Speakers: Thomas Small & Aimen Dean
Thomas: Hello Dear Listeners, Thomas Small here with another quick note before we get into this second episode on Hezbollah. Again, this was recorded before the events of October 7th and the ongoing conflict now taking place between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
However, this episode is more topical than at first glance. It narrates the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 — and as you’ll see, that war contains eerie echoes of Israel’s current war with Hamas, and therefore may offer illuminating insights into how the current conflict may evolve over the next few weeks – a conflict which, as of this recording, Hezbollah threatens to join, to some degree at least, from the North.
Oh and Aimen invokes his now famous image of the Mexican standoff within a Mexican standoff — a rather comical image where a four-armed Iran is pointing two guns each at Israel and Saudi Arabia, each of whom in turn are pointing two guns back. One of the guns Iran is pointing at Israel is Hezbollah — and as Israel struggles against Iran’s other gun, Hamas, we hope that our exploration of Hezbollah from the 90s until today will give you vital context to understanding the current conflict as it evolves.
Now, on with the show.
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Thomas: Welcome back to Conflicted with me, Thomas Small.
Aimen: And me, Aimen Dean.
Thomas: Aimen, we're starting the second episode here on Hezbollah, the Lebanese political movement and militia, who many believe to be a cancer inside the Lebanese body politic, but which no one can deny, holds most of the cards in Lebanon's, endless game of political poker.
Aimen: More like a Russian roulette. They hold not just only the cards, but they hold the bullets.
Thomas: In the second part of our exploration of Hezbollah. We want to understand how this Shia terror group … I think we're calling it a Shia terror group. Are we Aimen?
Aimen: Yeah, of course, because it's been prescribed now by the majority of the international community.
Thomas: How this Shia terror group has come to dominate Lebanon and infect the surrounding region with instability. We'll be looking at their fights with Israel throughout the 90s and noughties.
We'll see yet more assassinations at home and abroad, and we’ll discover just how malign their influence has become under the continued leadership of Hassan Nasrallah. Let's jump right back in.
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Aimen, when we left off in our previous episode, the Lebanese Civil War had just ended. The Taif Agreement was signed in Saudi Arabia which had controversially allowed Hezbollah to keep its weapons.
But the Israeli occupation of the South in Lebanon continued. And crucially, Hassan Nasrallah had just been elected leader of Hezbollah.
Now, Nasrallah, we discussed last time, but at the outset here, let's restate how important he is. And Aimen, remind the listener, especially what Hassan Nasrallah's personality is like.
I mean, you're an Arab, you've spent now your whole life, basically on and off being subjected to Hassan Nasrallah as a media figure, at the very least. Because he's been in Lebanese politics for so long. What is his personality like?
Aimen: Well, despite his lisp, I could tell you basically that-
Thomas: We love all of our listeners. If you have a lisp, the dear listener, we love you. We love you. But Hassan Nasrallah does have a lisp. It must be admitted, and it does sometimes undercut his performance as a great and evil and malign terrorist.
Aimen: Indeed. But nonetheless, his lisp does not take away from his charisma, from his magnetic personality, the fact that he is a great speaker, orator, and someone who can grab the attention of the audience. He is charismatic.
Thomas: I mean, basically to make his speech impediment understood. In a way, Hassan Nasrallah speaks like Elmer Fudd from Looney Tunes, a wascally wabbit. I'm going to find a wascally wabbit. It's a little bit as if a huge terrorist organisation was being run by Elmer Fudd.
Aimen: Except there is a problem here. You see, if it wasn't for the lisp, he would've been considered one of the greatest orators and public speakers in the 21st century Arab world.
It's just that lisp that basically that takes away a little bit of that charm. But he is charming. There is no questioning this. He has a charming personality. When he speaks sometimes, he does throw in some jokes.
In fact, one of his most famous jokes is when he compared John Bolton, the famous American politician-
Thomas: Yeah. American Ambassador to the UN, yeah.
Aimen: And the National Security advisor of-
Thomas: Donald Trump.
Aimen: President Trump for a while, exactly. He compared him to Angry Sam in the Looney Tunes, also if you remember.
Thomas: That's amazing. Oh, what's his name? Yosemite Sam.
Aimen: Yosemite Sam, yes.
Thomas: Yosemite Sam.
Aimen: Yosemite Sam.
Thomas: Well, who would've thought that the Looney Tunes would come up twice in the space of one minute on Conflicted?
Aimen: Exactly. So, as you can see, he is someone who would crack a joke or two, make everyone laughs. But also at the same time, when he threatened, when he wag his finger, it is unlike when al-Zawahiri wag his finger. Al-Zawahiri wag his finger, no one cares. But when Hassan Nasrallah wags his finger around, Israel listens.
Thomas: We'll see why in this episode, because Hassan Nasrallah, he certainly barks, but he also certainly bites. But let's go back to the year 1992, the year that Hassan Nasrallah became leader of Hezbollah.
Almost straight away, he made his mark felt in Israel, especially, or on Israelis, because on 17 March of that year, Hezbollah launched a terrorist attack, not in Lebanon, but in Buenos Aires targeting the Israeli Embassy there.
Aimen: Yeah. The attack against the Israeli Embassy in Argentina. And this is exactly how Hassan Nasrallah decided that he would avenge the Israeli assassination of his mentor, of his teacher, and the former leader, now the late leader of Hezbollah, Abbas al-Musawi, or as they call him there, Sayed Abbas al-Musawi.
Now, it is a daring attack because this demonstrated two key points between Israel and Hezbollah, and this set in motion, something that is still to this day, being practised, even though 31 years later, it’s called The New Rules of Engagement.
You kill one of our leaders, we are going to target you not in Israel and not Israeli soldiers. We are going to target Israeli and Jewish civilians all over the world. That was the message of Buenos Aires.
Thomas: Well, that tit for tat Rules of Engagement, sort of dynamic with Israel also pertained on the ground in Southern Lebanon. Now, remember, dear listener, Israel remained an occupying power in Southern Lebanon after the end of the Civil War.
And it was their presence there that gave Hezbollah the justification, it felt it needed to maintain its stance as a resistance movement, an armed resistance movement defending Lebanon against an outside invader.
There was constant back and forth military engagement, quite low level, most of the time between both sides. During the 90s, about every three days, one Israeli soldier would be killed. Now, that's actually quite a lot.
And Hezbollah was very adept at provoking them. So much so that in 1996 launching an operation which it called Grapes of Wrath, Israel retaliates quite sort of severely after Hezbollah rockets are fired into Israel itself.
This was considered a violation of the Rules of Engagement. Hezbollah pushed Israel a bit far, and so Israel in 1996 launched Operation Grapes of Wrath leading to the notorious Qana Village Slaughter.
Aimen: That was one of the darkest episodes of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, until that point. I mean, goodness, more than a hundred women and children and civilians were killed in that attack. It was an air bombardment, with F-16 and missiles, and it was awful.
Thomas: What made it even worse and most shocking, Aimen, is that these civilians had fled to a UN base for refuge and Israeli planes targeted the UN base killing 106 civilians.
Aimen: Exactly. I mean, this is what made it so shocking. And it drew a lot of international condemnations, even from many states that are friendly to Israel, including the French and other Europeans.
I mean, basically they condemned it utterly. And the irony is that it was happening during the premiership of Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who ironically just three years earlier won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Oslo Accord.
Thomas: Yeah. Israel's occupation of Southern Lebanon was not really working out in Israel's favour. It was causing a lot of blowback, reputational, and also security blowback.
For example, the following year in 1997, Hassan Nasrallah's son, Hadi is killed in a firefight with Israeli forces. And though you might think, oh, that's an Israeli win. They've killed the son of their great enemy, Hasan Nasrallah. But Nasrallah's reaction to the murder of his son, or the death of his son by Israeli forces, his reaction was very stoic.
It was very honourable, if you like, earning him kudos amongst Lebanese and amongst Middle Easterners more generally, increasing his political stature. So again, Israel is realising this constant fighting with Hezbollah because of our occupation of Southern Lebanon, is not working out for us.
Aimen: Exactly. They created the martyr. I mean, of course, they gave Hassan Nasrallah not only a martyr in his family, and they have given him the ultimate credibility. They killed his son.
He was stoic about it. And that showed the level of connection in that relationship between the leader and those who are led. Therefore, the level, the aura of this image being created, the narrative of this selfless, great, brave leader has been born. The legend.
Thomas: Well, public opinion in Israel was turning against the occupation of Southern Lebanon, leading in 1999 to a change of Prime Minister, Ehud Barak comes to power in Israel, actually on a promise to withdraw Israeli forces from Lebanon.
And from the point that he became prime minister, discussions began to be held between Israel and Syria because as we'll see later on in this episode, Syria remained a key player in Lebanon.
But discussions between Israel and Syria brokered by President Clinton resulted in Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Southern Lebanon on the 24th of May 2000.
Aimen: I remember that date, Thomas, so clearly, when I saw in late May the tanks, the Merkavas of the Israeli IDF withdrawing over the Southern Lebanese mountains and valleys into Israel proper, that filled my heart with joy.
I remember I was calling my brother; I was in the UK at the moment. I was of course still working undercover for the UK Intelligence Services. Of course, my brother didn't know, my family didn't know, no one knew except my handlers.
But nonetheless, I gave him a call and I said, “Hey, did you see what happened?” And why I was so full of joy and hope? And I was so happy about the Israeli withdrawal. It's not because I was siding with one side against another or anything. No, it's just because it so happened that my mom comes from a village called Shebaa. It's a very large village, about 13,000 inhabitants. So, can call it a town, actually.
So, I said to my brother, “Can you arrange a visit? Shall we go and visit our uncles there?” Because some of them, actually, all of them never saw me because the village was occupied in March of 1978. I was born September 1978.
And so, my brother immediately arranged things. And it so happened that the MP who represented that area, even though it was occupied, but he represented that area, was a cousin of my mom.
So, we contacted him, he said, “Yes, I will arrange a car to pick you up guys, and it'll bring you there.” Because at the time, even then, the Lebanese army won't let any foreigner to go south of an area called Nahr al-Awalī or the al-Awali River. And the car that came to pick us up from the hotel had Hezbollah flag on it. So, this is the first-
Thomas: Hezbollah were your hosts in your first ever visit to your ancestral village.
Aimen: Exactly. We spent two glorious days there. Goodness, it was an emotional scene for me, because we were there in July, and that was July 2000. Yet in July 1957, my mom and dad had their wedding there in a very beautiful place, right on the Israeli Lebanese border.
And there, there is a waterfall coming from a spring and beautiful area that is so green and full of trees. That's where the wedding was held. It was a romantic place.
Thomas: So, Aimen, while you're in Shebaa enjoying visiting your mother's family for the first time, Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah more generally are asking themselves a key question.
Now that Hezbollah's prime reason for being is gone. I mean, the Israelis are gone from Southern Lebanon, and they had always said, “We are here to defend Southern Lebanon from an occupying power.”
So, now that their reason for being is gone, do they disarm and become a normal political party, which represents Shia interests in the Lebanese political system or not?
I mean, basically they have a choice, become a normal political party, or remain an armed militia, an Iranian proxy pursuing the aims of the Islamic Revolution.
They had already faced this question to some extent in 1992, during the first elections in Lebanon following the Civil War. Hezbollah had fielded candidates in those elections, which had followed an intense debate within the ranks of Hezbollah about whether to participate in democracy or not.
Some Hezbollah members were afraid that participating in democracy would undermine Hezbollah's revolutionary credentials. This has echoes dear listener, if you've been paying attention with the Muslim Brotherhood, because in the 90s Muslim Brotherhood parties around the Islamic world had faced the same quandary. Do they participate in elections or not?
And in Hezbollah's case, because they are an Iranian proxy, they took the question to the Ayatollah in Tehran, Khamenei, they asked the supreme leader there what they should do.
Now, Aimen explain why this is the case, because the Ayatollah Khamenei is Hezbollah's official marja, what does that mean?
Aimen: The word marja means authority, I mean, really literally means the religious authority that you follow in Shia Islam.
Thomas: I mean, literally it means reference.
Aimen: Reference, yeah.
Thomas: The person to whom you refer.
Aimen: Yes. So, since the Ayatollah Khamenei is the ultimate religious and political reference point, or reference authority, I would say, before Hezbollah, they went to him and they said, “Look, can we participate in the elections in Lebanon and field political candidates to take up seats in the Lebanese parliament? Because we need people to act as cover and give us political cover for what we do in Lebanon.”
So, Ayatollah Khamenei, of course, the master of political expediency, told them yes, and you should.
Thomas: Yes. And so, Hezbollah did then from ‘92 onwards become a political party as well as a militia movement, a resistance movement in its own self-understanding.
And then in the summer of 2000 following the Israeli withdrawal, they again faced a big question, do we now become just a political party or not? And again, to answer the question, they turned to the Ayatollah Khamenei.
Aimen: Exactly. And this time he told them one answer and one answer only, “Never disarm, find a pretext to remain unarmed group in Lebanon.”
Thomas: Yes. Khamenei gave his blessing if you like, to Nasrallah, to continue being a resistance movement. And the pretext was easily found because Israel, though it had withdrawn from Southern Lebanon, did continue to still patrol where?
Aimen: My mother’s-
Thomas: The village of Shebaa.
Aimen: Exactly.
Thomas: Your mother's village. Aimen, honestly, wherever you walk, world shattering conflict is bound to follow.
Now the reason for this dear listener, is because Shebaa or an adjoining part of Shebaa known as the Shebaa Farms, a farming area, an agricultural area where the villagers of Shebaa would farm, actually technically was part of the Golan Heights, which technically was part of Syria. That technically Israel was occupying based on a UN mandate.
So, the village of Shebaa in Southern Lebanon continued to be patrolled by Israeli forces giving Hezbollah a pretext for maintaining the resistance against an occupying force.
Aimen: Indeed, I mean, I remember when I was there in the year 2000, and then in subsequent years, do you remember that spring I told you where there is a waterfall and the place where my mom and dad got married in 1957?
If I look up, just, I look up almost at 80 degrees up above me, I can see Israeli soldiers just like looking at us with binoculars, because that is the top of the mountain is basically the border. And they placed huge observation points there. Every 500 metres, there is an observation point.
Thomas: Well, between 2000 and 2006, as a result of these Israeli patrols of the village of Shebaa. There was regular continued tit for tat fighting between Hezbollah and Israel in that vicinity.
And it meant that though the Israelis had hoped that their withdrawal would result in some kind of norm normality resuming in the area, that didn't happen. And they were forced to maintain regular air patrols over Lebanese airspace.
And sometimes Hezbollah would take hostages, which they would have to bargain over. And so, to some extent, the dynamics of the 90s continued. Now this would eventually result in a big bust up, down the line.
But before we get there, I want to talk about Hezbollah's political activities. As we said, they faced the question, do we become a normal political party or remain a militia?
The Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran told them remain a militia, a resistance movement. But nonetheless, Hezbollah was a political party as well, and as a political party, they were governing areas that elected its candidates. And Aimen, it must be admitted they were doing so quite well.
Aimen: Oh, yes. I mean, the social services, the roads, the municipal services you expect, especially, when electricity is always a failure in Lebanon. And every Lebanese know that, yet their areas always enjoy whether the Lebanese people always call 24/7 electricity.
Can you believe it that the word 24/7 electricity is the biggest dream of the Lebanese population, yet in the areas that Hezbollah governs, generally excellent telecommunication services, excellent electricity services, excellent water services, and most importantly, they have their own even financial system.
And so, they have, through that enriched their community, the sense of solidarity between the Shia community there is strong thanks to Hezbollah's social, financial and services sector that they have looked after particularly well.
And with whose money though they're doing it, with whose help they are doing it? The poor Iranian citizen.
Thomas: Yes, Iran provided Hezbollah regular funding, huge amounts. The State Department reports that some years they would get up to $700 million of direct Iranian financial support, which helped Hezbollah to provide its constituents with these social services, but also was beginning to create the notorious state within a state.
The conditions whereby Hezbollah was running within the nation state of Lebanon, a little mini state of its own, which pertains to the present day, and which has led to Lebanon being largely an ungovernable country to the great detriment of all the Lebanese, it must be said.
The early noughties were a sort of high watermark for Hezbollah. Its international satellite broadcasting station, Al-Manār, The Lighthouse was a very, very popular, not just in Lebanon, but across the Middle East and the world indeed.
And with the War on Terror and the Iraq war, especially raging in that period, Hassan Nasrallah was increasing his international prestige and appeal as a regular anti-American, anti-Israeli voice.
Listeners, our age and older Aimen, will remember those times as very much polarised between those who supported quite vociferously, America's War on Terror and those everywhere who opposed it.
So, anti-Americanism was quite popular globally because of the horrible Iraq War that was raging. And Hassan Nasrallah for some anti-American voices, became something of a hero.
Aimen: And this is unfortunately, a permanent feature of the left in many European and North American political circles. I mean, anyone who just raise the banner of anti-Americanism and anti so-called imperialism, they will just, hey, cheer for him without understanding that hey, hey, hey, wait a minute, maybe you are cheering for one pack of wolves against another pack of wolves. So, be careful who you cheer for.
Thomas: Well, Hassan Nasrallah’s reputation may have been high amongst some people inside and outside Lebanon, but many Lebanese were opposed to Hezbollah at this time. It must be stated quite clearly.
Even Lebanese Shia, they were arguing that Hezbollah's attacks on Israeli troops in the South was endangering the republic. That Hezbollah's status as an armed militia was undermining the constitution.
And in a 2003 editorial, the Lebanese newspaper on An-Nahar wrote this, it's quite powerful, “Who authorised Nasrallah to represent all the Lebanese, to make decisions for them and to embroil them in something they don't want to be embroiled in? Did Nasrallah appoint himself, Secretary General of all the Lebanese and the whole Arab world?”
Now the divisions over Hezbollah within Lebanon would become very acute from 2005 onwards following the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic al-Hariri in Central Beirut.
Now, dear listener, the assassination of Rafic al-Hariri is one of the most fascinating, interesting, and revealing episodes in modern Middle Eastern history. It is also one of the most complicated and one day on Conflicted, we will do a whole series telling the whole story.
For now, it is enough to know that he was a Sunni, Saudi-aligned, Lebanese politician who had played a big role in building the country back up after the Civil War, but had created enemies both inside and outside Lebanon, especially with Syria, whose troops remained inside Lebanon and which remained a very, very key political player in Lebanese politics.
And as a result of this, on the 14th of February 2005, Rafic al-Hariri died in an enormous car bomb assassination in Central Beirut.
Aimen: Indeed, that was an event that I would never forget. I remember that as soon as the explosion happened, not a shred of doubt in my mind that this pointed out to two perpetrators immediately, Damascus, and the southern suburb of Beirut, as we always call it, which is the headquarters of Hezbollah.
Thomas: Well, the assassination of Rafic al-Hariri immediately led to mass demonstrations of Lebanese calling for Syria to get out of Lebanon. This movement, this political movement of endless demonstrations is known as the Cedar Revolution.
But in response to the Cedar Revolution, Hezbollah and allies of Hezbollah mounted their own huge counter demonstrations. And throughout the spring of 2005, these two demonstration movements, these two protest movements, the Cedar Revolution on the one hand, and what was called the 8th of March Coalition, on the other hand, kept mounting enormous demonstrations in Beirut.
We're talking demonstrations where up to a million people were present, which eventually forced under immense American pressure as well, Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon.
So, the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad withdrew Syria's troops from Lebanon. And in May 2005, elections were held. Now everyone assumed that these elections would sweep Rafic 8th al-Hariri’s son Saad to power, Saad al-Hariri the leader of the Cedar Revolution.
But in fact, that did not happen. And the election results were somewhat inconclusive, leading to various negotiations, which are too complicated to explain. Frankly, they're too complicated even for me to understand.
But in July 2005, Hezbollah joined a new unity government. And for the first time, Hassan Nasrallah's Party of God had seats in the Lebanese cabinet. They were given two ministries, the ministries of labour, and of energy and water.
And so, Hassan Nasrallah, this is a massive achievement for him. His political party, his resistance movement, Hezbollah is now in the cabinet of Lebanon.
Aimen: However, Thomas, in order for Hezbollah to get these two ministries, these two key services ministries, they promised their coalition partners that they would deescalate the military tensions with the Israelis on the southern border. They promised that. And guess what? They lied. They absolutely lied through their teeth.
Thomas: They certainly did lie. As we will see when we get back from this very quick break. Hezbollah now in the cabinet of Lebanon would certainly not deescalate its conflict with Israel. We’ll be back.
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We are back. When we left, Hezbollah had just achieved a singular political aim and had put two members in the cabinet of Lebanon and immediately began to cause problems for the political system in Lebanon.
Now, these problems initially revolved around the very thorny and interesting question of who assassinated Rafic al-Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister, because in August of 2005, the very month after the new unity government came to power there with Hezbollah in the cabinet, a UN tribunal investigating the Hariri assassination began to gather evidence. Now, fingers pointed at Syria initially and increasingly Hezbollah.
Aimen: Well, Thomas, just like any criminal mastermind, they will do everything in their power to subvert the course of justice. They joined the government not only because they wanted to protect themselves against any attempt to disarm, but also to protect themselves from any investigation that could lead to the truth.
But Thomas, there was this teeny tiny problem, and it was the fact that Hezbollah did indeed kill Rafic al-Hariri.
Thomas: As would be eventually proved like 15 years later via the tribunal.
Aimen: Exactly, the UN pace, you might as well compare it to a snail. But nonetheless, Hezbollah set out not only to sabotage the investigation, they went out of their way to blame everyone else.
First, they blamed al-Qaeda, they blamed every other terrorist groups they can think of. And then when that wasn't working, they went on to blame the Israelis. They said the Israelis killed him because he was the leader of Lebanon's Renaissance. And coming back to be an important financial and tourist centre.
Come on. And actually, this became the perfect excuse for Hezbollah after every single assassination afterwards, they always say it is the Israelis trying to frame Hezbollah. It is absolutely amazing that every opponent of Hezbollah who died, happened to be killed by mysterious Israeli agents. Amazing how Israel removed all of Hezbollah's enemies out of Lebanon.
Thomas: Well, during this initial phase of Hezbollah trying to subvert the UN tribunal investigating the assassination, in December 2005 when the Lebanese Parliament passed a resolution agreeing to participate in the tribunal, Hezbollah staged a dramatic walkout of the cabinet.
So, their two ministers left the cabinet along with some allies, and this action froze all government business. Without a full cabinet, the Lebanese state cannot function. This would be a tactic used regularly by Hezbollah ever since because they've always had ministers in the cabinet.
And so, they've always been able to effectively paralyse the Lebanese state when the government is seeking to do anything that they don't like.
Now, for two months, there were negotiations between the prime minister and Hezbollah, where the Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was trying to convince them to return to the cabinet.
Though, eventually these two ministers were seduced back into cabinet, but then Hezbollah was able to continue to cause paralysis in the government by entering into another coalition agreement with an opposition party.
And that's where things stood in Lebanese politics. Hezbollah able to paralyse the government in order to prevent any investigation into the assassination of Rafic al-Hariri, all the while posing as the great defenders of Lebanon from Israel.
And yet, ironically, just around the corner, Hezbollah's actions would provoke Israel into launching its biggest attack against Lebanon ever.
Aimen: In May 2006. And in response to the growing noises inside Lebanon about why Hezbollah is the only political movement that is allowed to have a private army. And they always, of course, respond by saying, well, we protect you against Israel.
So, they needed the Israelis to be more aggressive. So, they started firing against Israeli targets inside Israel. First, at the border post, and at the Israeli Northern Command in the Galilee, with few rockets here and there.
The Israelis, of course, always respond, but within the normative Rules of Engagement that the Israelis and Hezbollah came to understand, that military tango that they have been practising for the past 25 years.
So, they had no problem. I mean, the Israelis will shell Hezbollah targets, Hezbollah will shell Israeli targets as long as there are no fatalities, especially on the side of the Israelis.
And therefore, the Hezbollah knew despite the appeals by the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora at the time. Please exercise caution. And even though Fouad Siniora was calling the White House, the White House was calling Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel at the time, please exercise restraint. Do not depart, beyond the Rules of Engagement when you retaliate.
But Hezbollah knows the Israeli personality quite well. This doesn't go well; we have to go bolder. So, they decided to go much higher in terms of provoking Israel.
Thomas: So, yes, Hassan Nasrallah, in order to flex his muscles a bit to answer his critics inside Lebanon and elsewhere, that no, he needs to remain strong to defend Lebanon from Israel.
On the 12th of July of that year, 2006, Nasrallah ordered his militants to cross the Israeli border where they ambushed an Israeli patrol killing three soldiers and kidnapping two others.
Now, this was very provocative. Israeli forces pursued the attackers and the kidnappers inside Lebanon. But these pursuing Israeli soldiers were also attacked by Hezbollah. And five more Israelis were killed. So, eight Israeli soldiers in total were killed that day. And as you say, Aimen, this was really crossing a line for the Israelis.
Aimen: Yeah, in fact, that day I was actually in a meeting with one of my senior MI6 officials. And at that time, he was extremely sceptical about my reaction. He said, “Why are you so horrified?” I said to him, “By tomorrow, they will bomb the hell out of Lebanon.” He said to me, “No, no, no, no, no, I can tell you that the Israelis will stick to the Rules of Engagement.”
So, even MI6 at the time didn't even know that the Israelis are going to go so strong on Lebanon. I said to him, “Israeli blood was shed on a scale that never happened since the year 2000. So, of course, they were retaliate with all their might.” And so, they did.
Thomas: And indeed, they did. On the 13th of July 2006, Israel launched a huge reprisal strike against Lebanon. They blockaded Lebanon from the sea. They attacked Beirut airport, as you say, Aimen, from the air forcing the airport to close.
And then a huge artillery and air bombing campaign began, which would last 33 days destroying key Lebanese infrastructure, bridges, roads, seaports, and airports demolished. Basically, in the course of a month, almost all the progress that Lebanon had witnessed in terms of infrastructure building since the end of the Civil War was reversed.
Aimen: A senior Lebanese politician in later years would privately tell me that Hezbollah killed Rafic al-Hariri in 2005. And then both Israel and Hezbollah killed all the progress that Rafic al-Hariri did in the 15 years before he died for Lebanon.
Thomas: Israel's strategy was to drive the civilian population out of Southern Lebanon in order to create what the Israelis called a killing box there. So, they wanted to get the civilians to leave so that they could pound the hell out of Southern Lebanon, hopefully destroying Hezbollah once and for all.
So, they targeted gas stations, food shops, things like that. And indeed, 900,000 civilians from Southern Lebanon fled the South and were joined by half a million Lebanese civilians from the north. So, Beirut became sort of crammed with these refugees.
So, now that Southern Lebanon was largely empty of civilians, the Israelis could make good on their war aims. And the Prime Minister Olmert had openly stated that his aims were to eradicate Hezbollah completely. But this was ultimately impossible to achieve for two reasons.
First of all, the beginning of the war, in a shock to Hassan Nasrallah, the Arab world in general tended to support Israel, or at least tended not to support Hezbollah. They were very annoyed with Hezbollah for having provoked this war.
And yet, over the course of the war, the number of Lebanese civilian casualties reached just over a thousand. And this forced the Arab world to turn against supporting or at least sympathising with Israel and back towards supporting Lebanon and Hezbollah. So, that was bad for Israel.
And then despite a month of near constant bombardment, Hezbollah remained intact. Only 200 of its fighters were killed during the war, which is quite a remarkable fact given the bombardment they withstood. And the status of Hezbollah among Lebanese Shia, especially just skyrocketed, again, this blowback for Israel. So, Israel's aims were not being met.
Aimen: The public sentiment in the Middle East, I mean, if we want to take at least an indicator here, which is Egypt. I mean, Egypt is a country that signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. And yet, just as the conflict was raging between Israel and Hezbollah in July of 2006, there was an opinion poll, which shows that 9 out of 10 Egyptians were supportive of Hezbollah.
And that indicated that no matter what, if push come to shove Shia or Sunni, I mean Arabs will stick together. I mean, at least that is the idea that this indicator gave at the time.
Thomas: Well certainly, Israel realised that despite its efforts, it was not going to eradicate Hezbollah. And so, in mid-August of 2006, 33 days after the launch of the war, a ceasefire was announced that had been brokered by the United Nations.
Now, quite interestingly, later that month on TV, Hassan Nasrallah himself openly admitted that provoking the Israeli reprisal was a huge mistake. So, Nasrallah was slightly embarrassed, shamed even, that his provocations had resulted in so much destruction for Lebanon.
And yet, over the following two years, Hassan Nasrallah would continue his program of political sabotage in Lebanon of creating political paralysis, leading to just terrible gridlock.
In October of 2006, Nasrallah called for a national unity government. And yet in doing so, he also gave a terrible ultimatum. He said, “Either we reach a new agreement, giving Hezbollah effective veto over the government, or Hezbollah will organise huge demonstrations, seizing key facilities, and effectively putting Lebanon in a political chokehold.”
This is exactly what Hassan Nasrallah did. In December of that year, the March 8th coalition, of which Hezbollah's the largest part, the most powerful part, set up a big encampment in downtown Beirut, which remains in place for well over a year. And added to all of this political paralysis and instability resulting in chaos.
Aimen: Indeed, in fact, not only the paralysis that it caused and scuffles between ordinary Lebanese people was always breaking out around the encampment because of the political opposition and the political polarisation that it was causing. Not to mention the smell. I mean, these people never took a shower, even.
Thomas: Well, I was actually living in Damascus at that time. And I remember quite clearly that everyone knew that Lebanon was not doing well. We would often take hired taxis across the border into Lebanon to Beirut for the weekend, to kind of get out of Damascus and go to Beirut because you can have so much fun in Beirut.
But the journey was very harried. The border was very tense. It was quite clear that things were not well, and things were not well for Hezbollah either. I mean, people were very angry with Hezbollah. The Israelis remained extremely angry with Hezbollah.
Early in 2008, Hezbollah's longtime head of external operations, Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated in Damascus, almost definitely carried out by the Mossad, Israel's secret service.
And moves were afoot within Lebanon itself, to put an end to Hezbollah's stranglehold over the government. The Lebanese government moves to disrupt Hezbollah's telecommunications network, and the security chief at Beirut Airport, who was a Hezbollah client, was also targeted for removal.
So, Hassan Nasrallah realises in 2008 that he's off too many people, and he is about to be moved against.
Aimen: Nasrallah made it very clear; this is a declaration of war against Hezbollah. I still remember the day, it was May 7th of 2008. Hassan Nasrallah was giving a speech on a podium. He's standing, finger wagging, but this time he's not pointing the finger at Israel or America or any external enemy.
He was pointing that finger at his fellow Lebanese people. He was pointing the finger at al-Hariri. He was pointing the finger at Geagea and at Jumblatt and all the other leaders of the Lebanese factions of the opposing coalition, the Future Movement, and the 14 March Movement, as they call them at that time.
So, he said, any attempt to disrupt our communication services, any attempt to remove the head of security at Beirut Airport, because Beirut Airport became a lifeline for the transfer of weapons and missiles and rockets and drones from Iran to Lebanon, including also cash.
So, of course it goes without saying that the head of security there in Beirut Airport need to be in Hezbollah's pockets firmly. So, any attempt to remove him and to put someone else there is a declaration of war against Hezbollah.
This is no longer Rafic al-Hariri’s International Airport. This is Hasan Nasrallah's International Airport, and everyone must know that. So, at that moment, he gave the ultimatum, and within two hours, his men moved in to occupy West Beirut, where the heart of the Sunni population of Lebanon lives.
And what a three days of fighting that saw nearly 300 people killed, hundreds other wounded. And the peace that followed Lebanon Civil War 18 years earlier was shattered.
And this is when Hezbollah stated, without any doubt, “You try to disarm us. You try even to come close to the idea of disarming. You play with the idea, you dream of it, and we will cut off your head.”
So, he spoke like a darsh leader, no diplomacy, no niceties. He will defend to the death. The principle that Hezbollah is essentially an armed militia and a state within a state.
Thomas: People were wondering is Lebanon once again going to fall into outright civil war? Because the scenes on the ground in Beirut were ominously and worryingly similar to the sort of scenes that people had seen in the 1980s. Proper firefights against different militant factions.
It was a really terrifying moment for Lebanon, but staring into the abyss who would come to their rescue, Aimen?
Aimen: The Emir of Qatar.
Thomas: The Emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad playing a role, much like the role played by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. What is it? 18 years earlier during the Taif Accords, this time, the Emir of Qatar invited all the political parties in Lebanon to Doha the capital of Qatar, where they negotiated a new accord to end that political crisis.
And on the 21st of May 2008, an agreement was signed. Now, this agreement was very much in Hezbollah's favour, I would wager, because basically the arrangement gives Hezbollah effective veto over the Lebanese government.
Aimen: What this veto means is that Hezbollah and their other Shia ally, the little sister of Hezbollah, Amal, which now been reduced to being just a Hezbollah's puppet. These two parties will have not four ministers, but they will have six ministers in the cabinet, a cabinet of 18 ministers.
So, this will give them one third. The idea is that any decision in the cabinet must be backed by three quarters of the members of the cabinet. However, if you have six ministers out of 18, it means that you have one third. And this one third can veto anything that the cabinet wants to do.
Therefore, in other word, Hezbollah now will continue to govern Lebanon, either directly or indirectly, directly through participating in the government of unity or indirectly by also having ministers in regardless in the cabinet and vetoing the cabinet agenda. And this is how Hezbollah from 2008 to this day holds Lebanon-
Thomas: 15 years, Aimen. 15 years of Hezbollah holding the Lebanese people to ransom, frankly.
Aimen: Exactly.
Thomas: I mean, it's very distressing and depressing. I mean the story now we've brought it up to where we've covered sort of Hezbollah in the past on Conflicted, because as we've said many times when the Arab Spring broke out in 2010, 2011, Hezbollah was called on by its Iranian taskmasters to intervene on the side of Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian theatre where their fortunes waxed and waned.
But it did strengthen Hezbollah militarily. Its militants have a lot of battlefield experience now, which makes them an even greater threat to the Israelis and makes them even more able to exercise their will over Lebanon.
It also created the conditions whereby they could cooperate with Syrian figures in turning Lebanon into what we've called a narco-terrorist state. Hezbollah along with some members of the Assad regime and family have become fantastically rich by selling drugs openly in the international market.
We've talked about all of this before, and for Lebanon in the end, it means that in addition to many other causative factors like the basic corruption at the very top of Lebanese political society, the sectarian divides which remain endemic and very paralytic on the Lebanese body politic and basic incompetence, which was seen three years ago when that incredible explosion happened in the Port of Beirut.
Aimen: Yeah.
Thomas: Which is down basically to Lebanese governmental and political incompetence, which has inflicted a huge toll on the Lebanese people. But Hezbollah, how did they come to dominate Lebanon? We've told that story.
They've shifted, they've evolved, they've responded to events when necessary. Hassan Nasrallah especially has been very, very agile in bending all events to his favour.
But all of these different causative factors for Lebanon's dysfunction and its suffering are nothing compared to the singular fact of an armed, militant political movement operating as a state within a state there in Lebanon, answering to some extent, at least, to Iran as a proxy of Iran and dedicated to ideologically, at least the Islamic Revolution.
So, Aimen, when it comes to the future of Lebanon, what can we imagine is likely, I mean, given the fact that Hezbollah is there, it is not dislodgeable, not easily. So, what is likely to happen in Lebanon?
Aimen: Well, Thomas, what worried me so much over the past 11, 12 years since the beginning of the Arab Spring is the fact that Hezbollah used the past decade to arm itself to the teeth.
It has amassed more than 200,000 rockets and missiles of different ranges, and added to this arsenal, considerable amount of drones, suicide drones, as well as anti-ship missiles and weapons that could penetrate deep into Israel.
And this is why, I mean, you ask yourself why you arming yourself so much that it means that Lebanon is now going to be taken hostage. Someone will ask, why doesn't Hezbollah just take over all over Lebanon, and just rid itself of all the other political parties?
No, because they need the cover of all the other political parties. They need to keep the veneer that Lebanon is a politically plural society. And therefore, we are just one part, one component of the entire Lebanese mosaic, but it's not the case.
They are in charge, whether the Lebanese people like it or not, and they will take Lebanon into an inevitable war, whether now or 10 years from now.
Thomas: Okay. Let's talk about this inevitable war. Are we talking another civil war, do you think it's ever possible that the rest of Lebanon would ally together and try to fight Hezbollah to the death where they actually win and triumph over Hezbollah?
Aimen: No, there is no way that the rest of Lebanon, even with the help of the Lebanese Army, remember Lebanese Army itself is 40% Shia. So, the Lebanese army will break up immediately. 40% of it will join Hezbollah. That immediately will happen.
So, you'll be left with 60% of the decrepit and ineffective and undertrained and understaffed and underfinanced Lebanese army trying to help few militias here and there with the Christians and the Sunnis who are poorly armed, poorly trained, and they will be fighting a hopeless fight against fighters of Hezbollah.
Only the Druze you can say basically stand the chance, and they are only 5% of the country. So, there is no hope for the rest of Lebanon, militarily speaking.
Thomas: So, then maybe another civil war in which Hezbollah fully triumphs and takes over the whole country properly.
Aimen: Even that might not happen. And the reason for that is simple, because Israel will prevent Hezbollah from taking over Lebanon entirely. They will intervene immediately in order to start shelling and bombing the hell out of Lebanon again in order to dismantle and disable Hezbollah's most sophisticated communication networks in order to prevent it from taking over Lebanon as a whole.
I mean, it's going to be a Mexican standoff. This is basically a Mexican standoff within a bigger Mexican standoff. What is Hezbollah? Hezbollah basically is Iran's hand holding a pistol to Israel's head. Should Israel try to be foolish enough to attack Iran's nuclear sites on its own, then Hezbollah will retaliate immediately.
Thomas: So, then what are we talking about is the likeliest scenario for Lebanon? That Israel and Hezbollah have a fight to the death again? It seems to me actually that given what it experienced in 2006, Israel doesn't really want to fight another war with Hezbollah because it knows it won't win.
Aimen: No.
Thomas: It won't lose exactly, but it won't win.
Aimen: It won't win unless if they really, really have America intervening. I remember in Dallas in 2019, I was speaking to a former senior member, actually, of the Bush Administration, which was in the White House in 2006 during the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
And he said, “You have no idea how perilously we were close to actually coming to the aid of Israel and enter the war.” And he said that if it wasn't for the Iraq War, we would have done it. I mean, the Hezbollah was lucky that America was busy fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And for us, the survival of Israel is a must.
Now that America is out of Afghanistan and Iraq, any war between Israel and Lebanon in the future, if it really start to inflict damage on Israel, Hezbollah should know that America will not keep quiet about it.
Thomas: Well, frankly, given everything you've said and everything we've explored over these last two episodes, Aimen, I feel that the status quo, as unhappy as it is, is likely to persist into the future, at least in the short-term and probably the middle-term too.
Aimen: Yeah, I agree.
Thomas: I don't really see war on a big scale breaking out there. It's ultimately in no one's interests. And so, sadly for Lebanon and for the whole region, and really for the whole world, Lebanon will remain a patient, a cancer patient, frankly, with Hezbollah there as a cancer in the Lebanese body politic.
Aimen: Indeed.
Thomas: As long as Hezbollah is there, there can be no strong stable united Lebanon. It's impossible.
Well, with that depressing final note, we come to the end of our two-part series on Hezbollah. We started out talking about Iran and the ideological underpinnings of its regime. We moved on to Hezbollah, Iran's most powerful and longest lasting proxy in the region.
And starting with our next episode, we're going to discuss a country which we covered in the first season of Conflicted all those years ago but haven't really come back to much since.
A country which many analysts for many years now have worried will become another Lebanon with another Iranian proxy, pointing another pistol at another key Western allies head. And by that, I mean of course the country of Yemen and the Iranian proxy of the Houthis.
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It's going be an epic four-part series, dear listener, where we will go deep into Yemen and try to explain as best we can, everything that you need to know to understand the situation there.
And for that series, we are joined by a brilliant guest for the first time, Aimen. A brilliant guest, an eyewitness to many key events over the last 15 years in Yemen, and one who happens to be a close personal friend of us, both.
Aimen: Indeed.
Thomas: So, you've really got, I think, something to look forward to, dear listener. So, stay with us and when we're back, we will do our very deep dive indeed into Yemen. See you then.
A reminder that you can follow the show over on Facebook and Twitter at MH Conflicted. And for a deeper dive into all the subjects we talk about here on Conflicted, head over to Facebook and search, Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group.
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stott. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.