Empire: World History - 123. Hezbollah: The Party of God

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

In June 1982, Israeli tanks rolled over the Lebanese border. Soon after, Iran sent 1,500 Revolutionary Guards into Lebanon to help fight them. Thereafter, funded by Iran but largely manned by Lebanese Shi’ites, Hezbollah established itself as the most powerful militia in Lebanon and the Ayatollah’s most influential proxy. They were among the first Islamic groups in the Middle East to use suicide bombing, assassination and kidnapping. But it did not stop there. In the 1990s, Hezbollah began to morph into a political party too and set itself on the road to being the dominant force in Southern Lebanon it is today. Listen as William and Anita talk to Kim Ghattas about the history of one of the most feared Islamic groups in the Middle East. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. And welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremberth. And we are once again joined by Kim Gassas, author of the Black Wave, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the rivalry that unraveled the Middle East. And today we're going to be looking at something, I mean, very close to you geographically, because you're speaking to us in Beirut. But we're talking about Hezbollah, which always, when you hear about it in news bulletins here, certainly in Britain, is always described as Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Can I just ask you, what is the mood at the moment? Because you are really on pretty much one of the many front lines that exist in the most insecure world I have ever known in my lifetime. What are people talking about? Are they expecting war? Are they talking about war? Are they preparing for war? What's happening where you are? You know, it's been a rollercoaster since the attacks of October 7th by Hamas. You know, that horrific, horrendous massacre was a tragedy not just for Israel, but it unleashed dynamics across the region that we're still grappling with today. And it unleashed in Lebanon the fear of war because we're on the border with Israel, Hezbollah, the Shia militant political party that is backed. by Iran and armed by Iran. On October 8th launched its first missiles across the border into Israel in a show of support for Hamas. But they haven't gone further than that. So it's remained a sort of contained escalation on the border between Israel and Lebanon. But it's gone on now for over

100 days since the beginning. And there are skirmishes. There are shellings in some directions, phosphorus bombs and back. There's daily cross-border fighting and shelling. Southern Lebanon is mostly emptied of its inhabitants. 90% are gone have left. The Israeli shelling into southern Lebanon is quite intense. In a way, with the shelling, creating a de facto border zone where there's really no one living very much and it's not safe for villagers. How wide is that border zone? Five to ten kilometers, just roughly if I look at the map. What it really did to the psyche of the whole country, because there's no actual war in Beirut, but there's fear that Israel's retaliation,

reaction could extend all the way to Beirut. And in the two weeks following the October 7th attack, we now know that the Israelis wanted to have a preemptive attack against Hezbollah, and the Americans convinced them not to. When did that emerge? I hadn't read that. October 7th happens. October 8th, Hezbollah shells into northern Israel. And no one is really sure whether this is just a minimal show of support or whether Hezbollah and Iran are about to, you know, unleash hell as well alongside Hamas. We understand later that Hezbollah and Iran are not interested in escalating, that they were not necessarily aware exactly of the extent of the Hamas operation

and that they're not seeking full-on war. But we are living in Lebanon in this incredible insecurity and fear. fear. And it is, having seen a lot in Lebanon and having lived through many conflicts, including the Civil War, it's unlike anything I've seen before. It's close to hysterics. People take their kids out of school, leave the country, rent houses further north. The rumor mill starts, you know, going crazy. The IMF is evacuating its employees. The World Bank is leaving. This ambassador has left the country. None of it true. But foreign embassies, particularly Western embassies, are calling on their citizens, not to travel to Lebanon anymore, to leave the country if they can while commercial

options are available. So there's this mass feel of panic and fear, which stays with us on a daily basis. And every morning, or every day at lunch, dinner, whatever, people ask, shu, so is there going to be war? It's a mantra. So has it become sort of almost everyday life that people stockpile just in case or they're, you know, sort of sorting out water reserves? Because, you know, the Beirut that I knew was Party Central when I came like about six years ago. And some of the greatest restaurants in the world. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, those two coexist.

It's our way of coping. I wrote a piece for the Atlantic where I explain that the Lebanese propensity to party is not about amnesia or nonchalance. It's continuing to live with a vengeance because, you might die tomorrow. It is about extreme survival skills and the ability to adapt to the situation. So for a month or so, you know, everything froze. Life froze in Lebanon. In November, there was a little bit more movement. Everybody thought Christmas would be canceled. You know, Lebanon is a country of emigration. Hundreds of thousands, millions of Lebanese in the diaspora. Several hundred thousand of them come back to Lebanon for Christmas, Easter, the summer, even if they don't celebrate Christmas,

it's a time to come together with family and friends, et cetera, because everybody's here then at the same time. And until early December, we thought no one's coming. And then by the 8th of December, it looked like, you know, maybe war had been postponed. And so everybody came. Gosh, the crazy way to live. Parties and dinners. And, you know, a friend of mine said, it felt even more important to come because for two months Lebanon felt like forbidden ground. Right, right, right, right, right. And we want to see our family and we want to touch and feel the country and eat its food and immerse ourselves into its sense of community. And hug the people you love. And hug the people you love. And then, you know, at the end of the Christmas holidays,

people left and asked, well, see you in the summer if the country is still standing. Yeah. It's not black humor. It's like, you know, people are actually thinking that this is so very close. Yeah, it's not black humor. And what is interesting about Lebanon and all the, you know, dinners and functions that you, you know, end up being invited to with friends and acquaintances, you know, it's a big socializing period. Christmas. You hear all sorts of opinions. It really runs the gamut from, you know, we can never have peace with the Israelis to, it's all Hamas's fault and they started this to, you know, we hate Hezbollah and we don't want them to take us to war. You have everything at the same dinner table. It's really extraordinary.

Can we talk about the start of Hezbollah's existence? And I don't know whether you were a child in Lebanon at the time. In 1982 is the year I would like to take you back to. I was. Just paint us that lovely picture of the cosmopolitan city before all the trouble because people often, I think of a certain generation, don't have any idea that that ever existed, this wonderful Levantine port. Yes, I never experienced that. But of course, it's the golden era everybody likes to refer to, which as I now investigate and research my next book, which will be partly set during that period, I realize it wasn't that much of a, I mean, it was a golden era, but it was a hiding, it was a facade for a lot of shifting sands and deep systemic issues. You know, Lebanon,

was in a way, a haven of, you know, banking, tourism, cosmopolitan life, Westerners moved here, married Lebanese, you have a huge diaspora. The famous being able to ski in the morning and sunbathe in the afternoon, all that stuff. Ski in the morning, sunbathe, absolutely in the afternoon. The best hotels. I mean, my mother is Dutch and she met my father in the Netherlands in the 60s. when the Netherlands and Europe were still, you know, just over a decade after the Second World War, still quite conservative. You know, they'd gone through famine and rations in the Netherlands.

And she comes to Lebanon. And it's, you know, the big hairdos and the beautiful dresses and the casinos and restaurants and the beach. And she never left. Yeah. She never left. It was magical. Why would she? Yeah.

But there were tensions. between the political left and the political right, you already had a large population of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon since 1948, and then 1967, the Six Day War, and then 1969, 1970, when King Hussein of Jordan crushed the Palestinians in his own country and sent armed fighters and more refugees to Lebanon. And that was starting to bubble and clash with those who felt that the Palestinian cause was our cause as well. In Lebanon was a pan-Arab national cause. And those who felt that Lebanon first, and this is not our cause,

and we don't want to be a staging ground for attacks against Israel. And that would often fall down sectarian lines. Not really, actually. So many of those on the left who supported what was actually a national liberation movement at a time of leftist liberation movements around the world. Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, you know, that was the international left at the time. And the Palestinian fighters of the time, whether you like them or not, you want to call them terrorists or not, they were mostly secular. They played music, they drank wine, they, you know, wrote poetry.

And so on the left, in the communist Lebanese Communist Party and various other leftist parties, you had a lot of Christians. And they stayed loyal to that cause and to the anti-Israel front for decades until later on, more recently, Hezbollah completely took over the quote-unquote resistance file, and that became a purely Shia endeavor. But so this is the Lebanon that is both cosmopolitan but living with deep systemic problems and internal tensions, which eventually explode into the civil war that starts in 1975. And for those who don't know it, a large Christian population? Large Christian population. A large Druze population. Smallest minority. We're a country of minorities.

Sunnis, Shias and Christians. And then the Druze are the much smaller minority of about 8, 10%. So, I mean, is Hezbollah, does it grow out of the roots of this, you know, fermenting political difficulty? or is it an export from Iran that is implanted in this soil? It's both. So 1975, the Civil War erupts, and it's about the far left and the far right and how they view the Palestinian cause. It becomes much more complicated from 75 to 1982 with the invasion of Lebanon by Syria, etc. And in 1978, the Israelis invade Lebanon a first time they create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon

to push Palestinian fighters away from the border. And by 1982, they invade and they go all the way up to Beirut and they lay siege to the city of Beirut for about two months. 17,000 people are killed. And ostensibly the goal of that, which is actually successful, is to kick the Palestinian Liberation Organization, as it was called at the time. And Yasser Arafat, being its leader and chairman, is to kick them out of the country. And Yasser Arafat and his men get on ships and leave Lebanon.

For Tunisia, yes. But the growth of the support for the Palestinian cause in Lebanon is happening in parallel with the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And Ayatollah Khomeini had seen an opportunity in supporting the Palestinian cause and establishing himself as the real defender, not only of Islam, but of the Palestinian cause, and providing support for the Palestinians as opposed to the Saudis who were more about. you know, diplomacy and the niceties of giving moral support. Okay.

And what's interesting about that is Hormane's stand on the Palestinians is I've seen, and I couldn't believe it. I think I sent it to you a while ago, William. Do you remember the Shah of Iran talking about a Palestinian state saying, of course there's no argument for it. They don't deserve it. Of course they don't deserve it. Absolutely utterly, coldly dismissive of the Palestinian case for their own homeland.

I would like to see that video because I'd seen another one. I'm very interested. I will forward it to you because it took my breath away. But Khomeini seizes upon that and Yasser Arafat seizes upon it as well because a little-known episode as well, which is the opening chapter of my book, is a lot of the Iranian revolutionaries at the time in the 70s were training with the Palestinians in camps in Lebanon. Really? Lebanon was a supermarket for military training for all the, you know, however you want to call them.

Freedom fighters, terrorists, liberation movements, you know, pick your adjective, the Red Brigade, Badr Mainhof, they would all come to Lebanon and train with the Palestinians. So the Palestinians and Yasser Al-Harafat felt that they could claim some credit for the success of the Iranian revolution. And Harifat actually traveled to Iran to congratulate Khomeini. But fast forward to 82, because I think that's where you want to get to. 1982, the Iranians see another opportunity to export the revolution and support their fellow Shias who are being invaded in southern Lebanon, where you have a majority of Shias in southern Beirut. And so they send a group of about 1,500 Iranian men to Syria in the hope that Hafez al-Assad,

the president of Syria at the time, will allow them passage to Lebanon and will provide them with tanks, artillery, military hospitals and jets to fight Israel. Hafiz al-Assad is not interested in another war with Israel. He is, however, interested in facilitating Iran's endeavor to cause pain to the Israelis. And so he doesn't want 1,500 Iranians traveling across the border into Lebanon. And most of them go back, but some of them do come to Lebanon to the Beqar Valley. And they form together with young Shias who were already agitated not only by the Israeli invasion, but very admiring of the Iranian revolution and already had ties to the Iranian revolution. Together, they begin to establish the nucleus of what will become

Hezbollah in the Beqar Valley. And if I may just add one point, they arrive. These Iranians, and you're getting this in avant-premier, like this is all new research, they arrive two days after the start of the Israeli invasion. Wow. Two days. Really? Yes. Wow.

The arrival two days after that invasion suggests to me that there was a plan to send them anyway that just gets accelerated. You can't just mobilize in two days, or can you? I mean, what does that say to you? You can, because don't forget that the Iranians were in a war with Iraq, and they just won a big battle in May of 1982 in Khodamshar. And they were not demobilized, but they thought, you know, they'd won that war and that was kind of over. And so they very quickly shift.

OK. Kim, just give us a quick look at that, because we haven't talked about the Iran-Iraat war at all. When does that break out? 1980. 1980, Saddam Hussein invades Iranian territory. The Iranians fight back. They lose ground and they regain ground. And it's going back to what we were discussing in the previous episode about sort of ground zero of Shia

Sunni killings, that war Iran-Iraq starts as two nations and, you know, Persia and the Arab world, etc. And it later devolves into sectarian language, Sunnis and Shias, because don't forget that a small majority of Iraqis are Shia. So within the Iraqi army, you also have Shias who are fighting actually against Shias who are in Iran. So when I was at school, it was always said, oh well this is a war of ideology this is a war of religion you know the arraini you know the arraini the iranians are shia the Iraqis who are sunni and that's why they went to war the origins are often so much more complex and almost always have there is an economics territory and power yeah oh money yeah absolutely territory power money leadership yeah so i think that it's not that

difficult yeah to quickly organize and send 1500 men yeah across by plane they have to fly over turkey and then into Damascus. They're welcomed by Rifat al-Assad, the brother of the president at the time. And they pow-w when they discuss and they end up settling on the idea of starting to create an extension of their revolutionary guards who have just been set up in Iran

to fight the Israelis differently, but also to proselytize in the Beqha Valley and in Baalbek, which is completely transformed by the arrival of these men who start imposing the Chador on women, the all-encompassing black people, Shiaveil. Balbek, again, had been this place of a great festival, hadn't it? The concerts.

Absolutely. The International Festival of Balbeg. In the ruins of this extraordinary, beautiful temple. The Bacchus temple, absolutely. The largest, if I'm not mistaken, the largest Roman temple still standing. And just behind that, the Revolutionary Guard set up in a barracks. I don't know if precisely geographically behind it, but yes, nearby. And that becomes the start of Hezbollah, which officially is created later on, 1985. They officially announced their creation and they put out statements about what they represent and what their goals are.

But 1982 in the Bukha Valley is when they are born. And at first they take different names like the Islamic Jihad, etc. Kim, tell us about Sheikh Subi Tufelyi Tufeli is one of the founders of Hezbollah. He will later become one of its secretary. generals. He is one of the men who on the day of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 is actually on his way to Iran, to meet with the Office of Liberation movements in Iran, because they're organizing a conference, to request more support for Lebanon and the Shia community and efforts of resistance against Israel. And so I think, again, lots of different things.

things coincide in that moment and coalesce to make it possible for the Iranians to decide to send men to Lebanon and for the idea the nucleus of Hezbollah to come into being. And another person who is on the plane with Subhito Faili is Ahmad Mourniyya, a name that many people will know. And if they don't know, he becomes the mastermind of a lot of the terrorist attacks that Hezbollah will carry out across the decades. Which are the terrorist attacks you're talking about? So the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in April 1983,

the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in October 1983, the largest number of Marines killed since Iwo Jima, the hostage crisis, the taking of over 100 Western hostages in Lebanon across the 80s. Saw this one man, gosh. The hijacking of the TWA plane in 1985. And again, just a little aside here, because we talk about this country where you have war and peace, you have fear and partying.

You know, the TWA hijacking lasted two weeks. It was a plane that had come from Athens and hijacked. They wanted to go to Algeria. They ended up planning in Beirut. Lots of Americans on board. Women and children are released. One U.S. Navy diver is killed. the remaining two dozen hostages are held for an extra 10 days or so on their own.

And at the end, they're taken to this fancy summerland hotel and given a moonlit dinner to wish them goodbye and given a red rose each before they get into a convoy by the Red Cross to be sent to Damascus, where Hafez al-Assad wants to take credit for his mediation efforts to have them released. I mean, researching this book is sort of confronting me with human nature, the good and the evil and how they are often coexisting within the same person. Kim, one other person who arrives in Lebanon at this time with the Revolutionary Guards is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the future Iranian president. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yeah. He plays a minor role. You know, we don't know very much about how much time he spent here, exactly what his role was. But there are so many of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders or prominent personalities who will rise across the decades and become well-known figures who have their start in Lebanon, either pre-1979 as they were training with the Palestinians or after 1982 when they establish a base here.

Okay. You said that they go through many iterations at this beginning and they don't really know yet what they are. They haven't got that name Hezbollah. They don't announce it. Okay. But Hezbollah itself translates as party of God. The party of God. And does it exist in Iran as well or is it a name that has just come out of the soil? No, it's actually in the Quran. You will be the party of God. And it is inspired by what the leadership of Hezbollah had heard in Iran itself. Kim, so you begin to get in Lebanon. the same sort of thing as we've seen after the revolution in Iran. Music and alcohol is banned as a wedding celebrations. Well, in some parts of Baalbek, in some parts of Beirut, but not across Lebanon. We need to make that clear. And in southern Lebanon, where the Shia are living. Yes. In the southern Lebanon, where the population is dominantly Shia, that begins to change as well.

But it's gradual. It's very, very gradual. And a new radio station, the voice of the irration. Indian Revolution. Yes, in the Bekar Valley, proselytizing, programming that is religious, educational, etc. Very foreign to how the Shia community saw itself until then. And I'm always fascinated, and you have so much experience of how the State Department thinks and what it does, because in their mind, what's been created is like something out of Lord of the Rings. It's like the minds of Mordor where people are being manufactured, wound up, and sent around the world to destabilize. I mean,

And do they take it seriously at this point? Or do they just think, ah, not our problem, really. We've got other things to think about at the moment. You know, Lebanon is in the midst of a civil war. There's lots of different bits of the puzzle moving. It's hard to keep track. Syria is trying to position itself as the firefighter when actually it is the arsonist and it is working in collusion with Iran to make a lot of this stuff happens.

Iran and its people kidnap the hostages. Syria helps to mediate their release. It's a cooperation. It's a joint venture. And the Americans are aware that Iranian guys have showed up in the Bekha Valley. I know that for a fact. I spoke to somebody who was at the White House at the time. They're not quite sure what it means.

Four of them actually get kidnapped in July 1982. Four Iranians from that group that had arrived from Iran to the Beqar Valley. Four of those get kidnapped in a Christian area of Lebanon. There's a whole story about why they went there, but that's not for this. episode. And to try to gain their release, young Shia students who had heard about that, kidnap an American in Beirut. It's the first kidnapping of an American in Beirut. And it begins a long trend of kidnappings that the Americans don't quite know how to grapple with, don't know what the strategy should be. It leads to the Iran-Contra affair. We can discuss that

briefly and all the way to today, you're still trying to figure out how to deal with Iran taking hostages. Let us take a break at this point, because I think now we have the birth of what is Hezbollah, as we recognize it today. Join us after the break. It's not going to be easy listening because we are going to run through sort of the catalogue of horrors that are perpetrated under the flag of Hezbollah. But very important to understand what's happening today. Hugely, but if you've got small people in the car and you, you know, maybe delicate disposition yourself, maybe you might not want to stay with us. I just thought I'd offer you that warning, but join us after the break where Kim is going to run us through from that creation of Hisbola

to what we have here now today. Welcome back. So we're going to dive back in, but just before that, we're going to do something nice for somebody. We don't often do that. No, we don't. We're going to put our nice pants on. And what we're going to do is we're going to tell you about a very exciting new series. Coming to you, courtesy of the brilliant Peter Frank Pern and Afwer Hirsch. It's their podcast called Legacy.

they've just released a mini-series, and it's all about Mikhail Gorbachev. Now, you know, we've sort of touched on Gorbachev in our Russia series of Empire, but what a fascinating character he was. You used to send him love notes. I didn't send him love notes. I did scatter-gand London at one time with some 17 letters trying to get an interview and got quite close. And then Razor gave you a call or something. The man at the embassy gave you a call, saying, who's this person?

No, the man at the embassy gave me a call. He says, I've got seven of these letters or something, and how many more can I expect? So that is the man. But it's a really, really good series. And Willie, you really tweeted recently that you very much enjoyed their Rhodes series as well. Yes, I felt rather shamed by how technically perfect their legacy series was. They do all sorts of clever things that we don't do on Empire, like have sort of fancy music and this sort of reconstructions of conversations.

And it's a very, very interesting new way of doing podcasts. I was very taken with it. Anyway, look, do listen to this. Peter, as you know, I mean, I was going to call him a friend of the show, but he did slightly wallop us when he came up. Oh, he is a friend of the show, but he's just very clever, and he just clearly thought that we weren't that clever. And he told us what's what?

Do you remember about by Zantim? Well, my mother enjoyed that episode more than anything. Your mother actually phoned in specially to say that he kicked your pants around the room, if I remember the phrase. Yes, she said she kicked both your pants around the playground. So there we are. If you want to hear my mother's favorite podcaster, Peter Frank Ban, And the brilliant affords.

It should be said, a professor of global history at Oxford and at Cambridge now, Professor of Silk Rhodes or something at Cambridge. So he's very, very clever. And so is that for her. So it's a very, very clever podcast. And I actually generally do recommend it. And I'm quite invisible with their fancy music. Yes, I know.

Well, we'll have a word on that and get a rider somewhere under the contract. But anyway, this is a wandering goalhanger production. You can find it wherever you get your podcast. Or, of course, you can binge the entire series. series of legacy, ad free on Amazon Music. So let's get back to our empire business and to our lovely Kim Gattis. So brilliantly you've shown us how this group in the Bakar Valley is born and is getting stronger and how states are now cooperating Syria and Iran together to create, I mean,

you can either call it a new world order or a challenge to the world order or whatever way you want to describe this. Run us through some of the things that Hezbollah suddenly, launches itself into the world with and why we know them and why they're so feared today. And of course, you have to point out that they deny they were ever involved in all of this. They've never taken credit for it. But the evidence, I think, is pretty solid. I want to go back to something based on William's previous question about how things are changing also for people, et cetera, and tying back to the time before 1982 when these Iranian revolutionaries were training with the Palestinians in Lebanon. A lot of the people who come back to Lebanon during that period are known to the Lebanese who are on the Palestinian side, if you will. And a lot of them don't realize how brutal this is all going to become.

And, you know, I've spoken to politicians in today's Lebanon who were around at the time, who were in a way on the same side as those guys. Because at the time, it was about pushing back against American influence. It was about pushing America out of Lebanon. It was about pushing Israel out of Lebanon as well and thwarting efforts to have a peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon, which by some at the time were seen as laudable goals to push back against America's agenda. But fast forward three decades, some of those who were in. the same trenches as the young upstart Hezbollah found themselves targeted themselves by Hezbollah because the worldviews and the agendas just diverged way too much.

So after 1982, Hezbollah is slowly born and they also, Iran and Syria slowly start to take over the national resistance movement against the Israeli occupation, which was still, as we've discussed, mostly communist, leftist. Marxist, secular, and it becomes increasingly religious. And it happens violently because Hezbollah and their guys kill a lot of these leftist, communist thinkers so that they can control alone that trend and that movement and the idea of resistance against Israel. So the first victims are the Lebanese. Always the way, isn't it? Yes. Always the way. And always the ones who are overlooked. But the ones that reach the headlines are often the ones who are affected by this, shall I say new phenomenon,

because it feels like it is a new phenomenon in the world, a suicide bomber. It is. It is a new phenomenon. Tell us about the origin of suicide bombing being the weapon of choice for Hezbollah. Yeah, that's a method developed by Ahmad Mornier, the mastermind that we were just discussing before the break. Where does he get the idea from? Because we're so familiar now with suicide bombers. At the time, it must have been something, I mean, we'd had kamikaze, Japanese pilots in Second World War, but it isn't a thing. A genius Machiavellian mind that came up with this idea.

Grotesque, yeah. Which was dismissed at the time because everybody thought, who on earth is going to be willing to be blown up himself while driving this truck? But he finds someone, which, if I'm remembering correctly, is a distant cousin, I think. And a childhood friend. And he sends him to his death, yeah. So he finds this, you know, childhood friend, cousin, whoever he is. And what is he tasked to do? What is this first act?

To drive a truck laden with explosives into the Israeli headquarters in the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon in 1982. That is the first suicide bombing. And 75 Israeli military personnel are killed, aren't they? Which the Israelis never admit initially that it was a suicide bombing. They say it's a gas canister that has exploded. Why? Because they cannot fathom. that their invasion has gone so wrong that they are now being targeted by suicide bombers.

And only recently did they reopen the investigation to establish whether it was indeed officially gas canister or something else. And that is sort of the trial run for what unfolds in 1983, which is first the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut. 63 people. Same method. And every time people think, okay, it's just a one-off, you know, all the way back to the U.S. hostage crisis in Tehran, it's just a one-off. The kidnapping of the first American in 1982. Oh, interesting, just a one-off. Bombing of the Israeli headquarters in Tyre. Oh, well, that's strange. That's new. U.S. Embassy. People start slowly to realize that there's a whole new direction,

that this civil war in Lebanon is being taken into by new actors on the ground. And then you have the Marine bombing in October 1983. So Kim, at the same sort of time in the Iran-Iraq War, you're beginning to have those horrific reports of young men being given the keys of heaven. Not men, boys, boys, children. Boys, yeah, boys, holding little keys, walking through minefields to clear them for the Iranian tax. Now, does that precede the suicide bombings that you're getting in Lebanon, or is it part of the same thing at the same time? I wouldn't know chronologically whether it proceeds or whether it's parallel, but it's part of the same revolutionary fervor and desire for martyrdom.

Martyrdom? For a greater good and a different world vision, which may not make sense to you and me, but makes sense to them. I don't think we should dismiss this as totally irrational. It's just not what is familiar to me. but it is very effective for what Iran is trying to achieve, or the Islamic Republic of Iran. And in Lebanon, you also had a long history of car bombs before you had suicide bombers.

Which had been there right back into the 20s and 30s in Palestine, that the early resistance fighters there, the early Zionists were letting off car bombs in Jerusalem marketplaces. Absolutely, yeah, the Haganah and others, yeah. Haganah and Ergun. Yeah. And in Lebanon, the agenda of Syria, Syria, Iran, and the Soviet Union is to make America fail.

And that has been a constant for four decades as well. The Americans had sent Marines with a multinational force. They were trying to broker a type of a peace agreement between Lebanon and Israel. This did not suit the agenda of neither the Syrians nor the Iranians nor the Soviets who were being bludgeoned in Afghanistan, far away from Lebanon, by the American support for the Mujahideen. And so the Soviets wanted to make America pay in Lebanon. We only have a little while longer left, and I'd really love to know how this organization that trains and, you know, sort of winds up toy soldiers and sends them out becomes a political

force. What was the transformation that made Tesbola a political force? I think it's very important to understand, and I want to make clear that I'm explaining rather than justifying. Understood. They're not just sending boys to die. They have a cause, which is Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. And they have a lot of support. You know, Israel invades Lebanon in 1982, goes all the way up to Beirut.

And then withdraws slowly and then ends up keeping a 25-kilometer-wide buffer zone in southern Lebanon. And occupation is occupation. And so from 1982 until 2000, Hezbollah grows into a resistance movement against Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, where Shias are living under occupation, being taken to prison, tortured, rounded up, etc. And does actually have a fair amount of respect, Hezbollah, amongst other parts of Lebanese society. And they end up successful in a way because the Israelis, after this decades-long war of attrition, end up withdrawing in the year 2000 from South Lebanon. And it is the first time that armed struggle by Arab groups, army, etc., liberates Arab territory.

Everything else has been done by peace accords. So they set an example. The problem is, as you say, Anita, is that they've also become entrenched in Lebanese politics, they become corrupt and they further corrupt Lebanese politics and then they turn their guns against the Lebanese. Kim, just to clarify this, how soon does Hezbollah become a political party? When does it make that transformation into electoral politics from being just a militant group? In the 90s. I believe the first parliamentary election after the civil war. It's 1992, I think, isn't it, 92. And how solidly does Lebanon's Shias vote for this group? They are incredibly

capable of making sure that people vote for them. Right. Because there had been other Shia groups, hadn't they, playing around in Lebanon. Not anymore. Not by the stage. Not anymore. Not by this stage. Not anymore. And is it because has Boller is successful electorate or just because they're tougher? Both. You know, they have social services, hospitals, schools, it's a whole milieu, it's an environment that is very hard to leave. You're in the in-group.

And as a Shia, it's hard to leave that. But increasingly, you see the fissars also within the Shia community and also with the rest of Lebanon, where Hasbullah has turned from a resistance group that is helping to liberate Lebanese territory to

a regional, paramilitary legionary force for Iran that is busy in Yemen, in Iraq, in Syria, and in Lebanon. And these other movements such as Amal, which had once been quite a considerable force, are marginalized by Hezbollah, and the Shias begin to rally around Hezbollah, not any other. We call them the Shia duo. They distribute the roles according to the needs.

They need each other, and they find a way to have a modus Vivendi between them. But they fight a war as well in the 80s, which is a sort of war, by proxy between Iran and Syria, Amal and Hezbollah. And they have a monopoly over the Shia community. So the Assad's in Syria are al-a-white and therefore have a kind of sheer tinge to their identity. How enthusiastically do they adopt the Islamic Revolution? Very enthusiastically, because it's somebody else in their anti-imperial camp, anti-Western worldview. They are happy in a way the Shah's gone. They'd made overtures to Khomeini as well. but they want to own it.

So it's the competition as well for influence and for leadership of that camp, which Hafez al-Assad is a master at maintaining and which his son, Bashar al-Assad, has completely squandered. So whereas before Syria called the shots in Lebanon via Hezbollah, today Iran and Hezbollah call the shots in Syria.

And Syria is completely, Assad is completely frozen out of the picture. sideline, yeah. One of the people that we haven't talked about who comes to prominence after this parliamentary success in 1992, I think we're saying, is Hassan Nasrullah. Now, that's a name that comes up even today in your news bulletins. Can you give us a quick sort of pen portrait of Nasrallah? What is his story?

Where does he come from? And why is he as powerful as he is? Hassan Nasrallah first met Ayatollah Khomeini in Najaf, actually, when Khomeini was still in exile there, and he was greatly impressed by him. He comes from a Shia family. He grew up in the southern suburbs of Beirut. He started actually in the party of Amal, William, as you just mentioned. But a lot of young Shias who were either with the Palestinian groups like Fatah or in Amal

or in the Iraqi Shiaa group Dawa eventually join Hezbollah. And he becomes Secretary General of Hezbollah in 1992. and has remained Secretary General of Hasbullah since then, which goes against Hasbullah's alleged democratic approach to ruling because you should have regular elections for Secretary-General's. Kim, we're just coming to the end here, but over the last two episodes, you've taken us on this spectacular tour,

joining together, all sorts of things that I've never connected in my head. The sheer movements in Pakistan, you talked about last time, we've seen in this episode both the Iran-Iraq War and the beginning of Shia, backed by Iran in Lebanon. We're not going to talk about it at Leith, but just says that we establish this at this point at the end of this podcast. 1987 Hamas is founded. Is that also under Iranian influence or do the Iranians come into Hamas at a later stage? At a later stage, at a later stage. Hamas is born during the first intifada. It is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. and Sunni and it is very much encouraged by the Israelis actually who want to try to undermine the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Yasir-Arafat's leadership.

But over the course of time, the Iranians also become closer to Hamas and make overtures, start funding, arming, etc. But they have a schism. They have a break in their relationship because of the war in Syria, where Iran sides very clearly after 2000. 2011 with Bashar al-Assad as he slaughters his own people, Hamas decides it cannot abide by that and breaks away from Hezbollah and Iran. But eventually, they come back into the fold over the last two years or so. And that's why initially when October 7th happened, there was some questioning about whether Iran had been directly involved in the planning or not. And you, with your understanding of this movement, how far do you think Iran would have been involved? in the planning or not for October 7th? There's no evidence so far that they were involved in the planning.

I think they gave general approval for an operation against Israel as part of the continuing efforts to attack Israel, but I don't think they expected what unfolded on October 7th, and I don't think they expected that we would be here today where we are. And initially they were very worried about direct attack against Iran. But as I said in the previous episode, they're very good at turning moments of jeopardy into turning moments of opportunity. And today they are using their proxies across the region to negotiate their position in the region with America.

Kim, it's been absolutely utterly gripping and fascinating. Thank you so much. History sort of dovetailing into the world as we see it today. The roots of how we understand all these things that are happening. every day in our papers. Thank you so, so much. Thanks so much for having me. It's wonderful to be in this conversation with both of you. And a wonderful book that Kim has written and another new book, which is hopefully coming very soon, Kim. Thank you. That is it from Empire. Until the next time, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnind. Goodbye for me, William Duremple.