Hezbollah has really used this as, you know, or the changes that Hasbala is going through as an organization have really come out in its involvement in Syria. And then when I started digging into it, I sort of realized, wow, this is an organization that has changed in ways that I don't think a lot of people have recognized. I mean, everybody sort of always thinks of Asbalah as this group that is there exclusively to fight against Israel. And that's what a lot of their rhetoric revolves around. And, you know, Big War in 2006, that was the last time they really went head-to-head with Israel.

And then, you know, what we've seen in the last few years and sort of what I came across when I was doing reporting for this recent article was just really how much they're involved in things that aren't directly related to Israel. They've very much gone from being a Lebanese force, a political force and a military force inside of Lebanon to being a regional force. And they're just involved in so many different places now and in so many different places now. and in so many different ways. You know, obviously their role in Lebanon is quite clear. Their role in Syria has become quite clear. You know, we learned a lot about their involvement in Iraq. They have a lot of old relationships that have been rekindled with different fighting groups in Iraq

and Shiite militias in Iraq that have, you know, they've sort of revived these with the help of Iran. And now these groups are, they're sort of working together to fight the Islamic State, to push for Iranian interests in Iraq. They've gotten much more interested in the conflict in Yemen. I don't think they're as involved there as they are in other places, but it's definitely something that they consider one of their interests and something that they consider part of their regional project, even if they don't have as much kind of on-the-ground military and political support

as they would have elsewhere. So that's what really struck me is that, you know, wow, we have this group that was really a big factor in Lebanon, and now it's very much a regional force that's operating in a number of different places and has moved away in certain ways from its key mission. I should say that Hasbola very much denies that it's gotten away from its key mission, I mean, in terms of its own messaging and its own speeches by its leaders and the way that it talks about the state of the region and its own media, very much sees all of this is connected.

I mean, they will say that everybody fighting to get rid of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is connected to Israel and the Saudis and the Americans who are working together to support the terrorists who are trying to get. So, you know, they sort of, in their view of the region, this is all connected. It's all part of resistance against what they see as the American-Israeli project in the region. So it's kind of like the speech, Cato, the Elder, I think, used to give speeches during, I'm going back to the Roman Senate. Matt, you can laugh at me, but at the end of every speech, even if it was on some kind of spending bill, he would say Cartago Delenda Est, which means Carthids must be destroyed, right? So anything that Hezbollah says, they always end it with, and Israel must go. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's still a very, very key part of their rhetoric. And I do think that it is still, I mean, I don't want to make it sound in any way like they've given up on the fight against Israel,

but they've decided that, you know, they've sort of dropped that as one of their priorities. No, I still think it's something that's very important for them. And we don't have any reason to believe that they're not still investing lots and lots of resources in preparing for the next battle, whether it's training fighters, whether it's, you know, setting up new rockets and various other weapons that they can use against Israel, should there be another war. It's just that in addition to that, they're involved in another things that, in my reading, are not directly related to the fight against Israel.

They have much more to do with supporting their Shiite brethren in the region, working very much hand-in-glove with Iran to try to advance that alliance's interests in the region. All right, explain this connection to Iran. Does Hezbollah exist and become a regional power as it has without Iran? Hezbollah would not be what it is today without Iran. I mean, I don't know if I can quite say that it wouldn't exist. I mean, it is definitely true that in the 80s, there were officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who came to Lebanon and who helped form what became Hezbollah. So Iran has been involved in Hezbollah since the very, very early days.

And it's been involved throughout. If we fast forward to this point, I mean, we know that Hezbollah gets the vast bulk of its financing directly from Iran to run everything from its political acts. activities, to its media activities, to its social services. You know, here in Lebanon, it runs a whole school system. It runs social services. It has its own hospitals or hospitals that are affiliated with it. It has scout troops. It has, you know, lots and lots of activities and all these things.

You know, it's like running kind of a mini state within the state, and it takes a lot of money. And, you know, as well, as well, most of the money comes from Iran. I mean, they do have other sources of income, but pretty much everybody agrees that the vast, vast majority of their budget comes from Iran. You also just have ideological ties. I mean, on the religious level, I mean, Hezbollah is obviously a Shiite movement. Iran is, you know, the sort of plays itself in the region as being the leader of the Shiite world. And, you know, many of Hezbollah's leaders except, you know, the Iranian supreme leader as there, you know, they endorse one of the al-Faqiyahia, this idea from the Iranian revolution that you should have, you know, the rule by the top jurist. So, you know, you have, and then you also have sort of political.

political alliances. I mean, these are people that don't like Saudi Arabia. They don't like the United States. They hate Israel. So, you know, there's, it's all kind of mixed up. But all this, you know, all of this ideology and all of these operational ties bring together, bring them together in a very, very close operational relationship. And I think we've very much seen this in Syria, you know, in Syria, when you look at some of the major battles that have happened, if you want to look at Aleppo, or at least the end of Eastern Aleppo, the rebel enclave and Eastern at the end of last year. It was very clear that you had, you know, Iranian military officials, you know, IRGC officials who were on the ground. You had lots and lots of Hezbollah fighters.

You had Hezbollah commanders. And they were sort of working together to run this, this large military operation that coordinated air strikes with the Russians, coordinated with the Syrian military, and also coordinated, you know, what some people say was up to 20, you know, thousands and thousands of other Shiite fighters from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from Pakistan, from other places who had come to sort of join this big battle. You know, and that's what we're seeing more is that, you know, Iran is using Hezbollah in different ways in the region to try to bring about changes that it would like to see. What's the advantage for Iran? I think a lot of it is operational. I mean, some of it is geographic.

I mean, if you look at Iran, you know, Iran is quite far away from Israel. And so if it really wants to threaten Israel, what's the better way to do it then to help build a strong military force directly on Israel's border? And so I think in the early days of the creation of Pesbala, that was very much the idea. You know, okay, well, if Iran wants to strike Israel, it has to fly its jets over a certain number of countries to get there. Many of those countries probably wouldn't be very happy about it. But instead, they basically helped create a military force smack on the border that can attack Israel when, you know, whenever there's a new, whenever there are new hostilities. So there's that. And then I think as they branched out into more regional activities, a lot of it is operational.

I mean, now Hezbollah has a very large number of very well-trained fighters. They have very, you know, skilled operatives in various ways. And they're also Arabs. I mean, even Shiite Arabs, you know, a lot of them are not entirely comfortable with Iran. There's sort of, you know, distrust sometimes between Arabs and Persians. There's also linguistic difficulties. You know, a lot of the Iranian officials don't speak Arabic. and so it's hard for them to communicate with these Arabic populations.

So, well, if they were through Hezbollah, I mean, Hezbo, because of its many, many years fighting against Israel, you know, it seemed very positively in many parts of the Arab world. And so when its guys show up, you know, to do any kind of activity, they're usually well-received. You know, people figure, okay, these guys are good fighters, they're good military, they're Arabs like us, and we can understand them because they speak Arabic.

So, you know, they're allowed to, or they're able, just because of their Arabic background to, you know, to kind of be an Arabic, an Arabic face for many of the things that Iran wants to do in the region. And I don't mean this to, that, you know, Hezbollah is some sort of puppet of Iran. I think these are also things that Hezbollah very much wants to do. I mean, I do very much see it as an alliance. I think that they work very much in tandem on a lot of shared, you know, their shared vision for the region. I had a question from, you're talking about the infrastructure that Hezbollah has. and the way that they work with Iran, they sound more like an army to me than a militia,

but they're always referred to as a militia. Do you have an idea of, is there a difference? Is it some just semantic? Well, I don't know. I'm sure if you were to talk to military specialists, they would have, you know, exactly what the definition is. You know, what exactly is the difference between a militia and an army? I usually call the militia just because they're not a, they're not a state force. I mean, I usually consider, you know, an army is very much the armed, you know, the armed force of a given state or a given government.

And Hezbollah is still, I mean, it still remains a sub-state actor. So that's why I refer to them as a militia. But, you know, there are certainly debates about, you know, do they now have the power of an army? Or are they now operating in ways that make them more like an army than like a militia? You know, different sort of experts interested in Hezbollah debate that in different ways. And you've written that the core force that Hezbollah has is something in the order of 50,000 men, and I assume they're mostly men in this case. No, I don't think the core force is 50,000 men.

I mean, anything that has to do with numbers of Hezbollah, it's all murky part, mostly because they don't want people to know how many fighters they have. So, you know, various experts who study them will give various assessments. Sometimes, as well, officials will, if you sort of. tell them, when we heard this, they'll say, oh, that's too high, oh, that's too low. You know, and there are also, you know, in Lebanon, there are a lot of, you know, political analysts and other people who are very close to the movement. And so, you know, you can talk to all these different kinds of people. And, you know, I mean, I think that the realistic estimates are, are in the low tens of thousands, you know, perhaps 20,000, you know, experienced trained

fighters and then certain other numbers of, you know, people that are considered more reservists. I think it's gotten more complicated in Syria because there's been some wider recruitment that's gone on. There have been a lot of people who were probably not fighters before, but just because of the size of the battles in Syria, there have been people who have gone with as well into Syria to serve various, you know, to do various things there.

I think an article, when I mentioned the 50,000, I think just demographically, 50,000 is about the max that they could possibly ever turn out. I mean, if you look at just the demographics of Lebanon, I mean, unless they're going to start recruiting foreigners, which they've never done overtly,

I think 50,000 would be the max, but I don't think there's any reason they actually right now have that many, you know, train has bullfighters. I think it's probably, you know, more in the 20,000 range. And then with, with others who can chip in in various ways. Just another question along the same vein. What kind of equipment did they use? I guess it goes along the whole, are they a military versus, you know, a militia. Is this a group that has tanks and, you know, really high-level equipment? Do they have an Air Force? I know that you've written that they have tens of thousands of rockets, many of which are

aimed at Israel. But beyond that, what do they look like when they're fighting? And that's a good question. I mean, I'm not actually military or munitions experts, so, you know, I'm sure there are certainly other people who can give you better information on that. I mean, I think when it comes to, you know, when it comes to the battle against Israel, you know, now that they're not directly, directly resisting Israeli presidents in Lebanon, I mean, you know, I think that they've, certainly in Lebanon, there's no need for them to use the old roadside bombs and those kind of close insurgency tactics.

I think for the fight against Israel, it's a combination of, you know, small arms and, you know, small arms, RPGs, things like that. They definitely blew up tanks that tried to come into Israel, tried to come into Lebanon in 2006. And then they have their, you know, rockets, which some of them are sort of short range and can, you know, they fire large numbers to hit near the border. Others are much more precision and, you know, there's a lot of fear in, you know, there's certainly fear in Israel that they can hit lots of sensitive locations inside of Israel should there be another war. In Syria, I mean, there's not great visibility on it. They do have some, you know, they do certainly have armored vehicles and things like that. I mean, I don't think they have huge groups of tanks that they can deploy. I mean, huge tank columns and things like that.

But, you know, they do have some, you know, they do have some of this stuff. One thing that they don't have is an air force. You know, in Syria, they sort of work with the, you know, they coordinate with the Russians and they work directly with the Syrian military. But none of these guys, I think they do very much remain militias. You know, they might get an armored vehicle here and there. And, you know, I'm sure they have mortars and they have advanced RPGs and certain kinds of advanced, you know, guided missiles and anti-take weapons and things

like that. But they don't have an air force. And, you know, in the past, when Hezbollah has gone up against Israel, at least in the most recent wars, it's really been Israel. Air Force that's caused the most destruction to the other side. So anyway, that's just sort of something to keep in mind that, you know, even if they can rally tens and tens of thousands of militiamen to sort of storm the Golan Heights or whatever, Israel still does have a very powerful Air Force that it can use.

I mean, what other kind of weapons these guys have gotten in the meantime that might threaten that air force? I don't think anybody knows and we probably won't know until unless there's a war. And then we, you know, it's kind of like a game of poker that everybody has things in their hands and we don't really know what's there until the hand is called and everybody lays their cards on the table. So that's a bit the way that it is with trying to guess what kind of munitions

everybody has these days. But I mean, I think in Syria, you know, in Syria they've also kind of acted as like a force multiplier just because their fighters are reputed to be better, you know, much more experience, much more courageous. And so they sort of have fought a lot alongside the Syrian military, which has all the trappings of a traditional military,

tanks and, you know, all the various other heavy weaponry that a, you know, militia might not have. By the way, people should actually read Ben's article. We're going to post links to it, both in the episode show notes on Facebook. And, of course, I'm sure Ben would want to add he's not the only person who worked on this article. It looked like it was a large team across the Middle East. Right. That's true.

So, Matt, I know you had a question about the other conflicts that Hezbollah's fighting now. Yeah, where can you give us, we've kind of touched on it and some of the other answers, but where exactly are all the places that they are fighting right now? Well, I think the main places outside of Lebanon, I think probably an order of importance. Number one would be Syria. Number two would be Iraq and number three would be Yemen. And I think they have presence in, you know, a number of other places, but it's much, much smaller and I think we know very much about exactly what they're up to there. I mean, Syria, they've deployed thousands and thousands of fighters who have been on the front lines. and also played kind of a coordinating role

with a lot of the other Shiite militias who have come in from different countries, you know, while also coordinating with the Russians, coordinating with the Syrian military. And so that's very much been the place where they made their largest investment in kind of foreign military endeavors. And where they probably gained the most.

I mean, it's, I think for Hezbollah, it's been an incredible kind of confidence boost and it's, you know, so far, at least it's come away as looking like a great success, even though they have, you know, suffered substantial casualties and I'm sure it's also cost them a lot of money although we know less about that.

All right. So in both Iraq and Syria, they are fighting Islamic State, correct? Well, in Syria, it's more complicated because I think in some places they are. I think in other places they're fighting people, fighting basically government opponents. They're fighting members of the Syrian opposition who are not Islamic State, some of whom are Islamists and some of whom are not. I mean, in Syria, the trick is we have this whole range. In the opponents of the Syrian government, we have sort of,

you know, people from some of the original rebel groups that started early off in 2011, that they really just want to overthrow the government and set up something. And then from there, you have kind of a whole Islamist spectrum. You have some people who sort of use Islamist language but don't necessarily want to set up an Islamic state. You've got, you know, and then sort of goes, then you've got Jabhatan Nossara, the, you know, the Al-Qaeda branch in Syria, which is, you know, obviously following a much more kind of classic jihadi model. And then you've got the Islamic State, which is kind of its own thing because it doesn't, it's really kind of off doing its own thing with the caliphate.

So anyway, the bulk of what they've been fighting would be the first group, you know, the sort of anti-Assad rebels. That's where their major investments have been. I think more recently you've seen them kind of intervene in the fight against ISIS, which is much further east closer to Iraq. And then once you get into Iraq, their rule does really change. I mean, one thing that was quite striking for me while we were reporting this article, able to do an interview with Sheikh Naim Khashim, who was basically the number two official in

Hezbollah. And he was very frank about all this. And we went in and said, hey, we talked to people here. We talked to people in Iraq. We did this. We did that. And he just kind of said, yeah. And he kept using the phrase transferring expertise. He said, you know, our job was to transfer expertise. And he was very much, you know, he was very much just saying, you know, we've been at this for 30, 35 years. We've got a lot of great experience in militancy and fighting and various side of things. And now we consider it our job to pass along that experience to all of our, you know, all of our allies in the region. And so I think Iraq is one place where you see that happening much more clearly, where you've got sort of, you know, Hezbollah operatives going there

and working with Iraqi militias who are, who there, they're definitely fighting the Islamic State, you know, and teaching them how to use missiles that they didn't know how to use beforehand and, you know, teaching them other kinds of tactics and things like that. So does that mean that there are places? in Iraq where Hezbollah and the U.S. military are fighting the same enemy? Yeah, technically, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't, you know, I don't imagine they're like sharing the same bases and whatever, but, you know, the U.S. is working with, you know, the official Iraqi military and with the Kurds to fight ISIS.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi, you know, Shiite militias are fighting ISIS in other areas and basically coordinating with the Iraqi military. And Hezbollah is there, you know, basically acting as advisors. and trainers mostly for for those militias. So, you know, yeah, I mean, they're, you know, if you, they do definitely share a common enemy in Iraq. So it's kind of like when you say transferring expertise, it's kind of an attempt in Iraq for them to project influence rather than direct power. Yeah, I don't think that there's, I haven't seen a whole lot of, you know, I don't think

there's much of support that they want to actually exercise power in Iraq. I mean, you know, maybe influence because they want. I think it's much more of a case of they consider themselves part of this international alliance, which they, you know, the quote-unquote resistance axis. And so they really want to use their experience to boost their allies, you know. So they go and they help them out and they teach them out of do things, and then those guys get more power in their country. And that's kind of good for everybody.

I mean, it's good for Iran because a lot of those groups are also supported by Iran. It's good for Hezbollah because they're, you know, when they look at the region, they see themselves as all on the same team. But I don't think, you know, you don't have Hezbollah going and trying to, to recruit Iraqis to join. It still remains a Lebanese organization, with Lebanese leadership, Lebanese members, even though it's kind of taken on these new regional roles.

So I think it's much more about boosting its allies and boosting the resistance access as it were across the region. There was one other aspect that to me was tied right into this that really struck me from the article. The militants that they're training, I think you said they get only 15 days worth of training. Is that making these guys, these volunteers, essentially just cannon fodder? I think there's a whole bunch of different kinds of training going on.

I mean, I think there's definitely long-term advanced training that happens in Iran, people that get flown to Iran, and they do these long courses on, you know, various military technologies, activities, things like that. There's, you know, we believe there's training that happens here in Lebanon. Some people get out brought here force with a specialized sniper training or other kinds of explosive training, things like that. I mean, I think that those fighters that I talk to in Iran, Iraq that very much got these crash courses. Yeah, you could probably say that they were a type of

cannon fodder. I mean, these were mainly poor Shiite Iraqis from the south. They don't have a lot, you know, probably don't have great employment opportunities, not particularly well educated. A lot of them signed up for this because, you know, part of it is ideological. Part of it is that they were just angry that the Islamic State had taken over a large part of their country and they were worried that this was going to pose some kind of a threat. So they go to sign up with these local militias. There's also, you know, always an economic motive as well. Some of these guys earn more money with these militias than they would probably earn, you know, working as day laborers or what their other possibilities were. You know, I think that at certain points, yeah, they definitely

just brought in huge numbers of guys. They needed to get them on the front lines to sort of hold the front line or to make some kind of kind of advance. And the best they could do was give them kind of a two-week crash course and like, here's how you use a Kalashnikov and here's how you change the clip and here's how you take cover. Here's how you advance. Here's, you know, those kinds of sort of basic infantry training. And then you put them on the front line because you need to you need to reinforce it. So I think that there's a range of training. I don't think everybody's getting two weeks.

But I think in certain parts of the war in Syria, there was just such a need that they had to, you know, they had to deploy people very quickly and they probably didn't have time to do more than that. All right. I think we got one last question for you. So what happens to these tens of thousands of troops when these conflicts start winding down?

That's a very good question. And I don't think anybody really knows. I mean, it's something that makes lots of other people in the region nervous. I think it makes the United States nervous. It certainly makes the Israelis and the Israelis nervous. I think it makes the Saudis and the Saudi allies nervous. The United Arab Emirates, I think, are very nervous. You know, because they sort of see, you know, this standing army or these very flexible militias that, you know, along with their military training,

we'll get a lot of ideological training as well and sort of Shiite-themed jihad. And so I think that for the people that don't like Iran's influence in the region, this is a very scary thing because then you now have these very flexible deployable forces that you can send various places. You know, that could mean that in Iraq, you know, the stronger these guys get, the easier it is for them to advocate inside of Iraq for things that are good for Iran. I mean, I think in Syria they definitely, you know, they're going to have a foothold. There's, you know, when all these militias get involved, they're going to want something in the end.

I think it's probably too early for us to know how it's all going to shake out. You know, Nassarla said in a recent speech, Nassarla, the Secretary General of Tasbala basically threatened Israel and said, you know what, the next time there's a war with Israel, it's not just going to be us, but we're going to bring all these other guys with us. So that's certainly a possibility as well. Instead of having however many tens of thousands of fighters you have from Hasbalah, they can also call on the Iraqis and the Syrians and the, you know, Afghans and the other people who have kind of been brought into this Iranian military operation and use them to bolster whatever fight they have with Israel.

Ben, thanks so much for joining us today. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for listening to this week's show. If you enjoyed it, please tell the world on iTunes. Also, you can reach us now on Facebook. We are at www.facebook.com slash war college podcast. You can tell us the kind of shows you want to hear more of, or just leave general comments. We'll also be posting during the week to let you know what news we think is important. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again next week.

Thank you.