HezbollahParliamentary elections cement Hezbollah’s hold over Lebanon
The Iranian-controlled group Hezbollah and its political allies scored significant gains in Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Lebanon, the first to be held in nine years. “Hezbollah will continue to act, to behave as if there is no Lebanese state, as if there is no Lebanese government, as if it is an entirely independent entity,” says one expert.
The Iranian-controlled terror group Hezbollah and its political allies scored significant gains in last Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Lebanon, the first to be held in nine years, according to preliminary results published on Monday.
Hezbollah — and by extension, Iran — has achieved what amounts to complete political and military control of Lebanon. According to The Wall Street Journal, the pro-Hezbollah bloc is set to take at least 71 seats in the 128-seat parliament, which enables them to veto any laws the Iranian proxy opposes.
1. “Today, Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government and therefore, if we will be forced to fight, the next war will be against the state of Lebanon, which will bear the diplomatic responsibility for Hezbollah’s actions,” Tzipi Livni, Israeli Foreign Minister during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, 5 February 2018
2. “Iran’s objectives are clear — use Hezbollah to achieve complete control in Lebanon, create a land bridge under a Shiite Caliphate to the Mediterranean Sea, and threaten Israel with sophisticated weapons capable of inflicting massive destruction on Israel’s largest cities. Hezbollah is armed with 150,000 missiles and rockets, effectively allowing them to saturation bomb Israeli population centers with 1,500 rockets and missiles per day for over three months.” – Joshua S. Block, CEO and President of The Israel Project
Key Facts
• Iranian-controlled Hezbollah exercises complete political and military control over Lebanon, including the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), political institutions, and intelligence agencies
• Lebanon used to be a diverse, semi-Christian country on the Mediterranean. It has been reduced to an Iranian client state to wage war against Israel.
• At the heart of the Trump administration’s Lebanon policy lies the fiction that the way to weaken Hezbollah is to build up Lebanese state institutions. However, strengthening a Hezbollah-controlled state is a pro-Hezbollah policy.
