This article is part of a series from the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, looking back at the situation in the Middle East over the past year. Originally published Oct. 4, 2024.
In March 1979, just a few weeks after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran, taking over the country where the Shah’s dictatorship had been overthrown by a revolution and establishing his Islamic republic, feminist and left-wing party demonstrations were attacked by clerics and sections of the youth loyal to the new head of state’s line, shouting: “There is only one party, the party of God.” These militants were quickly dubbed hezbollahi, from the Arabic “Party of God” (ḥizbuAllāh) (although Arabic is not the official language of Iran).
The Islamist movement that seized power in Iran (after the army of the Shah’s deposed regime turned in its favor), is certainly not the first of the politico-religious movements in the Middle East: the Saudi monarchy has relied on the Wahhabi clergy since its birth, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement was born in 1925 and spread throughout much of the Arab world well before the 1970s. But the Saudi royal family remains distinct from the clergy. As for the Muslim Brotherhood, it was content to act as a counterweight to limit society’s “anti-Islamic” tendencies, to play a part in society through its mosques, social works (and Islamic banks), without having the means to claim power in Egypt, where a nationalist revolution led by Nasser had overthrown the monarchy linked to British imperialism in 1952. The Muslim Brotherhood only held power momentarily (just over a year) when the army conceded it to them in order to curb the social revolt of spring 2011.
The Iranian revolution, taken over by clerics from the Shiite branch of Islam, thus marked a turning point for the region insofar as, for the first time, the clergy itself took and exercised power, overlapping with a popular revolution. This event is not unconnected with the emergence of political currents claiming to be Muslim in neighboring countries, notably the Lebanese Hezbollah.
1982-1985: Hezbollah Founded in the Midst of a Civil War and a War of Influence
Against the backdrop of the civil war from 1975 to 1990, and in the name of exporting the “Islamic revolution”, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Pasdaran, established themselves in Lebanon right from the start. They were linked to the Shiite party Amal. When, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Amal leader Nabih Berri agreed to take part in the National Salvation Committee charged with negotiating with the United States and the Hebrew state, the party’s number two, Hussein Al Moussaoui, led a split: Amal islamique. He then openly pledged allegiance to Ayatollah Khomeini.
The following year, in April 1983, a suicide attack on the US embassy in Beirut killed 63 U.S. personnel, and was claimed by a new Lebanese organization, Hezbollah. A few months later, on October 23, two attacks in the Lebanese capital killed 239 American and 58 French soldiers. They were claimed by the Islamic Jihad Organization (OJI), a Shiite group founded by Imad Mougniyah, a former PLO member with links to the Pasdaran.
Other attacks were attributed to Hezbollah, the OJI and the Pasdaran, without it being clear how these entities, linked in the civil war to Syrian interests, were to be distinguished.
Hezbollah’s formalization as a political and armed organization linked to Iran came on February 16, 1985, with the publication of its manifesto, an “Open Letter to the World’s Oppressed”. Taking up the concept founded by Ayatollah Khomeini of the “government of the learned” or “tutelage of the theologians” (in Arabic: Velayat-e faqih), Hezbollah placed itself under the authority of the Supreme Guide of the Islamic Revolution, with the aim of establishing in Lebanon a regime identical to that of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Hezbollah was therefore born under Tehran’s patronage, but with Lebanese forces already present and established, and with links to the Syrian regime.
A Primarily Nationalist Movement
It would be totally wrong to reduce Hezbollah to the status of Iran’s armed wing. It is nevertheless true that it has, in the past, carried out operations in the name of Iran. Between December 7, 1985 and September 17, 1986, it carried out fourteen attacks in Paris, killing fourteen people and wounding more than three hundred, on behalf of Iran, which, in the midst of war with Iraq, in order to put a stop to French arms sales to Saddam Hussein.
Hezbollah has also put itself at the service of its other patron, Syria. In February 2005, the Shiite movement most likely assassinated former Prime Minister, multi billionaire businessman and friend of Chirac, Rafiq Hariri, because he represented opposition to the influence of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, while 15,000 Syrian soldiers were still present in Lebanon. Above all, after the 2011 uprisings in Syria, Hezbollah took part in crushing the population’s revolt against Bashar al-Assad’s regime alongside the latter’s forces, also supported by Iran.
Finally, in Lebanon itself, Hezbollah’s primary role was to eliminate or marginalize the Palestinian forces calling for socialism, under the benevolent eye of the imperialist powers (while he carried out murderous attacks against them) and the Zionist state (whose destruction he nevertheless called for).
The emergence of religious movements capable of proclaiming themselves at the head of the anti-imperialist struggle and laying claim to power, can be largely explained by the failure of the Stalinist or social-democratic workers’ movement, incapable of assuming its independence from the so-called “progressive” bourgeoisie, and by that of the nationalist movements calling themselves “progressive”, led by the very bourgeoisie incapable of putting an end to oppression and exploitation.
In this way, Hezbollah has reached out to a largely marginalized community within Lebanon’s Shiite-speaking population, offering social works, education, medical services and assistance to the most disadvantaged, while waging effective guerrilla warfare against Israeli forces until their withdrawal in 2000. Hezbollah has established itself in the south of the country not for its references to the Velayat-e faqih (which it abandoned in its new charter in 2009), but for its anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist rhetoric and, above all, for its actions. In 1992, in its first parliamentary elections, the “Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc” coalition with Amal (as well as Christians and Sunnis, as required by Lebanese electoral law) won twelve seats.
Hezbollah’s finest hour came in the summer of 2006, in a thirty-four-day confrontation with the Israeli army. Using guerrilla tactics, tunnels and rockets to strike at a vastly superior army, Hezbollah obtained a UN-brokered ceasefire, which was seen in Lebanon, Palestine and the rest of the world as a humiliation for the State of Israel. A state which Hezbollah was thus able to claim had twice rolled back between 2000 and 2006, something no Arab regime has been able to boast of since 1948.
A Policing Party
Since April 2005, Hezbollah has occupied at least one ministry in every Lebanese government.
This was also the case in 2009, in the government led by Saad Hariri, son of Rafiq Hariri, at the head of a pro-Western coalition. The coalition led by Hezbollah, Amal and the Free Patriotic Movement (CPL) of Maronite general Michel Aoun, known as the March 8th coalition, in reference to the demonstration on March 8, 2005, shortly after Hariri’s assassination, in support of the Syrian army’s presence, won the legislative elections in terms of the number of votes cast, but not in terms of the number of elected representatives, due to denominational suffrage.
Behind the alliances, U-turns and political dealings, there was, and still is, a compromise between two wings of the Lebanese bourgeoisie, one preferring to look to Paris and Washington, the other to Damascus and Teheran, in order above all to defend its interests as the national ruling class. The current head of government, Najib Mikati, in power since 2021 and who had already succeeded Saad Hariri in 2011, is certainly distinguished by his pro-Syrian orientation. But what both politicians have in common is that they are, above all, billionaires.
Between 2019 and 2021, a vast popular movement shook Lebanon against the cost of living, notably after the announcement of new taxes on gasoline, tobacco and WhatsApp calls, against corruption and against religious divisions in Lebanese society. On several occasions, these demonstrations targeted offices and residences of Hezbollah officials, just as corrupt and unpopular as their counterparts in the country’s Christian and Sunni bourgeoisie.
Hezbollah showed its class loyalty by organizing counter-demonstrations and even violent clashes against the movement.
Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who has just been killed, had even opposed the resignation of the government, including after the explosions in the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, which killed over two hundred people and left thousands homeless, showing once again the negligence and corruption that allowed tons of ammonium nitrate to be stored in the port.
In the current situation, it’s hard to say how Hezbollah will overcome the unprecedented attack launched by the State of Israel, from the beeper explosions to the assassination of Nasrallah. It’s hard to say whether this offensive will have the effect of weakening Hezbollah for good, or of rallying a section of the population around it, particularly the Shiites.
“Terrorist” for the United States and the European Union, but also a “respectable party in Lebanon”, according to Macron in 2020: that Hezbollah, like other reactionary nationalist movements, has become a major force of resistance to Israeli attacks and Western domination is the result of the failure of the workers’ movement and its repression, leaving the place vacant in these struggles to this type of movement in the name of nationalism and religion.
Of course, its elimination by the Israeli colonial state or any other imperialist power, if at all conceivable, would in no way help the exploited and oppressed masses to take their affairs into their own hands and find the path to emancipation.
Jean-Baptiste Pelé
