[UltraSane]

You are ignoring the elephant in the room: Hezbollah was literally founded in 1982 under IRGC direction; 1,500 Revolutionary Guards deployed to the Bekaa Valley to organize and train it. It is arguably the most successful export of the 1979 revolution's "velayat-e faqih" ideology. So Iran colonized Lebanon.

Hezbollah formally accepts Khamenei as wali al-faqih the supreme juridical authority. That's not alliance, that's religious-political fealty to a foreign head of state.

Iran provides an estimated $700M–$1B/year, plus missiles, drones, training. Without Iran, Hezbollah's strategic arsenal doesn't exist.

It operates as a parallel state inside Lebanon (own military, telecoms, social services, foreign policy), displacing Lebanese sovereignty in the south and Bekaa.

[GordonS]

You are ignoring the mammoth on the room: Hezbollah only even exists because of Israeli aggression; murder, rape, land theft, and as we saw yesterday, civilian massacres.

> So Iran colonized Lebanon

They haven't "colonised" anything, and, at best, it's disingenuous to describe training a resistance group as such.

> It operates as a parallel state inside Lebanon (own military, telecoms, social services, foreign policy), displacing Lebanese sovereignty in the south and Bekaa.

To claim the "officially recognised" Lebanese state is sovereign is utterly ridiculous! They are stooges, tasked with sitting back and doing nothing while Israel carries out ethnic cleansing and genocide. An MI6 front (Westminster Foundation for Democracy) even has an office inside the Lebanese parliament.

Turns out that if you take over a country's government and continuously carry out appalling attrocities against it's people for decades, they will resist.

[UltraSane]

"To claim the "officially recognised" Lebanese state is sovereign is utterly ridiculous"

Wow, this is quite a take. If Hezbollah doesn't have to respect Lebanon sovereignty then why does Israel?

"Turns out that if you take over a country's government and continuously carry out appalling attrocities against it's people for decades, they will resist."

This is just a insane conspiracy theory. Hezbollah is the organization that actually partially took over the Lebanese government with Iranian help.

Hezbollah attacks Israel with absolutely no concern for the damage Israels counterattacks will do to Lebanon.

[GordonS]

> This is just a insane conspiracy theory

Absolutely disgusting - look at the massacres Apartheid Israel committed in Lebanon just yesterday.

> Hezbollah attacks Israel with absolutely no concern for the damage Israels counterattacks will do to Lebanon

That's the same logic wife-beaters use... "it's their own fault I hit them!".

I'm not going to engage any further with your genocidal rhetoric.

[UltraSane]

Israel would not be attacking Hezbollah if Hezbollah wasn't attacking Israel. Israel just wants to exist while Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran all want to destroy it. Don't expect Israel to just passively accept this. Try to imagine how the US would react to a Mexican cartel shooting rockets at El Paso. I couldn't feel sorry for that cartel when the US counterattacked.

Let me ask you a few questions

1) do you think Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran can defeat Israel with force?

2) do you want them to?