Throughline - A History of Hezbollah

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Hezbollah is a Lebanese paramilitary organization and political party that's directly supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the wake of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, and Israel's invasion of Gaza, Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging missile fire across the border they share, causing growing fears of a regional conflict with the U.S. and Israel on one side and Iran along with its allies in Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthi rebels of Yemen on the other.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. 0630 on a Sunday morning, Beirut, Lebanon, everybody was asleep. This is Sergeant Stephen Russell, a U.S. Marine who served in Lebanon in 1983. This is from an interview he gave to USA Today. I blame myself for what happened.

A truck containing explosives was driven into the Marine Headquarters building just before dawn, Beirut time, today. Then I heard the rev of an engine behind me. Truck filled with high explosives crashed through the southern gate. Drove into the lobby of what was formerly the Aviation Safety Building. I saw the truck come to a stop, dead center of that lobby. Dead silence in the lobby. You could hear a pin drop. And then the next thing I saw was a bright orange flash.

Pounds of explosives had been packed into the truck, which was driven through two barriers. The first thing I said was, son of a bitch, he did it. The explosion brought down the building. The Marines asleep inside had little chance. I remember looking over my shoulder. There was one Marine back here. Those who were able to free themselves limped through the smoke and dust to safety. Moaning.

Help me. Help me, God, help me. Somebody please help me. It was not long before administration officials started suggesting that Iran may have played a part in this morning's bombing. There are among Lebanon's many factions fundamentalist Muslim Shiites with strong allegiance to Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. There are no words to properly express our outrage and I think the outrage of all Americans. President Ronald Reagan pulled the American troops out of Lebanon in the months after the attack, which killed 241 Marines and left survivors like Sergeant Russell dealing with the trauma afterward. Initially, it wasn't clear who did it, but the blame fell on an organization called Hezbollah,

who deny responsibility. The group is a large paramilitary organization and political party that is directly supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The 1983 U.S. Marine barrack bombing was Hezbollah's introduction to the international community, especially the United States. In the last several months, in the wake of the Hamas-led October 7th attack and Israel's invasion of Gaza, tensions have risen in the entire Middle East. Hezbollah, the most powerful military and political force in Lebanon, has been exchanging missile fire with Israel across the

border they share. And this has caused growing fears of a regional conflict with the U.S. and Israel on one side, and Iran, along with its allies in Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthi rebels of Yemen on the other. But the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel is not new. They've been fighting on and off for just short of 40 years. Hezbollah's reputation has almost reached a mythical level. For some, they are a vicious terrorist group that has caused death and destruction. For others, they are one of the most resilient and steadfast forces of resistance against Western power in the Middle East. The seeds of Hezbollah were sown during Lebanon's civil war and bloomed during Israel's 1982 invasion of the country.

Their story is rooted in the ethnic and religious complexity of Lebanon, the complicated geopolitics of the Middle East, and the longstanding battle for self-determination in the post-colonial world. I'm Ramtin Arablui. And I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah. And on this episode of ThruLine from NPR, a history of Hezbollah. Hi, this is Brian from Jersey City, New Jersey, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming.

Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. Part 1. There are no sides. April 13th, 1975. Lebanon. On a warm spring day, a bus carrying Palestinians to a refugee camp drives through the streets of East Beirut. A Palestinian bus was passing through a Maronite territory. A Maronite territory. Maronites are Eastern Christians with a strong presence in Lebanon. There were rumors that some of the people on the bus were members of the PLO. PLO stands for Palestine Liberation

Organization, the militant group that represented the Palestinian cause. They were in Lebanon after being expelled from Jordan. Some in Lebanon, including a Maronite Christian political party, the Falangists, saw them as a foreign threat. The presence of these militants in Lebanon became increasingly a source of friction with the local population and namely the mostly Christian nationalist faction. There had been fighting back and forth between these groups for months. But on this day, everything escalated. Phalange's gunmen ambushed the bus, killing 27 people. Almost immediately after the attack...

Fighting broke out between Maronites and Palestinian groups. The Lebanese civil war was underway. Bloody civil strife has marred the capital of that small Arab nation for the past week. I think it's much more than just a local flakist between two extremist groups. In essence, that war, if we really want to simplify it, was

about a right-wing nationalism of Christian parties and pan-Arab support for the Palestinian cause. This is Kim Qatas. I'm a longtime journalist, now author of Black Wave,

a book about the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Kim is Lebanese and spoke to us from Beirut. She says the PLO and many other Palestinians arrived in Lebanon in 1970 after being expelled from Jordan. Many were refugees who'd originally been driven from their homes after the establishment of the State of Israel.

Which meant that Lebanon suddenly had a large population, an even larger population of Palestinian refugees, but also of armed militants who used southern Lebanon to launch attacks against northern Israel. Palestinians at that time had created a kind of a state within the state in the south of Lebanon.

This is Aurélie Dahir. She's an associate professor at Paris Dauphine University and lecturer at Sciences Po Paris. And she wrote a book called Hezbollah, Mobilization and Power. And they were using the soil, the territory of southern Lebanon as a military base to face up to the question of where Lebanon belongs in a much more dire way, in a much more direct way. That's Suna Hagbola. He's a professor of global Middle East studies at Roskilde University in Denmark. Now it became a question of to what extent Lebanon should give space for Palestinian militias to attack Israel directly. That question became not just strategic, but it became about identity. Basically, was

Lebanon going to identify more with the West or was it going to face East and support the PLO? And those who argued for that mainly belonged in a camp in the Lebanese political landscape, if you want, that viewed Lebanon's identity as more Arab than most Christian groups would. This identity crisis, being stuck between Western and Middle Eastern influence, has always been there for Lebanon. The country is on the Mediterranean Sea, with Syria to its north and east and Israel to its south. Even during the medieval period, it was located at both a strategically important point and a cultural crossroads. Over time, this made it an incredibly diverse country.

It has 18 officially recognized religious sects. The three most powerful groups are the Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shia Muslims. There had been friction between these groups even before Lebanon became an independent state free of French colonial rule in 1943. In order to try to strike a balance, the Lebanese set up a quota system to try and ensure equal representation. So, for example, the larger your religious group, the more seats you get in parliament. Lebanon always has a Christian president, a Sunni prime minister, and Shia speaker of the house.

The only problem with this is that these quotas are based on a census from 1932. So the numbers are not very reflective of the actual demographic reality. And the main outcome of that is that Christians have a larger share of representation than their numbers actually allow for. And increasingly, as particularly Shiite Muslims became a larger part of the population, they felt that they were not given a fair deal in the quota system. This discrepancy had a material effect on the social and political reality of Shias in Lebanon. Shias in Lebanon were traditionally the underclass, the dispossessed in a way who worked menial jobs

and never made it to the upper echelons of power in the country. And this was especially apparent in the late 1960s, when Lebanon was booming economically. The capital, Beirut, became an international destination for tourists and people who wanted to party. It had lavish nightclubs and a vibrant social scene. Some called it the Paris of the Middle East. That's quite a stark contrast to daily life in a Shiite village in the south.

If you go to the Bikar Valley or the south in the 1960s, you would find villages where people are illiterate. You would find villages where they live, youate, you would find villages where they live without electricity, in very basic conditions. So that sense of being deprived, that sense of being downtrodden, was shared amongst the Shiites. By the 1970s, an influx of Palestinian refugees and the PLO arrived, throwing whatever delicate balance that existed in Lebanon out of whack.

So when the Christian phalangist attacked that bus in 1975, it was like lighting a match and throwing it onto a powder keg of ethnic and religious tension. From that moment on the 13th of April, all the tensions that had been building just emerged into fighting. The Christian phalangists claim that the Muslim-backed Palestinians are threatening the stability of Lebanon. The Palestinians say they are being blocked in their attempts to wage a liberation war against Israel.

The streets are almost deserted. The schools, the shops, the banks, almost all are closed. On the sidewalks, piles of rotting garbage foul the air. The valuable tourist season is doomed and trade is non-existent. And it didn't take long for foreign governments with interests in the region to pick their own sides in the conflict. Lebanon is a small country and the fate of small countries is that they get used by regional and international powers.

Israel also armed and trained Christian groups like the Falangists to fight the PLO. And on the other hand, many Muslim countries supported both the Sunnis and Shias in Lebanon that were helping the PLO. And I think this is a very important point because the civil war becomes an arena with a multitude of different groups whose alliances change. And you continue to have this upsurge in also fighting over who's actually running the state. And in the middle of all this chaos, Israel decided that supporting Christian groups against the PLO wasn't enough.

And so they made a dramatic move. So in 78, Israel invaded Lebanon to push to the north the Palestinian armed groups and the Shia community, the major community of South Lebanon. So it was the most severely hit and it was the major victim of that first invasion. Collateral damage happened and the Shia became obviously quite angry, both with the Palestinians, who they considered to be responsible for the tragedy, but also with the Israelis. By the close of the 1970s, the end of the civil war was nowhere in sight. Anger among Shias had spread into Lebanese society as a whole, as people were fed up with the grinding, endless war and Israel's incursions. Soon, the Shia, a large, mostly disempowered group,

would rise up with the help of their own foreign backer, Iran. That, coming up on ThruLine from NPR. Hi, my name is Stephen Barrera, and I'm a graduate student at Indiana University here in Bloomington, Indiana. And you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. We just want to take a moment to shout out our ThruLine Plus subscribers. Thank you so much for your support. If you don't already know, subscribing to ThruLine Plus means you get to listen to our show without any sponsor breaks. And you also get access to special bonus episodes where we take you behind the scenes, introduce you to our amazing producers,

and tell you about how we make the show. To get these awesome benefits and support our work here at NPR, head over to plus.npr.org slash ThruLine. Part 2. Decade of Invasions 1978. Iran. By some estimates, as many as a million people participated in anti-government demonstrations in Iran's capital city yesterday, and even more were in the streets today. Unrest broke out all over the country. Iran's king, or Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a close ally of the United States, was on his back foot, unable to stop the protests.

Some two million in Tehran alone shouting slogans against the Shah and against American influence in the country. Hundreds of thousands of marchers carrying banners and chanting slogans in support of Ayatollah Khomeini, the country's religious leader who was living in exile in Paris. Protesters rallied against a lack of political freedom and economic inequality. It was a revolution, and it had a de facto leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, an Iranian Shia Muslim cleric. He appealed to the army to stop obeying the government and to join with the people. Come into our arms, he said, and we shall embrace you. More bloodshed today in Iran. Government troops reportedly opened fire on anti-Shah demonstrators in several Iranian cities.

Reports say 19 people died in the political violence. The government's response got more and more violent. But the crowds of protesters just got bigger and bigger. Until one day. In Iran today, this announcement was heard over the radio. It was over. This is the voice of the revolution. The dictatorship has come to an end. The Shah left Iran, and Ayatollah Khomeini returned. He almost immediately started trying to consolidate power. Opposition forces of the religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini

appear to have effectively taken over the capital of Tehran, and with it the running of the entire country. The Iranian revolution didn't start out as an Islamic one. There were secular actors and leftists also involved. But by the end of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters had forcefully taken over the revolution in the end of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters had forcefully taken over the revolution in the name of Islam, Shia Islam. We cannot overemphasize the importance of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979. This is Matthew Levitt. I teach at

Georgetown University, and I'm the author of the book Hezbollah, the Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God. Matthew says that Khomeini immediately had a goal of projecting power throughout the Middle East. The Shia Islamic revolution in Iran was never intended to end at the borders of Iran. And so they immediately created departments and agencies whose sole purpose was to export that revolution. And their first targets were those countries in the region that had large Shia populations. And first among equals was Lebanon. The ties between Iran and Lebanon's Shia communities date back to the 1500s, when the Safavid Empire forcefully converted Iran from Sunni to Shia Islam. Currently, about 85 to 90% of the world's Muslims are Sunni, and about 10 to 15% are Shia.

The Iranian Safavid Empire wanted Iran to become Shia in order to differentiate itself from neighboring rival empires that were Sunni. They brought Shia clerics from Lebanon to help convert the Iranian population. And in the following centuries, Iran became the power center of Shiism. There was such strong historical connections between the clerical elite in Lebanon and in Iraq and Iran because the elite Shia clerics had studied in the holy cities in Iran or in Iraq. And because Lebanon's Shia community had long been oppressed, the prospect of having a state like Iran as an ally changed the balance of power in Lebanon. And they were waiting for that empowerment.

And they were resentful of the fact that the Paris of the Middle East was their backyard, but denied to them, as anybody would be. But Iran's plan to export the revolution… Went on pause in a big way because of the Iran-Iraq war. In 1980, seeing Iran weakened by the revolution, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's dictator, unleashed an all-out invasion of Iran's oil-rich southern county of Khorramshahr. This was an existential fight for Iran, and the effort to export the revolution was secondary. But that would all change in 1982. Israeli military forces entered southern Lebanon again to push back the PLO.

Unlike their push into the south in 1978, this invasion was larger and went farther. Israel hoped to push Palestinian militants 25 miles away from the border. That was the initial stated goal. This is Kim Ghatas again. But Israel's then-defense minister, Ariel Sharon, had grander vision. He wanted to do more than just push back Palestinian militants from the border. He decided to push all the way to Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. So the goal became not just to push the PLO away from the border with Israel, but to push them out of Lebanon completely.

The PLO and associated militias tried to fight back, but were overwhelmed by Israel's advanced weapons and tactics. Eventually, the Israeli military laid siege to Beirut. The siege of Beirut was painful and devastating. No water, no fuel, no food. And it came also at, you know, great civilian cost, and the toll was high in Lebanon. Israel laid siege to Beirut in order to push out PLO fighters hunkered down there and to install a new government. Israel was hoping that it could have a friendly, pro-Israel Christian president because it already had deep ties with Christian militias in Lebanon

and provided arms for them. Meanwhile, as Israel is invading Lebanon... Several Lebanese Shia clerics are actually on their way to Iran by pure coincidence to meet with Iran's newly established Office of Liberation movements to ask for help. The Iranians actually are not enthusiastic at all with their project. This is Orly Dahid again. She says a spokesman for the Iranian parliament, along with Ayatollah Khomeini's son, said, Look, the Israeli army is way too powerful.

And Iran had its hands full with the Iraqi invasion, which it was starting to turn back. But the Lebanese clerics had connections within Iran's leadership, one of whom was interested. It is the Iranian ambassador in Damascus who will really lobby in favor of the creation of Hezbollah. And Iran sends a plane load of Iranian Revolutionary Guards to come and assist Lebanon in its fight against Israel. Iran's Revolutionary Guards have a unit that functions kind of like the U.S. Green Berets. They're sent as military advisors,

but they come with weapons and special knowledge on how to conduct guerrilla warfare. They take over an old military barracks and they start training Shia militants. And the idea was to create some superstructure and to provide some training, including, by the way, ideological training. With this support from Iran, the Shia clerics were able to start an organization called The Resistance, the Muqawwama. The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon. The IRL, or in Arabic, Al Muqawwama al-Islamiyya fi Lubnan,

which soon realized it needed more than just military power. The IRL will feel the need to add to that military structure a whole network of civilian institutions. That network of civilian institutions was called Hezbollah, which translates to party of God. The group was tasked by its leaders to do three things. First, communication, basically, explaining to the Lebanese society who they are, what they're doing, the point of their fight. Second, recruiting. Basically, raising an army.

To promote that resistance discourse. And Hezbollah's third objective. To help the Lebanese cope with collateral damage, the IRL fighting the Israelis will have a cost. And will have a cost on civilians. If you're wounded in an Israeli attack, then basically they will take care of you for free. They had Iranian funds to be able to pay salaries and to empower people to be able to build grassroots institutions, not just political, but much more importantly, social, welfare, religious, educational, medical.

With this three-pronged approach, Hezbollah served to be seen by some people in Lebanon as a force for good. Hezbollah's position as a resistance force definitely bought it standing and respect. And in the Shia community, Hezbollah increasingly became its defender. Finally, someone was standing up for them, someone from within the Shia community. So there was an element here of going from zero to hero, of empowerment, of being part of something bigger than themselves. It helped drive recruitment. People wanted, people within the Shia community wanted,

aspired to be able to join Hezbollah. But the other major recruitment tool for Hezbollah was something that was out of their hands. It was the brutal nature of Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. Those who were suspected of working with the resistance to the Israeli occupation were sent to a huge prison called the Chiyam Prison that actually worked more like a concentration camp.

The prison was run by the South Lebanon Army, a Christian-dominated militia that receives support and training from Israel. Amnesty International called Chiem... The prison of shame. The Lebanese talked about it as the center of hell. There were accusations of torture at the prison. Former inmates claimed, Prisoners were beaten, interrogated naked, bit by dogs, tied for hours to pillars. They were deprived from food, from sleep, waterboarding drowned. And those prisoners, well, they were detained with no trial, no attorney to defend them.

Amnesty International reported 11 detainees died there in the 15 years the prison operated. A lot of Shia eventually found themselves in a situation where it's either I fight myself against that occupation or I'm going to die there anonymous. Israel's siege of Beirut and occupation of southern Lebanon mostly worked. The majority of PLO fighters were pushed out of the country. But they now face a new challenge from Hezbollah. So the first big suicide operation against Israel is in November, I believe, 1982 against Israeli headquarters set up in the southern city of Tyre. The following year, 1983, is when the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut were attacked, which the U.S. government linked to Hezbollah,

who deny involvement. Even though the Marines were there officially as part of a peacekeeping effort in the ongoing Lebanese civil war, Hezbollah viewed the U.S. as a supporter of Israel's invasion. It's clear then that the war in Lebanon, which could have ended with the departure of the PLO from Lebanon, is going into a new cycle that is going to be propelled forward by the actions of groups that are anti-American and anti-Israel. And some of those groups are very much aligned and funded and helped by Iran. For the sake of the truth, we declare that the sons of Hezbollah's nation have come to know well their basic enemies in the area, Israel, America, France, and the Falange. A few years later, in 1985, Hezbollah released an open letter laying out its purpose and goals.

You're hearing excerpts from it, read by ThruLine producer Peter Ballin and Rosen. Our sons are now in an ever-escalating confrontation against these enemies until the following objectives are achieved. Israel's final departure from Lebanon as a prelude to its final obliteration from existence, and the liberation of venerable Jerusalem from the talons of occupation. Their goal is also, very, very bluntly, to take orders from the Supreme Leader of Iran. So are you Lebanese or are you something foreign?

Imam Khomeini, the leader, has repeatedly stressed that America is the reason for all of our catastrophes and the source of all malice. By fighting it, we are only exercising our legitimate right to defend Islam and the dignity of our nation. And they really presented themselves as the vanguard of furthering the Islamic revolution against the West. This dual identity, one as a Lebanese resistance force very much concerned with domestic affairs, and the other as a transnational group allied with Iran, has continued to haunt Hezbollah to this day. Who are they? What are they? Are you really Lebanese? Are you really more interested in a foreign power?

And they've never been able to fully answer that because, of course, they're both. In 1990, after 15 years, the Lebanese Civil War came to an official end. The Taif Agreement, like a national reconciliation accord that formally ended the civil war came to an official end. The Taif agreement, like a national reconciliation accord that formally ended the civil war, required that all sectarian communities and groups disarm. Hezbollah asserts that it should be the one that doesn't because it is the resistance organization and it has to deal with Israel. And frankly, it at this point is so powerful that no one can say no. The civil war was over, but Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon continued. Hezbollah emerged as the single greatest power to fight it.

In 1992, when suspected supporters of Hamas were deported from Palestinian territories to southern Lebanon, Hezbollah welcomed them and gave them tactical training. That same year, when Hezbollah's leader died, a new leader emerged to take over the group and further change tactical training. That same year, when Hezbollah's leader died, a new leader emerged to take over the group and further change its direction. His name was Hassan Nasrallah. Hassan Nasrallah decided to really focus all the effort and all the money and all the time and all the energy of the IRL

on fighting the Israelis. Hassan Nasrallah is a Shia cleric. He was born in a poor suburb of Beirut and completed his religious studies in Iraq and Iran. He joined Hezbollah in the 1980s as a young man. He had very close ties with Iranian leaders, and his ascension to power would be a turning point for Hezbollah. So one year after Hassan Nasrallah was appointed secretary general, I remember everybody really was surprised when that summer the Israelis carried out a massive offensive for more than a week. They hit Hezbollah very hard. This is the first time where

the Israelis didn't manage to achieve their goals. This is the first time where Hezbollah managed to inflict serious damages on the north of Israel. And eventually, this is where we started to hear the first discourses within the Lebanese society saying, you know what, these guys actually, they're sincere about their fights. And if they continue this way, they might go somewhere. Coming up, Hezbollah wins the first major battle against Israel by an Arab military in a generation and changes the balance of power in the region. Hi, this is Hiba from Dallas, Texas, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Part 3. These are not our heroes. The end of Israel's 22-year occupation of South Lebanon last week erased a line that divided not just Lebanon's land, but its people.

The Israelis had been an occupying force there since 1978, on the grounds that they could better defend their northern border from positions in Lebanon. In 2000, the Israeli military withdrew its forces from Lebanon. Roads were not only jammed, they were chaotic. Hezbollah claimed it as a victory for Lebanon. Triumphant Hezbollah guerrilla fighters found themselves directing traffic. That was really the moment that created the core of the whole Hezbollah legend, the whole Hezbollah myth.

And for Israel, it appeared to be a loss. They had to withdraw defeated and unconditionally. This is Aurelie Dahir, author of the book Hezbollah, Mobilization and Power. That was the first. Nobody ever saw that in the history of the Middle East. For the Lebanese, it was like the Lebanese David defeating the big Israeli Goliath. For years, Hezbollah had portrayed itself as Lebanon's protector. A protector that was fighting for both self-determination and for God. And Israel's withdrawal only supported that narrative. Hezbollah has gone to great lengths over the years to build,

it's term, not mine, to build a culture of resistance. This is Matthew Levitt. He wrote a book called Hezbollah, the global footprint of Lebanon's party of God. It wants to inculcate the idea that it is serving lofty goals that are in God's interests and in the interests of all Lebanese, whether you are Shia or not, that they are the protectors of Lebanon, not people who are doing things that bring war to Lebanon. And they use this narrative to propel themselves deeper into Lebanese politics. And that means they begin to speak in a different way,

they begin to legitimize themselves in a different way, and sort of focus more on making sure that Lebanese Shias are represented in the political system. That's Suna Haqbala, professor of global Middle East studies at Roskilde University in Denmark. In the 2000s, Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, grew closer to Iran's leadership. Eventually, the son of his second-in-command would marry the daughter of Iran's most famous military leader, Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the U.S. in 2020. This is how intertwined Hezbollah became with Iran. Iran continued funding Hezbollah, and Nasrallah expanded social infrastructure nationwide, primarily in Shia areas. They run their own equivalent of the Boy Scouts, the Mahdi Scouts. There's television, radio, print media. They got the whole thing going

to be able to promote that narrative. And all of this didn't just have a material impact on Lebanon, it had a cultural impact as well. According to Lebanese journalist Kim Ghatas, it pushed the country's Shia Muslims into a more conservative direction. It starts with women being told to put on the veil, not just in the Bekaa Valley, but also in the southern suburbs, but also in very cosmopolitan West Beirut. Hezbollah has always been a religiously conservative organization, and over the years, it has been increasingly influenced by its ally, Iran, an Islamic state. Hezbollah members allegedly went through villages and some neighborhoods in Beirut

enforcing Islamic laws. They take over violently sometimes, you know, cafes and bars in Beirut and break all the bottles of alcohol. And it's so foreign to most Lebanese that they think it's a passing fad, that it will go away. But it doesn't go away. Hezbollah's influence only expands. In time, Hezbollah decided to leverage its position of influence because of its social welfare activities and power because of its weapons, into politics and decided to contest elections. When Hezbollah decided to enter the political game, it wasn't to run the country. It was to basically use state institutions as a scene, as a stage, to promote the interest of the IRL.

The Islamic resistance in Lebanon. And it ended up doing very well. And you've had several Hezbollah-led governments, not always because Hezbollah itself got so many seats, but because its coalition did. And Hezbollah for many years had what we describe as a blocking third. It had enough seats in the parliament to be able to block any law from passing. In this way, Hezbollah functions kind of like a state within a state. It has some seats in the Lebanese parliament and participates in national politics,

but it kind of doesn't need to because it has its own military and civilian infrastructure. This allows them to call the shots from the shadows. It is both a part of and a part from the Lebanese government. It's able to benefit from the legitimacy that being in government gives it, but it's not responsible for anything. The deal between Hezbollah and the other political forces is very easy to understand. Basically, Hezbollah says, you guys do whatever you want running this country, as long as you don't go near the interests of the Arab. But what if someone does mess with the interests

of Hezbollah's military or civilian arm? According to Matthew Levitt, they are not shy about doling out consequences. When Hezbollah is called to task for carrying out illicit financial schemes through the Lebanese banking system that undermines the Lebanese financial system, when politicians don't get on board

with what Hezbollah and its allies want, there are consequences. Hezbollah has attacked its opponents and rivals throughout its history. Hezbollah actually eliminates, literally, I mean, they kill them. They hunt them down to take over completely that cause of the quote-unquote

resistance against Israel. This would continue into the early 2000s as Hezbollah emerged as the most powerful military and social force in the country. It was an assassination that would shape Lebanese politics for years to come. On February 14, 2005, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, who was at odds with Hezbollah and its allies in Syria, was assassinated when a massive bomb went off as his motorcade drove through Beirut. It sent shockwaves through the region. It was a horrendous crime that looked like it belonged to another era. A United Nations investigation followed that implicated Hezbollah members

in plotting and carrying out the assassination. They carried out intimidation operations for investigators who came. Some of the key Lebanese investigators who were working with this international investigation, Lebanese officials were themselves assassinated. So they will not accept a situation where they are made out to be something bad for Lebanon or the bad guys. In 2012, Hezbollah would do something else in support of its allies

that would poke major holes in the myth that they were the Arab world's ultimate freedom fighters. Today in Egypt, battles raged. That's Khaled Hamila, who waved his fist at an army helicopter overhead. No fear. No more fear. It's the country of freedom. There's uprisings throughout the Arab world. It's a mixture between watching people get killed and tweeting.

Tweeting now seems insignificant when people are dying in front of you. The Arab Spring began in Tunisia in 2011, when protesters took to the streets to demand government reform and economic opportunity. Soon, pro-democracy protests spread across the Middle East. In Syria, which borders Lebanon to the north and east, the rebellion started with teenagers who were accused of scrawling anti-government graffiti against President Bashar al-Assad's regime. The Assad regime cracks down by beating a bunch of youth in the south in Daraa. And this leads to first protests, and the protests are crushed, and then full-scale rebellion.

The rebellion soon threatened the Assad regime. And Syria needed help. So Iran steps in. The Assad regime in Syria is close allies with Iran. So Iran sent thousands of Revolutionary Guard soldiers to Syria to help put the rebellion down. And Iran asks Hezbollah to step in. Hezbollah agreed. Analysts say this is deeply embarrassing for Hezbollah, which always portrays itself as on the people's side.

But Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah remains loyal to Syria. I personally believe that President Bashar al-Assad is a believer in reform and is serious, but with patience. This is a responsible regime. Hezbollah sent massive troops to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad and fight. And they go all in, despite the fact that they understand that now they're no longer fighting Israel. They're no longer resisting against Israeli occupation. They are going into Syria to kill fellow Muslims.

And the regime in Syria is primarily killing Sunnis, women and children, using gas, using barrel bombs, using starvation as a tactic of war, the nastiest of stuff. And Hezbollah is on that side. People being unable to get food, medication, babies not having, you know, milk or diapers, etc. And then Hezbollah, you know, preventing anybody from getting any help. And that cost Hezbollah significantly in the Muslim and Arab worlds, the overwhelming majority of which are Sunni. And it put them in the position of siding with the bully. Even among devoted Hezbollah supporters, this caused a major rift.

A lot of people who were unconditionally pro-Hezbollahs were like, you know, this is not our heroes. This is not the Hezbollah we know. The Hezbollah we know would never, you know, go after civilians. And I remember I talked about that with some Hezbollah members when I was, you know, go after civilians. And I remember I talked about that with some Hezbollah members when I was, you know, doing my research

in Beirut a few years ago. And they said it, that created a kind of a moral crisis or a kind of a conscious crisis for some of them within the organization. Even within the organizations, some people were really wondering, like, is it still us? Because that's not our purpose.

That's not our identity. That's not our vision. Today, Lebanon is in a state of economic and social freefall. The country's banking system is almost in collapse. Unemployment is rampant and corruption is everywhere. The country is barely being held together. And it's in this context that Hezbollah must navigate new tensions with Israel since the October 7th Hamas-led attack. Hezbollah was not ready to jump into the war on the 7th of October, but have managed it in their own way,

in a way that also has one eye on the very delicate and difficult situation domestically in Lebanon, with a broken economy where the Lebanese population does not need another big war. Hassan Nasrallah definitely does not want to be blamed for another major military tragedy with the Israeli neighbor. Since October 7th, Hezbollah has exchanged rocket fire with Israel, but has refrained from escalating things further. Hezbollah doesn't want full-scale war with Israel because of the political and economic situation in Lebanon, but only Hezbollah makes the decision.

Hezbollah is not accountable, but they are making decisions of life and death, war and peace for all Lebanese. Hezbollah is also concerned with the position of its main benefactor and ally, Iran. It's a relationship that is often understood as Iran controlling Hezbollah. But Suna Haqbala says that's not quite accurate. This is not a question of who's taking dictates from the other. It's more a question of understanding how much they're on the same page. Iran and Hezbollah work as partners.

It's not only transactional. They have the same strategic view. They want to destroy the state of Israel. And they want justice for Palestinians. And they want to deter American influence in the region. And all of also grew out of a strong sense of grievance, of social grievance, of grievance against colonialism and the long effects of colonialism in the region. And those are the core ideological elements still of Hezbollah that drive them today. That's it for this week's show. I'm Ronda Abdel-Fattah.

I'm Ramteen Arablui. And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR. This episode was produced by me. And me and... Lawrence Wu. Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Casey Miner. Christina Kim.

Devin Katayama. Peter Balanon Rosen. Irene Noguchi. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. The episode was mixed by Josh Newell. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes... Navid Marvi. Sho Fujiwara. Anya Mizani. Thanks to... And as always, if you have ideas or suggestions,

you can reach us at throughline at npr.org. Thanks for listening. This message comes from Grammarly. Back and forth communication at work is costly. That's why over 70,000 teams and 30 million people use Grammarly's AI to make their points clear the first time. Better writing, better results. Learn more at Grammarly.com slash enterprise.