[tptacek]

Hey! I'm glad to see you. Hezbollah was a Khomeinist response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. If you want to argue that Israel bears some responsibility for the destabilization of Lebanon, I won't argue. But it was trained and guided by the IRGC from its inception; the modern incarnation of Hezbollah is directed by the IRGC Quds Force. If you want to argue that the two organizations (QF and Hezbollah) are separable, you have two simple fact patterns to contend with:

* Hezbollah fully mobilized to engage, on behalf of the Syrian Baathists, during the Syrian civil war. By some accounts Hezbollah was the most effective fighting force in the entire conflict. There was no clear ideological reason Hezbollah should have committed itself and other Lebanese militia to that conflict; it did so because Iran and the Baathist leadership of Syria are aligned politically. It's striking, reviewing the entire history of Hezbollah's military conflict, that the Syrian theater accounts for a plurality of all military casualties ever taken by Hezbollah. I'd like to understand your explanation for Hezbollah taking over 2,000 infantry casualties in Syria that excludes the IRGC directing them to do so.

* The Mossad pager attack struck Iran's foreign envoy to Lebanon (that's reported in the story we're commenting on) and dozens of Iranian Quds Force operatives in the Bekaa valley. I'm curious what your explanation of those casualties would be, apart from the obvious and widely reported suggestion that Hezbollah under Nasrallah was an instrument of the QF.

The claim that Hezbollah is directed by and is in essence an instrument of the Quds Force fits into a context of Iran's strategy of engaging militarily through a network of proxies --- the claim I'm making is one Iran itself makes. Iran's proxies include not just Hezbollah but Kata'ib Hezbollah in Iraq, Ansar Allah in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza --- Hamas being noteworthy because they had a falling out with the IRGC because they supported the Sunni insurgency in Syria.

It's wild to me, as a westerner, that on the leaderboard of "most salient military conflicts in the Middle East", Israel/Palestine ranks at best #3, behind the Saudi/Persian rivalry (which claimed hundreds of thousands of noncombatant lives in Yemen) and the Sunni/Alawite conflict in Syria (which claimed hundreds of thousands of noncombatant lives in Syria).

Let me know where our premises differ!

[dtornabene]

Are you going to respond to my point about the "occupy" "fact" or...not? Plenty of resistance groups are trained by other state (and non-state) powers who have an interest in their success? Vietnam comes to mind! I don't know, maybe you would, but I'd be pretty shocked if you described the North Vietnamese army as "occupying" ....North Vietnam. Similar dynamics apply across pretty much any ideological axis you could name. The level of support that a resistance group gets for a militia which I haven't seen you deny (yet!) is made up entirely of Lebanese people does not somehow negate that that force is indigenous to its location/state/region/etc and is operating from a motivation to repel a state that had already actually occupied Lebanon for 20 years during a previous invasion. None of what Hezbollah did in Syria negates its origins or in anyway makes it an "occupier" of its own land. This is the point I made in my reply, nothing that I'm seeing in yours in anyway addresses that, if you think it does, please, feel free to explain it to me.

[tptacek]

To the extent that it is the dominant military power in Lebanon and it is directed by a foreign power, while enjoying something like 8% public support outside the Shia minority in Lebanon, I do feel comfortable referring to it as an occupying power. The Syria thing is not a small deal.

I feel like if I have a stake in any part of these cursed threads, it's the notion that just because you oppose Israel --- a deeply problematic state, I agree with you preemptively --- doesn't make you justifiable. You saw the same thing with people talking up Ansar Allah when they were deterring shipping in the Red Sea. Literally a minoritarian racialist supremacist group!

[aguaviva]

To the extent that it is the dominant military power in Lebanon and it is directed by a foreign power, while enjoying something like 8% public support outside the Shia minority in Lebanon, I do feel comfortable referring to it as an occupying power.

Except that extent is tempered greatly by Hezbollah's broader social and political significance (providing government services in some areas, and being a leading party in the previous ruling coalition). Also, if we go by its standing in the polls, its support clocks in at 18.56 percent, and its broader coalition block came in with an additional 20 percent (which has quite a different ring from the "8 percent outside of the Shia majority" figure you were touting).

Point being - it's not simply a proxy of Iran, and (since the definition of a "military occupier", going by Wikipedia, explicitly requires a foreign power as a referent) that's where the assertion "Hezbollah occupies Lebanon" starts to lose structural coherence.

[dtornabene]

1) There hasn't been an official census in Lebanon in nearly a century[1], precisely because such statistics would upset a fragile balance of power between competing minority groups. So I'm not sure where you are getting the 8% public support outside the Shia minority line but if you have access to census data that literally the entire rest of the world, including and most prominently the Lebanese, do not have, perhaps you should share it! Not that that matters because even if you were correct about the support levels, given that Hezbollah is a genuine Lebanese political movement, made up entirely of Lebanese people, it cannot, ipso facto be an "occupying power". There are a number of different words to describe when an indigenous minority rules over an indigenous majority but "occupier" is not one of them, and the political function that that word performs in your argument is the reason I think maybe your doubling down on it, substance free.

2) I did not at any point say that the actions of Hezbollah in Syria are "a small deal". The actions of Hezbollah in Syria however, while truly heinous, have zero to do with whether or not it is accurate to call Hezbollah an "occupying power". You often try to draw in extraneous aspects to a particular point in these threads which are salacious or horrifying and seem to believe that these buttress your argument without ever actually illuminating the link, I feel like this is a perfect example of that. Maybe we're talking past one another, I don't know, but as I said, nothing that Hezbollah did in Syria in anyway makes it an occupying power in Lebanon.

3) I have never, here or at any time in any of these threads, held to some kind of childlike mentality that simply by virtue of "oppos[ing] Israel...makes you justifiable."

4) Plenty of resistance groups engage in ugly tactics or are either authoritarian from the beginning or become so over time. None of that makes those groups somehow an "occupier", or negates that they are resisting a real oppressor. Which, again, is my entire reason for jumping in this thread.

5) If your only reason to jump in these threads is to perform some kind of intellectual policing action, scolding and sneering at your interlocutors, presuming that their motivation is a kind of shallow reflexive opposition to Israel, I think maybe you lose the ability to claim that you are attempting to preserve an environment for "curiosity". I have tangled with you probably half a dozen times or more over this last year, not once have I felt you are in anyway "curious" or seeking to understand. Just the opposite. Do you think I support any and all opposition to Israel, simply because....it is opposition to Israel? You would be quite wrong stranger! I have prayed at more synagogues, just in Chicago, then you have probably, probably, set foot in in your entire life. I was a zionist for many years. None of this really needs to be said, and given you are unwilling to defend your own statements, commenting that you are "not going to litigate your politics" and that you "blame message boards" for other people "misunderstanding" your statements, I kind of feel like its a charity and gesture you are unwilling to extend yourself and do not deserve! But again, its worth putting out there, so at least other people can see it.

EDIT: Just to respond directly to a point you raised in your initial reply which I missed on first read, the amount of casualties that Hezbollah sustained in Syria, again, does not make it an occupying power of Lebanon, I can't think of a single reason why that would somehow make them occupiers. As to why they did that, I would assume for the guns! The guns and other military support that they receive from Iran overwhelmingly passes through Syria and had the Assad regime fallen that would have been a pretty bad day for Hezbollah! Seems like a powerful reason. The idea that the relationship to Iran can be reduced to one of puppet and puppeteer by gesturing at the number of Iranians killed or wounded in the pager attack is a strange one.

[1] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/lebanon-census/

[tptacek]

I'm sorry but my lived experience of this thread is that you're the one who jumped in. I'm happy you did so, but maybe we just leave this at "we disagree and our premises are too far apart for it to make sense to litigate".

My contention is that Hezbollah is a literal arm of the IRGC Quds Force, integrated into Iranian military command and control, operating in Iran's regional strategic interests, to the point of dragging Lebanon into another regional war for no apparent benefit to Lebanon itself; it is further the most powerful military organization in Lebanon and largely outside the reach of internal law in Lebanon. Ergo: I would say that Hezbollah is evidence of Iranian occupation of Lebanon.

If you want to dispute the definitions I'm using, that's fine; it's just about the most boring thing we could possible argue about. What I strongly object to is the notion that Hezbollah under Nasrallah has functioned as a "resistance movement", as has been claimed elsewhere on this thread. Ask a Sunni in Homs what they think about that claim.

[dtornabene]

That Sunni in Homs that you want to ventriloquize (do...do you actually know any Sunnis from Homs? Seriously dude. Do you get why its extremely gross to use their suffering for point scoring?) wasn't under Hezbollahs boot in 1982, when it was formed to resist an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. This is what I mean when I say your definition of "occupation" is doing an incredible amount of ideological lifting, and why it is, in fact, a resistance movement. You haven't responded to the link I provided nor provided any of your own to buttress an part of your own argument, which is pretty telling I think. Do you actually know anything, literally anything at all about the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon? Thats a serious question and if you want to respond to me I'd ask you to respond, in detail, to that. Because the idea that the Lebanese were just peachy keen over their country being invaded and brutalized, for years and years, until the Iranians planted an occupation force in their midst is... its kind of gross man! The idea that the Lebanese right now were just fine with the slaughter in Gaza and its only the evil Persians and their scheming who are whipping up antizionist sentiment...that kind of argument has a history. You can point to the horror show of the Syrian Civil War all you want, that came literally two plus decades after Hezbollah was formed. I'm not sure if its intentional or not, but I see you have now tightened your argument to say "Hezbollah under Nasrallah". Kind of looks like a shifting goalpost to me. Do you believe it was a resistance movement and then degenerated under Nasrallah? Seems germane!

[tptacek]

I don't know what point you're trying to make here, sorry. The Hezbollah siege of Madaya didn't occur in 1982. You've jumped onto a thread about what Hezbollah is; I don't know that it's reasonable to object to comments pointing out what it isn't. By all means, rebut them if you can.

[runarberg]

You seem to have adopted a very convenient definition of “resistance movement”. In almost all colonial warfare throughout history, the colonized received international support. Sometimes this was just weapons and aid, sometimes these were international volunteer bridges, and sometimes whole armies of a supporting nation. For example, in Rhodesian bush war, not only were the main Zimbabwe resistance groups armed and supplied by China and the Soviet Union, but they also had fighters and armed groups coming from Mozambique, ANC (South Africa) and Zambia.

During the Gaza genocide Hezbollah has been one of only two international groups who have fought with the Palestinian resistance (the other being the Huthis). Not even Iran has fought to help Palestine (they merely sent a nominal amount of missiles for reasons other than the liberation of Palestine). The ANC, and Mozambique fighters surely were armed and supplied by e.g. the Soviet Union, who probably event gave them intelligence, military advice, etc. But at no point were they a vessel or otherwise integrated into any military unit of the Soviet Union. And they fought the Rhodesian Government on ideological grounds and in solidarity with their colonized partners on the continent, but also of self preservation as e.g. the Mozambique resistance probably saw an independent Rhodesian Government would be a thread to their own liberation.

To claim e.g. that the ANC were evidence of a Soviet occupation in Africa would be very ahistorical (and I don’t thing anybody would do that), but still (and I haven’t checked, so I may be wrong) it wouldn’t surprise me that many contemporary apologists of African apartheid did just that.

[tptacek]

Was Hezbollah an active ideological adversary of Israel, a participant in the conflict between Israel and Hamas/PIJ? Absolutely. Does that mean it participated in what Iran calls "resistance" to the state of Israel? Absolutely. Is that Hezbollah's core function? Absolutely not. Hezbollah is a service branch of the Iranian military. In every conflict Hezbollah has fought with Israel, it has incurred fewer losses and contested less territory than it did in Syria.

Empirically, Hezbollah's function is to serve Iran's regional strategic interests. When those interests align against Israel, as they so often do, Hezbollah "resists" Israel. When they involve killing Lebanese Sunni political adversaries, they do otherwise. When they involve projecting Iranian military power in other foreign conflicts, that's what they do.

I walk down the street, and someone sitting down the side of the road asks for some spare change. I give them a couple bucks and keep walking. Am I a philanthropist? Maybe in that moment? But I am in reality a software developer.

If you want to argue that Hezbollah is both a resistance movement and a foreign military occupier of Lebanon, we might find a place to agree. But, obviously, us agreeing isn't important. I'm comfortable with what this thread says about our respective positions!

[aguaviva]

Hezbollah was a Khomeinist response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

This "response" being armed resistance to that invasion, specifically. Eventually not only forcing the latter's withdrawal, but handing it a decisive strategic defeat (from which it is still licking its wounds). As a neat little side bonus, the US was forced to leave with its tail between its legs as well.

Which makes it not only a you-know-what movement - but (by the end of that conflict at least) a very successful one at that.