A History of Hezbollah (Throwback)

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Speaker 2 0630 on a Sunday morning,

Speaker 2 Beirut, Lebanon.

Speaker 1 Everybody was asleep.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 I blame myself for what happened.

Speaker 4 A truck containing explosives was driven into the Marine headquarters building just before dawn Beirut time today.

Speaker 2 Then I heard the rib of an engine behind me.

Speaker 5 Truck filled with high explosives crashed through the southern gate, drove into the lobby of what was formerly the Aviation Safety Building.

Speaker 2 I saw the truck come to a stop dead center of that lobby. Dead silence in the lobby.
You could hear a pin drop.

Speaker 6 And then the next thing I saw was a bright orange flash.

Speaker 5 Pounds of explosives had been packed into the truck, which was driven through two barriers.

Speaker 6 The first thing I said was, son of a pitch.

Speaker 5 He did it. The explosion brought down the building.
The Marines asleep inside had little chance.

Speaker 2 Remember looking over my shoulder. There was one Marine back here.

Speaker 5 Those who are able to free themselves limp through the smoke and dust to safety.

Speaker 2 Moaning.

Speaker 2 Help me. Help me.
God, help me. Somebody, please help me.

Speaker 8 It was not long before administration officials started suggesting that Iran may have played a part in this morning's bombing.

Speaker 8 There are among Lebanon's many factions fundamentalist Muslim Shiites with strong allegiance to Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran.

Speaker 9 There are no words to properly express our outrage, and I think the outrage of all Americans.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Initially, it wasn't clear who did it, but the blame fell on an organization called Hezbollah, who deny responsibility.

Speaker 10 The group is a large paramilitary organization and political party that is directly supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The 1983 U.S.

Speaker 10 Marine barrack bombing was Hezbollah's introduction to the international community, especially the United States.

Speaker 3 Since the Hamas-led October 7th attack and Israel's invasion of Gaza, tensions have risen in the Middle East.

Speaker 3 Recently, the Israeli military and Hezbollah, the most powerful force in Lebanon, have been exchanging attacks in what's considered the most significant escalation on the Israeli-Lebanese border in the last year.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 For some, they are a vicious terrorist group that has caused death and destruction.

Speaker 3 For others, they are one of the most resilient and steadfast forces of resistance against Western power in the Middle East.

Speaker 10 The seeds of Hezbollah were sown during Lebanon's civil war and bloomed during Israel's 1982 invasion of the country.

Speaker 10 Their story is rooted in the ethnic and religious complexity of Lebanon, the complicated geopolitics of the Middle East, and the long-standing battle for self-determination in the post-colonial world.

Speaker 10 I'm Ramteen Arab Louis.

Speaker 3 And I'm Randab Dil Fattah.

Speaker 10 And on this episode of Through Line from NPR, a history of Hezbollah.

Speaker 8 Hi, this is Brian from Jersey City, New Jersey, and you're listening to Through Line from NPR.

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Speaker 13 Part 1.

Speaker 14 There are no sides.

Speaker 10 April 13th, 1975.

Speaker 10 Lebanon.

Speaker 10 On a warm spring day, a bus carrying Palestinians to a refugee camp drives through the streets of East Beirut.

Speaker 16 A Palestinian bus was passing through a Maronite territory.

Speaker 10 A Maronite territory. Maronites are Eastern Christians with a strong presence in Lebanon.

Speaker 16 There were rumors that some of the people on the bus were members of the PLO.

Speaker 10 PLO stands for Palestine Liberation Organization, the militant group that represented the Palestinian cause. They were in Lebanon after being expelled from Jordan.

Speaker 10 Some in Lebanon, including a Maronite Christian political party, the Phalangists, saw them as a foreign threat.

Speaker 17 The presence of these militants in Lebanon became increasingly a source of friction with the local population and namely the mostly Christian nationalist faction.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 16 Almost immediately after the attack, fighting broke out between Maronite and Palestinian groups.

Speaker 10 The Lebanese civil war was underway.

Speaker 19 Bloody civil strife has marred the capital of that small Arab nation for the past week.

Speaker 5 I think it's much more than just a local

Speaker 5 francis between two extremist groups.

Speaker 17 In essence, that war, if we really want to simplify it, was

Speaker 17 about

Speaker 17 a right-wing nationalism of Christian parties

Speaker 17 and pan-Arab support for the Palestinian cause.

Speaker 10 This is Kim Qatas.

Speaker 17 I'm a long-time journalist, now author of Black Wave, a book about the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Many were refugees who'd originally been driven from their homes after the establishment of the State of Israel.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 20 Palestinians at that time

Speaker 20 had created a kind of a state within the state in the south of Lebanon.

Speaker 10 This is Aurelie Dahir. She's an associate professor at Paris Dauphine University and lecturer at Science Po Paris.
And she wrote a book called Hezbollah, Mobilization and Power.

Speaker 20 And they were using the soil, the territory of southern Lebanon as a military base to launch attacks on the north of Israel.

Speaker 16 The Lebanese state and Lebanese society have to face up to the question of where Lebanon belongs in a much more dire way, in a much more direct way.

Speaker 10 That's Suna Hagbullah. He's a professor of global Middle East studies at Raskilda University in Denmark.

Speaker 16 Now it became a question of to what extent Lebanon should give space for Palestinian militias to attack Israel directly.

Speaker 10 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?

Speaker 16 And those who argued for that mainly belonged

Speaker 16 in a camp in the Lebanese political landscape, if you want, that viewed Lebanon's identity as more Arab than most Christian groups would.

Speaker 10 This identity crisis, being stuck between Western and Middle Eastern influence, has always been there for Lebanon.

Speaker 10 The country is on the Mediterranean Sea, with Syria to its north and east, and Israel to its south.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 It has 18 officially recognized religious sects. The three most powerful groups are the Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shia Muslims.

Speaker 10 There had been friction between these groups even before Lebanon became an independent state free of French colonial rule in 1943.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 17 Lebanon always has a Christian president, a Sunni

Speaker 17 prime minister and Shia Speaker of the House.

Speaker 16 The only problem with this is that these quotas are based on a census from 1932.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 10 This discrepancy had a material effect on the social and political reality of Shias in Lebanon.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 It had lavish nightclubs and a vibrant social scene. Some called it the Paris of the Middle East.

Speaker 16 That's quite a stark contrast to daily life in a Shiite village in the south. If you go to the Bikal Valley or the South in the 1960s, you would find villages where people are illiterate.

Speaker 16 You would find villages where they live

Speaker 16 without electricity in very basic conditions. So that sense of being deprived, that sense of being downtrodden, was shared amongst the Shiites.

Speaker 10 By the 1970s, an influx of Palestinian refugees and the PLO arrived, throwing whatever delicate balance that existed in Lebanon out of whack.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 16 From that moment on the 13th of April, all the tensions that had been building just emerged into fighting.

Speaker 19 The Christian phalangists claim that the Muslim-backed Palestinians are threatening the stability of Lebanon.

Speaker 19 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.

Speaker 19 On the sidewalks, piles of rotting garbage foul the air. The valuable tourist season is doomed, and trade is non-existent.

Speaker 10 And it didn't take long for foreign governments with interests in the region region to pick their own sides in the conflict.

Speaker 17 Lebanon is a small country and the fate of small countries is that they get used by regional and international powers.

Speaker 10 Israel also armed and trained Christian groups like the Falanges to fight the PLO.

Speaker 10 And on the other hand, many Muslim countries supported both the Sunnis and Shias in Lebanon. that were helping the PLO.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 And you continue to have this upsurge in also fighting over

Speaker 16 who's actually running the state.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 20 So in 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon to push to the north the Palestinian armed groups and the Shiite community, the major community of South Lebanon, so it was the most severely hit and it was the major victim of that first invasion.

Speaker 20 Collateral damage happened and the Shia

Speaker 20 became obviously quite angry, both with the Palestinians, who they considered to be responsible for the tragedy, but also with the Israelis.

Speaker 10 By the close of the 1970s, the end of the civil war was nowhere in sight.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Soon, the Shia, a large, mostly disempowered group, would rise up with the help of their own foreign backer, Iran.

Speaker 10 That coming up on ThruLine from NPR.

Speaker 21 Hi, my name is Stephen Barrero, and I'm a graduate student at Indiana University here in Bloomington, Indiana. And you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

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Speaker 14 Part 2: Decade of Invasions

Speaker 3 1978. Iran.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 3 Unrest broke out all over the country. Iran's king, or Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a close ally of the United States, was on his back foot, unable to stop the protests.

Speaker 22 Some two million in Tehran alone shouting slogans against the Shah and against American influence in the country.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 3 Protesters rallied against the 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 22 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.

Speaker 3 The government's response got more and more violent, but the crowds of protesters just got bigger and bigger until one day.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 The Shah left Iran, and Ayatollah Khomeini returned. He almost immediately started trying to consolidate power.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 3 The Iranian revolution didn't didn't start out as an Islamic one. There were secular actors and leftists also involved.

Speaker 3 But by the end of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters had forcefully taken over the revolution in the name of Islam, Shia Islam.

Speaker 18 We cannot overemphasize the importance of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979.

Speaker 3 This is Matthew Levitt.

Speaker 18 I teach at Georgetown University and I'm the author of the book Hezbollah, the Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God.

Speaker 3 Matthew says that Khomeini immediately had a goal of projecting power throughout the Middle East.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 And their first targets were those countries in the region that had large Shia populations. And first among equals was Lebanon.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Currently, about 85 to 90 percent of the world's Muslims are Sunni, and about 10 to 15 percent are Shia.

Speaker 3 The Iranian Safavid Empire wanted Iran to become Shia in order to differentiate itself from neighboring rival empires that were Sunni.

Speaker 3 They brought Shia clerics from Lebanon to help convert the Iranian population. And in the following centuries, Iran became the power center of Shiism.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 But Iran's plan to export the revolution went on pause in a big way because of the Iran-Iraq war.

Speaker 3 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 Khoramshahr.

Speaker 18 This was an existential fight for Iran, and the effort to export the revolution was secondary.

Speaker 3 But that would all change in 1982.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Israel hoped to push Palestinian militants 25 miles away from the border.

Speaker 17 That was the initial stated goal.

Speaker 3 This is Kim Ghattas again.

Speaker 17 But Israel's then defense minister, Ariel Sharon, had a grander vision.

Speaker 3 He wanted to do more than just push back Palestinian militants from the border.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 17 The siege of Beirut was painful and devastating. No water, no fuel, no food.
And it came also at great civilian cost and the toll was high in Lebanon.

Speaker 3 Israel laid siege to Beirut in order to push out PLO fighters hunkered down there and to install a new government.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Meanwhile, as Israel is invading Lebanon, several Lebanese Shia clerics are actually on their way to Iran.

Speaker 17 By pure coincidence, to meet with Iran's newly established Office of Liberation Movements to ask for help.

Speaker 20 The Iranians actually are not enthusiastic at all with their project.

Speaker 3 This is Orli 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 20 It is the Iranian ambassador in Damascus

Speaker 20 who will really

Speaker 20 lobby in favor of the creation of Hezbollah.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 17 Iran sends a planeload of Iranian revolutionary guards to come and assist Lebanon in its fight against Israel.

Speaker 3 Iran's revolutionary guards have a unit that functions kind of like the U.S. Green Berets.

Speaker 3 They're sent as military advisors, but they come with weapons and special knowledge on how to conduct guerrilla warfare.

Speaker 18 They take over an old military barracks and they start training Shia militants.

Speaker 18 And the idea was to create some superstructure and to provide some training, including, by the way, ideological training.

Speaker 3 With this support from Iran, the Shia clerics were able to start an organization called the the Resistance, the Muqawawa,

Speaker 3 the IRL, or in Arabic, Al-Muqawa Ma'il Islamiya Filubnan, which soon realized it needed more than just military power.

Speaker 20 The IRL will feel the need to add to that military structure a whole network of civilian institutions.

Speaker 3 That network of civilian institutions was called Hezballah, which translates to party of God. The group was tasked tasked by its leaders to do three things.

Speaker 20 First, communication, basically, explaining to the Lebanese society who they are, what they're doing, the point of their fight. Second, recruiting.

Speaker 3 Basically, you're raising an army.

Speaker 20 To promote that resistance discourse.

Speaker 3 And Hezbollah's third objective.

Speaker 20 To help the Lebanese cope with collateral damage. The IRL fighting the Israelis will have a cost and will have a cost on civilians.

Speaker 20 If you're wounded in an Israeli attack, then basically they will take care of you for free.

Speaker 18 They had Iranian funds to be able to pay salaries and to empower people to be able to

Speaker 18 build grassroots institutions, not just political, but much more importantly,

Speaker 18 social,

Speaker 18 welfare, religious, educational, medical.

Speaker 3 With this three-pronged approach, Hezbollah started to be seen by some people in Lebanon as a force for good.

Speaker 18 Hezbollah's position as a resistance force definitely bought it standing and respect.

Speaker 3 And in the Shia community, Hezbollah increasingly became its defender.

Speaker 18 Finally, someone was standing up for them, someone from within the Shia community.

Speaker 18 So there was an element here of going from zero to hero, of empowerment, of being part of something bigger than themselves.

Speaker 18 It helped drive recruitment. People wanted, people within the Shia community wanted, aspired to be able to join Hezbollah.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Those who were suspected of working with the resistance to the Israeli occupation were sent to a huge prison called the Khiyam Prison

Speaker 20 that actually worked more like a concentration camp.

Speaker 3 The prison was run by the South Lebanon Army, a Christian-dominated militia that received support and training from Israel. Amnesty International called Khiyam the prison of shame.

Speaker 20 The Lebanese talked about it as the center of hell.

Speaker 3 There were accusations of torture at the prison.

Speaker 20 Former inmates claimed prisoners were beaten, interrogated naked, bit by dogs, tied for hours to pillars.

Speaker 3 They were deprived from food, from sleep,

Speaker 20 waterboarding, drowned.

Speaker 20 And those prisoners, well, they were detained with no trial, no attorney to defend them.

Speaker 3 Amnesty International reported 11 detainees died there in the 15 years the prison operated.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 3 The following year, 1983, is when the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut were attacked, which the U.S.
government linked to Hezbollah, who denied involvement.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And some of those groups are

Speaker 17 very much aligned and funded and helped by Iran.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 3 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 Through Line producer Peter Balin and Rosen.

Speaker 23 Our sons are now in an ever-escalating confrontation against these enemies until the following objectives are achieved.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 18 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?

Speaker 23 Imam Khomeini, the leader, has repeatedly stressed that America is the reason for all of our catastrophes and the source of all malice.

Speaker 23 By fighting it, we are only exercising our legitimate right to defend Islam and the dignity of our nation.

Speaker 18 And they really presented themselves as the vanguard of furthering the Islamic revolution against the West.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 3 In 1990, after 15 years, the Lebanese civil war came to an official end.

Speaker 18 The Taif Agreement, like a national reconciliation accord, that formally ended the civil war, required that all sectarian communities and groups disarm.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 3 The civil war was over, but Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon continued. Hezbollah emerged as the single greatest power to fight it.

Speaker 3 In 1992, when suspected supporters of Hamas were deported from Palestinian territories to southern Lebanon, Hezbollah welcomed them and gave them tactical training.

Speaker 3 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 Nasradla.

Speaker 20 Hassan Nasrallah

Speaker 20 decided to really

Speaker 20 focus all the effort and all the money and all the time and all the energy of the IRL on fighting the Israelis.

Speaker 3 Hassan Nasradla 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.

Speaker 3 He had very close ties with Iranian leaders, and his ascension to power would be a turning point for Hezbollah.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 They hit Hazrat

Speaker 20 very hard.

Speaker 20 This is the first time where the Israelis didn't manage to achieve their goals. This is the first time where Hazrat Allah managed to inflict serious damages on the north of Israel.

Speaker 20 And eventually, this is where we started to hear the first

Speaker 20 discourses within the Lebanese society saying, you know what, these guys actually

Speaker 20 are sincere about their fights. And if they continue this way, they might go somewhere.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Hi, this is Hibba from Dallas, Texas, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

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Speaker 3 Part 3.

Speaker 17 These are not our heroes.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 10 In 2000, the Israeli military withdrew its forces from Lebanon.

Speaker 25 Roads were not only jammed, they were chaotic.

Speaker 10 Hezbollah claimed it as a victory for Lebanon.

Speaker 25 Triumphant Hezbollah guerrilla fighters found themselves directing traffic.

Speaker 20 That was really the moment that created the core of the whole Hezbollah legend, the whole Hezbollah myth.

Speaker 10 And for Israel, it appeared to be a loss.

Speaker 20 They had to withdraw defeated and unconditionally.

Speaker 10 This is Oreli Dahir, author of the book Hezbollah: Mobilization and Power.

Speaker 20 That was the first. Nobody ever saw that in the history of the Middle East.

Speaker 20 For the Lebanese, it was like the Lebanese David defeating the big Israeli Goliath.

Speaker 10 For years, Hezbollah had portrayed itself as Lebanon's protector, a protector that was fighting for both self-determination and for God.

Speaker 10 And Israel's withdrawal only supported that narrative.

Speaker 18 Hezbollah has gone to great lengths over the years to build, it's term, not mine, to build a culture of resistance.

Speaker 10 This is Matthew Levitt. He wrote a book called Hezbollah, the global footprint of Lebanon's Party of God.

Speaker 18 It wants to inculcate the idea that it is

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 3 And they use this narrative to propel themselves deeper into Lebanese politics.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 3 That's Suna Hagballah, 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.

Speaker 3 Eventually, the son of his second-in-command would marry the daughter of Iran's most famous military leader, Qasim Sunaimani, who was assassinated by the U.S. in 2020.

Speaker 3 This is how intertwined Hezbollah became with Iran. Iran continued funding Hezbollah, and Nasrallah expanded social infrastructure nationwide, primarily in Shia areas.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 3 And all of this didn't just have a material impact on Lebanon, it had a cultural impact as well.

Speaker 3 According to Lebanese journalist Kim Ghattas, it pushed the country's Shia Muslims into a more conservative direction.

Speaker 17 It starts with women being told to put on the veil. Not just in the Bakar Valley, but also in the southern suburbs, but also in very cosmopolitan West Beirut.

Speaker 3 Hezbollah has always been a religiously conservative organization, and over the years, it has been increasingly influenced by its ally, Iran, an Islamic state.

Speaker 3 Hezbollah members allegedly went through villages and some neighborhoods in Beirut, enforcing Islamic laws.

Speaker 18 They

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 3 But it doesn't go away. Hezbollah's influence only expands.

Speaker 18 In time, Hezbollah decided to leverage its position of influence because of its social welfare activities. and

Speaker 18 power because of its weapons into politics and decided to contest elections.

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 10 The Islamic resistance in Lebanon.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 10 In this way, Hezbollah functions kind of like a state within a state.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 This allows them to call the shots from the shadows.

Speaker 18 It is both a part of

Speaker 18 and a part from

Speaker 18 the Lebanese government. It's able to benefit from the legitimacy that being in government gives it, but it's not responsible for anything.

Speaker 20 The deal between Hezbollah and the other political forces is very easy to understand. Basically, Hezbollah says, you guys, do whatever you want.

Speaker 20 running this country as long as you don't go near the interests of the IRL.

Speaker 10 But what if someone does mess with the interest of Hezbollah's military or civilian arm? According to Matthew Levitt, they are not shy about doling out consequences.

Speaker 18 When Hezbollah is called to task for carrying out illicit financial schemes through the Lebanese banking system that undermines the Lebanese financial system,

Speaker 18 when politicians don't get on board with what Hezbollah and its allies want,

Speaker 18 there are consequences.

Speaker 10 Hezbollah has attacked its opponents and rivals throughout its history.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 10 This would continue into the early 2000s as Hezbollah emerged as the most powerful military and social force in the country.

Speaker 26 It was an assassination that would shape Lebanese politics for years to come.

Speaker 3 On February 14, 2005, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hadidi, 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.

Speaker 3 It sent shockwaves through the region.

Speaker 26 It was a horrendous crime that looked like it belonged to another era.

Speaker 3 A United Nations investigation followed that implicated Hezbollah members in plotting and carrying out the assassination.

Speaker 18 They carried out intimidation operations for investigators who came.

Speaker 18 Some of the key Lebanese investigators who were working with this international investigation, Lebanese officials were themselves assassinated.

Speaker 18 So they will not accept a situation where they are made out to be something bad for Lebanon or the bad guys.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 26 Today in Egypt, battles raged.

Speaker 5 We are not afraid!

Speaker 20 We are not afraid!

Speaker 3 That's Khaled Hamila, who waved his fist at an army helicopter overhead.

Speaker 17 No fear!

Speaker 18 No more fear!

Speaker 20 It's the country of freedom!

Speaker 18 There's uprisings throughout the Arab world.

Speaker 27 It's a mixture between watching people get killed and tweeting. Tweeting now seems insignificant when people are dying in front of you.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 18 The Assad regime cracks down by beating a bunch of youth in the south in Dara, and this leads to first protests and the protester crushed and then full-scale rebellion.

Speaker 3 The rebellion soon threatened the Assad regime.

Speaker 18 And Syria needed help.

Speaker 18 So Iran steps in.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 18 And Iran asks Hezbollah to step in.

Speaker 3 Hezbollah agreed.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 28 I personally believe that President Bashar al-Assad is a believer in reform and is serious, but with patience. This is a responsible regime.

Speaker 20 In Bahrain, Hezbollah sent like massive troops to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad and fight.

Speaker 18 And they go all in.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 And Hezbollah is on that side.

Speaker 20 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

Speaker 18 that

Speaker 18 cost Hezbollah significantly in the Muslim and Arab worlds, the overwhelming majority of which are Sunni.

Speaker 18 And it put them in the position of siding with the bully.

Speaker 3 Even among devoted Hezbollah supporters, this caused a major rift.

Speaker 20 A lot of people who were unconditionally pro-Hezbollah

Speaker 13 were

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 20 And I remember I talked about that with some Hezbollah members when I was 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

Speaker 20 crisis for some of them within the organization, even within the organization, some people were really wondering, like, is it still us?

Speaker 20 Because that's not our purpose, that's not our identity, that's not our vision.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 16 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

Speaker 16 big war.

Speaker 20 Hazrat Maslallah definitely does not want to be blamed for another major military tragedy with the Israeli neighbor.

Speaker 3 Since October 7th, Hezbollah has exchanged rocket fire with Israel and has said they will continue until Israel announces a ceasefire in Gaza.

Speaker 3 Israel's recent attacks against Hezbollah have been the largest since 2006.

Speaker 18 Hezbollah is not accountable, but they are making decisions of life and death worm peace for all Lebanese.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But Sunnah Haqball says that's not quite accurate.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 3 Iran and Hezbollah work as partners. It's not only transactional.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 And all of that grew out of the Lebanese civil war.

Speaker 16 It grew out of this strong resistance ideology that existed in the Shiite community, but it also grew out of a strong sense of

Speaker 16 grievance, of social grievance, of grievance against colonialism and the long effects of colonialism in the region.

Speaker 16 And those are the core ideological elements still of Hezbollah that drive them today.

Speaker 3 That's it for this week's show. I'm Rand Abdir Fattah.

Speaker 10 I'm Ramteen Arab Louis, and you've been listening to Through Line from NPR.

Speaker 3 This episode was produced by me. And me, and Lawrence Wu, Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey Miner, Christina Kim, Devin Katayama, Peter Balinon-Rosen, Irene Noguchi.

Speaker 10 Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel. The episode was mixed by Josh Newell.

Speaker 3 Music for this episode was composed by Ramteen and his band Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvy, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.

Speaker 10 Thanks to Johannes Durkee, James Heider, Tony Cavan, Larry Caplow, Kara West, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell.

Speaker 3 And as always, if you have ideas or suggestions, you can reach us at throughline at npr.org.

Speaker 10 Thanks for listening.

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