Hezbollah Quotes

Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.

But blaming Islam is a simple answer, easier and less controversial than re-examining the core political issues and grievances that resonate in much of the Muslim world: the failures of many Muslim governments and societies, some aspects of U.S. foreign policy representing intervention and dominance, Western support for authoritarian regimes, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, or support for Israel's military battles with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. (p. 136-137)

We will consider every hand who will try to take our weapons, as an Israeli hand.

When I am alone with God I see that God is really all I have. All that matters. All that will last. At these times I realize that the magnitude of what I have is incomprehensible. Usually I cry for the sheer joy of it. Not tears of defeat, but rather tears of gratitude.

A Christian in many American circles, for example, means 'right-wing, gun-toting fanatic who hates Democrats.' As such, a pacifist Democrat who called himself a Christian in those circles, would be lying, albeit unwittingly. To most of this world, America is Christian, just as to most Americans being an Arab means being a Muslim. Both labels have only limited usefulness. I have been called a Christian writer, but I'm not a right-wing, gun-toting fanatic who hates Democrats, not by a long shot. So am I a Christian? Yes and no - it depends on what Christian means to you. . . But labels are almost impossible to shed.

If you want to judge if a party is a Lebanese enough, let me say we take up arms and fight against the occupation of our land, is that Lebanese enough?

The sun began to set behind Bethlehem and the beams were breaking through some white and gray clouds. There was a slight and beautiful chill from the autumn air. I gave thanks for that beautiful day and for the fact that the sun does not know Palestinian from Israeli, Christian from Muslim or Jew, and Asian from American or African, and I asked myself: If the sun shines on all of us as one, how much more does the sun's Creator see and love us all as one?

You see, Yousef, you can't force someone in their hearts to believe the way you do. They all tried and failed. They judged by their own convictions--not even by the truth of the teachings of Isa. No one is above God's judgment. No one has the right to judge for him.

The little boats cannot make much difference to the welfare of Gaza either way, since the materials being shipped are in such negligible quantity. The chief significance of the enterprise is therefore symbolic. And the symbolism, when examined even cursorily, doesn't seem too adorable. The intended beneficiary of the stunt is a ruling group with close ties to two of the most retrograde dictatorships in the Middle East, each of which has recently been up to its elbows in the blood of its own civilians. The same group also manages to maintain warm relations with, or at the very least to make cordial remarks about, both Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Meanwhile, a document that was once accurately described as a 'warrant for genocide' forms part of the declared political platform of the aforesaid group. There is something about this that fails to pass a smell test.

Iran also continues to provide seemingly “limitless support” to the Hezbollah terror organization in Lebanon. In 2006,

The elite are the men of religion, political leaders, media and press people, and teachers. Everyone can understand the truth and know what is right. These have the responsibility of showing this right and truth to the people. They should not remain silent....It is the responsibility of people to look for right and truth. As they hear me now, they should not accept everything I say. Even the masses of Hezbollah and the resistance should not do so....Forget what my faith is and what yours is. Hear what I say and see what I do and hear what others say and see what they do, and then decide.

Why care about other people’s six-year-olds who’ll never perform anything because they died when Israeli bulldozers or Hezbollah rockets destroyed their homes? They’re not our kids. We’re clever enough to be born where such things don’t happen.

What the West does not understand about Islamism is that Jihad is very systematic. It has stages. If Muslims have the upper hand, then Jihad is waged by force. If Muslims do not have the upper hand, then Jihad is waged through financial and political means. Since Muslims do not have the upper hand in America or Europe, they talk about peace in front of you while supporting Hamas and Hezbollah in the back room. The whole idea of Islam being a peaceful religion emanates from that silent stage of Jihad.

Yael chipped in: “He is trying to sell this artifact he stole. The people he is trying to sell it to are extremely dangerous. People who might kill him, if they need to, to get the stone.” Virgil added, “Hezbollah, among others.” Yael added, “And Texans.

What kind of self-centered bastard would miss his own daughter’s star turn? Why care about other people’s six-year-olds who’ll never perform anything because they died when Israeli bulldozers or Hezbollah rockets destroyed their homes? They’re not our kids. We’re clever enough to be born where such things don’t happen. See the problem, Seymour?

I didn't want any surprises; I churlishly thought if I revealed my Judaism at McDonald's, I would somehow be protected by the friendly American forces of crispy chicken sandwiches and supersized French fries.

The non-state organizations that wage it rely largely on terrorism, guerrilla tactics, and popular insurgencies. However, they also engage in small-scale conventional warfare. The perfect examples are Hezbollah in 2006 and Daesh (ISIS) in 2014–2015. Neither organization is a state. Neither maintains the usual distinctions between government, armed forces, and people. However, both have enough money, troops, and conventional weapons to do more than wage terrorism and guerrilla alone.

During his first months in office Clinton did not think of Afghanistan as a major base for international terrorism, he told colleagues years later. He was more seriously concerned about state sponsors of terrorism, such as Iraq and Iran, and about Shiite groups such as Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, which had killed dozens of Americans during the 1980s. Clinton knew nothing of bin Laden during the first few years of his presidency. As for Afghanistan’s war, the issue languished mainly from inertia, Lake said later; it had not been a major issue in the late Bush administration, either.3

Israel is not just any small country. It is the only small country - the only country, period - whose neighbors publicly declare its very existence an affront to law, morality and religion and make its extinction an explicit , paramount national goal. Iran, Libya, and Iraq conduct foreign policies designed for the killing of Israelis and the destruction of their state. They choose their allies (Hamas, Hezbollah) and develop their weapons (suicide bombs, poison gas, anthrax, nuclear missiles) accordingly. Countries as far away as Malaysia will not allow a representative of Israel on their soil or even permit the showing of 'Schindler's List' lest it engender sympathy for Zion.

We have a better understanding today of what triggered such a furious Israeli reaction. In their book Boomerang, two senior Israeli journalists, Ofer Shelah and Raviv Drucker, interviewed the General Chief of Staff and strategists in the Ministry of Defence and offered inside knowledge on the way these officials and generals were thinking about the issue.12 Their conclusion was that in the summer of 2000 the IDF was a frustrated outfit following its humiliating defeat by Hezbollah in Lebanon, who had forced the army to withdraw totally from Lebanon. There was a fear that this retreat made the army look weak. And so a show of strength was much needed. The reassertion of dominance within the occupied Palestinian territories was just the kind of display of sheer power the ‘invincible’ Israeli army needed

What the West does not understand about Islamism is that Jihad is very systematic. It has stages. If Muslims have the upper hand, then Jihad is waged by force. If Muslims do not have the upper hand, then Jihad is waged through financial and political means. Since Muslims do not have the upper hand in America or Europe, they talk about peace in front of you while supporting Hamas and Hezbollah in the back room. The whole idea of Islam being a peaceful religion emanates from that silent stage of Jihad. Sheikh Qaradawi has taught Muslims this form of trickery at conferences in the U.S., I have it on video. At one conference, Qaradawi used the example of Salahu-Deen Al-Ayubi (Saladin). Saladin was asked to concede to peace with the verse from the Qur’an 8:61, “And if they incline to peace, then incline to it and trust in Allah.” However, from Qur’an 47:35, he replied, “And be not slack so as to cry for peace and you have the upper hand.”93

We had reached a “decisive moment” in the conflict, I began. Seventy-five hundred lives had been lost, and the regime was committing crimes against humanity. Most of the world had turned against Assad. The Arab League had expelled Syria and the U.N. General Assembly had rebuked the regime, though Russia and China used their vetoes to protect Assad in the Security Council. The Russians hadn’t yet intervened militarily, though Moscow and Beijing were supplying arms and other assistance to the regime. Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world, and Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, had deployed fighters to the conflict. There were already Revolutionary Guard officers in Syria, but the full extent of Iran’s involvement was a year away. ISIS hadn’t yet exploited the conflict to establish the center of its caliphate. Had the U.S. and Europe intervened in that first year of the conflict, eliminated Assad’s airpower advantage, and provided the FSA arms and munitions, including antitank weapons, I believe it would have been decisive. The regime would have collapsed and Assad, if he had survived, would likely have fled the country. Hundreds of thousands of lives might have been spared.

He was walking down a narrow street in Beirut, Lebanon, the air thick with the smell of Arabic coffee and grilled chicken. It was midday, and he was sweating badly beneath his flannel shirt. The so-called South Lebanon conflict, the Israeli occupation, which had begun in 1982 and would last until 2000, was in its fifth year. The small white Fiat came screeching around the corner with four masked men inside. His cover was that of an aid worker from Chicago and he wasn’t strapped. But now he wished he had a weapon, if only to have the option of ending it before they took him. He knew what that would mean. The torture first, followed by the years of solitary. Then his corpse would be lifted from the trunk of a car and thrown into a drainage ditch. By the time it was found, the insects would’ve had a feast and his mother would have nightmares, because the authorities would not allow her to see his face when they flew his body home. He didn’t run, because the only place to run was back the way he’d come, and a second vehicle had already stopped halfway through a three-point turn, all but blocking off the street. They exited the Fiat fast. He was fit and trained, but he knew they’d only make it worse for him in the close confines of the car if he fought them. There was a time for that and a time for raising your hands, he’d learned. He took an instep hard in the groin, and a cosh over the back of his head as he doubled over. He blacked out then. The makeshift cell Hezbollah had kept him in in Lebanon was a bare concrete room, three metres square, without windows or artificial light. The door was wooden, reinforced with iron strips. When they first dragged him there, he lay in the filth that other men had made. They left him naked, his wrists and ankles chained. He was gagged with rag and tape. They had broken his nose and split his lips. Each day they fed him on half-rancid scraps like he’d seen people toss to skinny dogs. He drank only tepid water. Occasionally, he heard the muted sound of children laughing, and smelt a faint waft of jasmine. And then he could not say for certain how long he had been there; a month, maybe two. But his muscles had wasted and he ached in every joint. After they had said their morning prayers, they liked to hang him upside down and beat the soles of his feet with sand-filled lengths of rubber hose. His chest was burned with foul-smelling cigarettes. When he was stubborn, they lay him bound in a narrow structure shaped like a grow tunnel in a dusty courtyard. The fierce sun blazed upon the corrugated iron for hours, and he would pass out with the heat. When he woke up, he had blisters on his skin, and was riddled with sand fly and red ant bites. The duo were good at what they did. He guessed the one with the grey beard had honed his skills on Jewish conscripts over many years, the younger one on his own hapless people, perhaps. They looked to him like father and son. They took him to the edge of consciousness before easing off and bringing him back with buckets of fetid water. Then they rubbed jagged salt into the fresh wounds to make him moan with pain. They asked the same question over and over until it sounded like a perverse mantra. “Who is The Mandarin? His name? Who is The Mandarin?” He took to trying to remember what he looked like, the architecture of his own face beneath the scruffy beard that now covered it, and found himself flinching at the slightest sound. They had peeled back his defences with a shrewdness and deliberation that had both surprised and terrified him. By the time they freed him, he was a different man.  

The Koran is empathetic about the rights of other religions to practice their own beliefs. It unequivocally condemns attacks on civilians as a violation of Islam. It states that suicide, of any type, is an abomination. The tactic of suicide bombing, equated by many of the new atheists with Islam, did not arise from the Muslim world. This kind of terror, in fact, has its roots in radical Western ideologies, especially Leninism, not religion. And it was the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist group that draws its support from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, which invented the suicide vest for their May 1991 suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Suicide bombing is what you do when you do not have artillery or planes or missiles and you want to create maximum terror for an occupying power. It was used by secular anarchists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They bequeathed to us the first version of the car bomb: a horse-drawn wagon laden with explosives that was ignited on September 16, 1920, on Wall Street. The attack was carried out by Mario Buda, an Italian immigrant, in protest over the arrest of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. It left 40 people dead and wounded more than 200. Suicide bombing was adopted later by Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Hamas. But even in the Middle East, suicide bombing is not restricted to Muslims. In Lebanon during the suicide attacks in the 1980s against French, American and Israeli targets, only eight suicide bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were the work of communists and socialists. Three were carried out by Christians.

If we cannot understand the depth of feeling in the Muslim world toward Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islam as a political force, then we will be doomed to failure in every encounter we have with the world.

Among the crowd at the Colony was Juan Carlos Gumucio, known to many as JC, a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El País. Marie knew him as a friend and something of a legend, as he had stayed in Beirut during the war while others left, surviving partly because his barrel belly, wild black hair, and thick beard made him look like a member of Hezbollah.

President Obama’s proposed deal makes military conflict with Irana virtual certainty. Under the terms that have been publicly announced, Iran will keep its nuclear centrifuges, will keep its enriched uranium, and will keep developing its ICBM program (which exists for the sole purpose of carrying a nuclear weapon to America). Under the terms of the deal, Iran will receive billions of dollars — which it will surely use to keep developing nuclear weapons. And, becauseIran will remain the leading state sponsor of terrorism (the deal does nothing to change that), those billions of dollars will also be funneled directly to Hezbollah and Hamas and radical Islamic terrorists across the world. Along

Throughout history there have been populations that have lived in desperation, and none of them have resorted to the intentional targeting and murder of children as an officially practiced and widely praised mode of achieving political ends. When extremist elements of otherwise legitimate liberation movements such as the Republican Sinn Fein have committed such atrocities, their actions have been unconditionally condemned by the civilized world, and their political objectives have been discredited by their vile crimes. This is not so with the Palestinians. Once upon a time there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now that place is in the pantheon of Palestinian heroes. Now that behavior is legitimized as ‘armed struggle’ against Israeli ‘occupation’ by, among others, the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Commission, and the European Union. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the rise of Hamas in 1987, the campaign to destroy Israel has taken on an ugly, fanatic religious tone. Holy obligation reinforces (and is replacing) Palestinian nationalism as the motivation for committing terrorist murder. As we have seen the secular, ‘moderate’ factions of the Palestinian nationalist movement (such as Abbas’s Fatah Party) will shrink into insignificance, and is replaced by terrorist Islamic factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Hamas receives financial and material support from the same sources as al Qaeda, and from al Qaeda directly. Islamic Jihad receives financial and material support from Iran, directly and through Hezbollah. These are the same international criminal entities that wage religion-based terror war against the United States. They do it for the same reason and by the same means: to make Islam supreme in the world, by the sword or the suicide bomb.

Los asesinos de Siria son tanto los descendientes de los sicarios judíos como los antepasados de los terroristas suicidas del Hezbollah.

In Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting nonstate opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.

Decía que el método podía haber sido extranjero, pero que la ejecución había estado en manos de locales y no de Hezbollah. Se basaba en que muchos nazis se habían refugiado en la Argentina después de la Segunda Guerra, que existía afinidad ideológica con los nazis en las fuerzas armadas y de seguridad y que los explosivos podían conseguirse en la Argentina.

Whether these politicians lack understanding of the law or simply seek to circumvent it by using corporate regulations instead is unclear. But in the case of both Hamas and Hezbollah, we need to ask: What is the impact in Palestine and Lebanon, where these groups are powerful players in local politics—local politics that have no shortage of violent actors? Azza El Masri is a media researcher from Lebanon who, for the past several years, has studied content moderation. “Is Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and its participation in the Iran-KSA proxy war tantamount to terrorist activities? Yes,” she told me in a text message. “However, this doesn’t absolve the fact that Hezbollah today is the most powerful political actor in Lebanon.” Lebanon’s political scene is, to the outsider, messy and difficult to parse. After the fifteen-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands, the country’s parliament instituted a law that pardoned all political crimes prior to its enactment, allowing the groups that were formerly militias to form political parties. Only Hezbollah—an Iran-sponsored creation to unify the country’s Shia population during the war—was allowed by the postwar Syrian occupation to retain its militia. The United States designated Hezbollah (which translates to “Party of God”) a foreign terrorist organization in 1995, more than a decade after the group bombed US military barracks in Beirut.

For better or worse, Hezbollah remains a major player in contemporary Lebanese politics, as El Masri points out, and the willingness of tech companies to cave to US pressure has an immeasurable impact on the country’s political scene.

Over the years, lawmakers in several countries have implored tech companies to go above and beyond the law to remove certain designated groups, in particular Hamas and Hezbollah—calls which have at times succeeded.43 Most recently, a 2019 letter from sixteen members of US Congress to Twitter to ban Hamas resulted in the company caving, after first pushing back, and banning accounts from both groups.44

Other countries, such as the United Kingdom and the European Union—as well as Twitter—make the distinction between Hezbollah’s military wing and its political arm—putting only the former on their blacklists—while still others do not list Hezbollah at all.

The modern equivalents of the Psalm 83 confederates are: tents of Edom (Palestinian Refugees and Southern Jordanians), Ishmaelites (Saudi Arabians), Moab (Palestinian Refugees and Central Jordanians), Hagrite^ (Egyptians), Gebal (Northern Lebanese), Ammon (Palestinian Refugees and Northern Jordanians), Amalek (Arabs South of Israel), Philistia (Palestinian Refugees and Hamas of the Gaza Strip), inhabitants of Tyre (Hezbollah and Southern Lebanese), Assyria (Syrians and perhaps Northern Iraqi’s), and the children of Lot (Moab and Ammon above).17

Terry Anderson, the American journalist who was held hostage for almost seven years by the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, relates a telling conversation he had with one of his guards. The guard had objected to a newspaper article that referred to Hezbollah as terrorists. “We are not terrorists,” he indignantly stated, “we are fighters.” Anderson replied, “Hajj, you are a terrorist, look it up in the dictionary. You are a terrorist, you may not like the word and if you do not like the word, do not do it.”84 The terrorist will always argue that it is society or the government or the socioeconomic “system” and its laws that are the real “terrorists,” and moreover that if it were not for this oppression, he would not have felt the need to defend either himself or the population he claims to represent.

Some of the terrorists Gregory tried to control decided to stay rogue. They didn’t want anything to do with a heathen from America and would not be told what to do, even if he did have a lot of money. One such group was known as Islamic Jihad, who began their campaign of terror during the Civil War in Lebanon. They began with the bombing of the French Embassy in Beirut, followed by the bombing of the United States Embassy a year later, and then the bombing of a barracks containing a multinational force of French paratroopers and American Marines. The group also went after civilians, assassinated the President of the American University in Beirut, and also attempted to assassinate the Kuwaiti ruler, but that failed. Eventually, their downfall came about when they tried to abduct Soviet diplomats, but the KGB came down hard on the group, which caused some other Middle Eastern countries to enter the fray. Eventually, Islamic Jihad merged with Hezbollah.

The tour of the amusement park–like campus included a chat with Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. I shared with him Israel’s concerns about Google Earth, the global mapping program, which terrorists had used as a targeting device. Google Earth, Schmidt explained, was designed to bring people closer together. “Yes,” I acknowledged, “but does it have to bring Hezbollah closer to my children?

The synchronized suicide attacks that Sunday morning resulted in the deaths of 299 U.S. and French peacekeepers and scores of wounded. The cost to Hezbollah was two suicide bombers.

Osama bin Laden drew inspiration from Hezbollah’s dual suicide attacks against the multinational forces in Beirut in 1983. Al Qaeda’s first simultaneous suicide attacks on two U.S. embassies in eastern Africa on August 7, 1998, were directly modeled on Hezbollah’s 1983 attacks. Al Qaeda’s coordinated suicide missions expanded the model three years later for four simultaneous airplane hijackings on September 11, 2001. The nineteen Islamic jihadists, who were armed only with box cutters, successfully hijacked four commercial planes to carry out their suicide mission. Their bravado spoke for itself in that they didn’t even bother to have a backup plan.

That cult of martyrdom proved equally important to Shia politics in Lebanon, where Hezbollah used it to launch its campaign of suicide bombing against the Israeli army in the 1980s. The willingness to die for the Shia cause was a watershed in Middle East politics. It gave Iran’s revolutionary Islamic regime an edge in pursuing its domestic and international goals, and it made Islamic extremism and terrorism more lethal by encouraging what were in the 1980s called “martyrdom missions.” In the Middle Eastern context at least (the Hindu Tamils of Sri Lanka have also extensively used suicide bombers), willingness to die for the cause has until fairly recently been seen as a predominantly Shia phenomenon, tied to the myths of Karbala and the Twelfth Imam.

AL QAEDA SPENT ABOUT $500,000 TO PRODUCE 9/11, WHEREAS THE direct losses of that day’s destruction plus the costs of the American response to the attacks were $3.3 trillion. In other words, for every dollar Al Qaeda spent planning and executing the attacks, the United States spent $7 million.1 The costs of 9/11 equal one-fifth of the US national debt. In 2006, Hezbollah fired a precision-guided cruise missile at an Israeli ship

As the current U.S.-Israel assault raged, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained that Israel’s tactics in the current attack, as in its invasion of Lebanon in 2006, are based on the sound principle of “trying to ‘educate’ Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population.” That makes sense on pragmatic grounds, as it did in Lebanon, where “the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians—the families and employers of the militants—to restrain Hezbollah in the future.”10 And by similar logic, bin Laden’s effort to “educate” Americans on 9/11 was highly praiseworthy, as were the Nazi attacks on Lidice and Oradour, Putin’s destruction of Grozny, and other notable educational exercises.

When Iran exported its jihad to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Muslim Brotherhood in several regions around the world, these all indirectly threatened the United States. These terrorists threatened our greatest ally in the region, Israel, while destabilizing countries we depend on to help bring security to that area. These terrorists harm our allies with violence while sowing hatred for our values, thus hurting our national interests abroad. Until 2001, these organizations had not historically attempted to carry out terrorist attacks on the American homeland. With the Sunni-Shiite divide once again put on the back burner to tackle a bigger enemy, the relationship between al-Qaeda, another Sunni terrorist organization, and the Shiite regime in Iran is all about destroying the United States of America. Their relationship began a long time before the United States even knew about al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden as public enemy number one.1 Today, ISIS is perhaps public enemy number one. Yet the most interesting trait common to ISIS, al-Qaeda, Iran, and every other Islamic terrorist group is this: they are all motivated by the same anti-Western, jihadist ideology.

Sovereignty with no reciprocal recognition of a Jewish state. Statehood without negotiations. An independent Palestine in a continued state of war with Israel. Israel gave up land without peace in South Lebanon in 2000 and, in return, received war—the Lebanon war of 2006—and 50,000 Hezbollah missiles now targeted on the Israeli homeland. In 2005, Israel gave up land without peace in Gaza, and again was rewarded with war—and constant rocket attack from an openly genocidal Palestinian mini-state. Israel is prepared

Despite the efforts of the regime to marginalize him, Montazeri is still the marja-e taqlid for many religious Iranians, along with others who keep a certain distance from the regime. Another important example is Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, who has stated directly that the possession or use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable, and that Iran did not retaliate with chemical weapons against Saddam because marjas concurred that weapons of mass destruction as a whole were unacceptable. Sanei has also issued a fatwa against suicide bombings. Although Shi‘as may have been responsible for the devastating suicide attack against the U.S. marine headquarters in Beirut in 1983, Lebanese Hezbollah later stopped using the tactic and since then to my knowledge Shi‘a Muslims have not perpetrated suicide attacks.

In the 1980s and 1990s, however, thousands of Egyptians were forced conscripts and paid fighters constituting the bulk of Iraq's 200,000 reservoir in its war with Iran. The ‘Egyptian fighter’ was also absent from the Arabs' most important struggle against Israel in the last thirty years: the Israeli–Hezbollah wars in southern Lebanon. Also, today, an Arab nationalist identity based on the old premise of an Egyptian leadership does not match the reality of the developmental state of Egyptian society relative to its supposed constituency (the Arab world).

Later that day, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm a secretary of defense who had a record of undermining our ally Israel, rationalizing the terrorism of Hezbollah and Hamas, expressing openness to allowing Iran to build a nuclear weapon, and affirmatively withholding information about whether he had received funding from foreign governments hostile to the United States. It was not a proud day for the Senate.

Iran’s zeal to export the Islamic Revolution and expand its network of terror did not end with the creation of Hezbollah. That was simply the beginning. A much larger and more sinister goal is afoot. And in order to achieve this goal, Iran is creating a network of terror with a global geographic reach. In order to defeat Israel and the United States, Iran is working with its centuries-old rivals, even funding certain terrorist groups in some regions while battling those same entities in other regions. These unholy alliances between Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas destabilize communities, murder countless humans, and endanger our national security.

One of the results of the Islamic Revolution spreading outside Iran was the creation of Hezbollah, a Shiite terrorist organization in Lebanon. The organization’s name declares its dedication and commitment to Islam. The word Hezbollah is derived from the Arabic Hizb Allah, which means “party or fellowship of Allah.”2 This phrase comes from a Quranic verse (Surah al-Ma’idah, 5:56), which appears in red letters at the top of Hezbollah’s yellow-and-green flag: “The fellowship of Allah that must certainly triumph.”3 At its formation in 1982, Hezbollah was inspired by the ideology behind the Iranian Revolution and its principal leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.4 It adheres to Khomeini’s vision of an Islamic cleric-ruled state,5 vilayat-e-faqih, and thus views Iran as the ultimate example of the successful implementation of that vision. The group reveres Khomeini as the “divinely inspired ruler” of the community of true Muslim believers and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s current Supreme Leader, as the modern “Legal Guardian of Muslims.”6 Hezbollah believes that Allah has established Iran as the “nucleus of the world’s central Islamic state.”7

Recent U.S. foreign policy has done more than simply allow these dangerous forces to multiply and to gain control of an increasingly unstable Middle East. It has also actively compounded the problem through the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.53 The JCPOA, announced in 2015, came about after years of negotiations between Iran and the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany, the so-called P5+1.54 President Obama entered office wanting to negotiate with Iran, making clear he was willing to do whatever it took. As soon as the Obama administration sent senior advisor Valerie Jarrett to negotiate through back channels, Iran knew how desperate the Obama administration was. The Iranians sensed this desperation, which allowed them to get everything they wanted while giving up virtually nothing in return. The deal completely capitulates to Iran, providing very broad relief from existing sanctions in coming years as well as the ability to recover billions of dollars’ worth of hard currency presently frozen abroad in foreign banks.55 Frozen Iranian assets based in the United States, including oil, petrochemical, and investment companies, will also be lifted.56 Estimates suggest that loosening sanctions will provide Iran up to $150 billion in assets currently tied up.57 That’s billions to terrorists around the world who hate America. That’s billions to President Assad in Syria to kill his own citizens and use chemical weapons on children. That’s billions to Hamas to launch rockets toward innocent Israeli civilians. That’s billions to Hezbollah. That’s billions in payments to Russia for weapons that violate international sanctions, money that Russia can, in violation of international law, use to attack its neighbors. What has Iran promised the United States and the world in return? Iran has agreed to relax its uranium enrichment efforts and repurpose some of its nuclear facilities for peaceful operations.58 Yet there is considerable fear that Iran will leverage the removal of trade restrictions and the $150 billion it is receiving to build nuclear weapons and to support terrorism worldwide.

David Petraeus, when he became the top US general in Iraq, got to know Suleimani quite well, referring to the master spy as “evil” and mulling whether or not to tell President Bush that “Iran is, in fact, waging war on the United States in Iraq, with all of the US public and governmental responses that could come from that revelation.” For Petraeus, Iran had “gone beyond merely striving for influence in Iraq and could be creating proxies to actively fight us, thinking that they [could] keep us distracted while they [tried] to build WMD and set up [the Mahdi Army] to act like Lebanese Hezbollah in Iraq.

It would be bad for Lebanon and for the Middle East if the U.S. withdraws from the region. We will face a different Arab and Muslim world. It is very strange and ironic that even the pro-Iranians in Iraq are asking the Americans to stay. You could write a theater about it. Making the Americans totally withdraw from the Arab world would be a mistake, would be a disaster for the moderates in the Arab world. The radicals and the Iranians would win.

According to the Pulitzer Foundation, “Most of Hezbollah’s support comes from drug trafficking, a major moneymaker endorsed by the mullahs through a particular fatwa. In addition to the production and trade of heroin in the Middle East, Hezbollah facilitates, for a fee, the trafficking of other drug smuggling networks, such as the FARC, in the case of cocaine.”4

Yet Colonel Samir Basri was the clearest vision of a protean figure if there ever was one. Indefatigably shrewd and bursting with native wit—despite his corrupting and condemnable demons—Basri was the only indispensable ingredient in Lebanon’s hopelessly complex blend of sectarian wrangling. He had a knack for navigating the sprawl, the tangled web of factions that delineated a most complex cast of characters: Shiites, Sunnis, Druze, Maronite Christians, moderates, radicals and the bundle of suicidal, homicidal maniacs—all of them respected Colonel Samir Basri’s word. That trust, a voice that all could stomach, had led Basri to become a valuable mediator between the Lebanese security services and Hezbollah. The access TOPSAIL willingly provided to CIA made his hefty fee of fifty thousand dollars per meeting a bargain

Because I know what you seek!” the faceless American snapped, a gentle spasm in his left hand. “You seek war…the last war, a war that will run Israel back under the sea from whence it came. I can, and will, give you that war, for a small price. You, with my assistance, will draw the United States into attacking your old masters in Iran—the same masters who abandoned you here to rot. In exchange, I will take Hezbollah from those spineless clerics, and hand it, to you.” “And how do you intend to do that?” “By making you and your band a nuclear power.” Al-Din stared down his guest. “And you? What do you seek?” The faceless American hissed, “Chaos.

The Quds Force…created a separate unit for terrorist operations called Unit 400, which is responsible for the provision of military support, training and guidance to terrorist agents and guerilla organizations in various parts of the world. The Quds Force uses foreign agents in countries in which it has influence, such as members of the Lebanese Hezbollah, to conduct its terrorist operations.

…the Arab section of MOIS’s foreign affairs division….One of the mandates of this office related to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Ansar Allah emerged in the 1990s. Its founder was Hussein al-Houthi, who denounced Saleh as the living personification of the “unjust ruler” that figures in Zaydi theology. Houthi traveled to both Iran and Sudan for religious education. He had returned to Yemen to build a Zaydi militia and lead the rebellion against Saleh in the name of piety and fighting corruption—and resisting the encroachment of fundamentalist proselytizing from neighboring Saudi Arabia. His 2002 sermon, “A Scream in the Face of the Arrogant,” reflected the rhetoric of revolutionary Iran. Ansar Allah found the model for its new militia in Hezbollah. Houthi studied videos of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and celebrated how “Nasrallah’s powerful words” were “shaking Israel.

Houthi was killed by Saleh’s forces in 2004. Thereafter, his fervent followers took his name—the Houthis. They also received support from Iran and Hezbollah.

Yemen may be a prototype for a chaos nation. It has also, because of its strategic location, turned into a critical battleground in the great rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the modern Middle East. “From now on, we can’t speak about [the] Syrian army, Hezbollah, Yemeni army, Iraqi army, and Iranian army,” Hezbollah television announced. “We must speak about one resistance axis operating in all theaters.

government and its Iranian and Hezbollah allies. But ISIS was distinguished by its organization, capabilities, fervor, and violence. It proclaimed that the other Islamic rebels, including Al Qaeda, were apostates who were to be killed “wherever you find them.

manifest in the IRGC’s support for armed proxies like the Lebanon-based Shiite militia Hezbollah and the military wing of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas—made the Iranian regime Israel’s single greatest security threat and contributed to the general hardening of Israeli attitudes toward possible peace with its neighbors.

With all of these platforms having their headquarters in the West and their reliance on those lists to inform their policies related to extremist and dangerous groups, applying a universal view of terrorism to local complex contexts such as Lebanon’s allows for the weaponization of these policies in the interest of one side of the political equation,” she says. “The [de-platforming] of the group presents Hezbollah within a Western lens—as a terrorist group—and erases the political history of this group and its current participation in local and regional politics. This doesn’t just mean in its dealing with Iran, but also in the context of representation at a governmental, parliamentary, and municipal level as well as in unions and syndicates.

You’re absolutely certain this War of Gog and Magog has never happened before?” they pressed. “Yes,” he replied directly. “So you’re certain these are End Times prophecies?” “What does the text say?” he asked. “It says this will happen in the ‘last days.’” “Do you think this will come to pass soon?” “I don’t know,” Birjandi conceded. “But what’s intriguing to me is that as you examine the text carefully, you’ll see at least three prerequisites before the prophecy may fully come to pass.” “What are they?” Ali asked. “First,” Birjandi explained, “Israel must be reborn as a country. Second, Israel must be ‘living securely’ in the land. And third, Israel must be prosperous. Let’s consider these in reverse order.” He paused for a moment, then inquired, “Do you feel Israel is prosperous?” “Yes, of course,” Ibrahim said. “Why?” “Well, it’s certainly better off economically than any of its immediate neighbors.” “That’s true,” Birjandi said. “Israel as a nation is wealthier than Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon, and its economic growth rate is far better than Egypt’s. In fact, the Israeli economy is consistently growing at 4 or 5 percent a year—faster than any of the major industrialized countries of the West, including the United States. And did you know that the Israelis have in recent years discovered massive amounts of natural gas offshore? There is even growing speculation that there may be enough to make Israel not only energy independent but a net exporter of natural gas, mostly to Europe. And which European country would be harmed most if Israel began selling massive amounts of natural gas?” “Russia,” Ali said. “Exactly, but why?” Birjandi pressed. “Because right now they’re the major supplier of gas to Europe, and the Kremlin is getting filthy rich as a result.” “Correct again. Now let us consider Israel’s security. Obviously at the moment, the Israelis cannot be described as living securely in the land. But what if they win this war? What if they destroy all of Iran’s nuclear warheads and decimate most of our offensive military capabilities and shame the Twelfth Imam? What if they pulverize Hamas and Hezbollah, too? Wouldn’t that suddenly make them more secure than at any time since 1948?” They agreed that it would. “But you know what’s most remarkable of all?” Birjandi asked them. “So many skeptics say that the events of Ezekiel 38 and 39 will never take place, but the fact is that Ezekiel 36 and 37 have already come to pass.

Shia Iran is currently fighting the Islamic State, a Sunni group, in Iraq, which has a Shia majority. Meanwhile, Iran has also helped prop up the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad (an Alawite whose sect is associated with Twelver Shia), who is still fighting a civil war against Sunni rebels financed by nations like Sunni Saudi Arabia. Iran and Syria have both historically been primary sponsors of Hezbollah, a Shia militia of considerable strength in Lebanon.

Suicide bombings, introduced into the region by Hezbollah in the 1980s, were inaugurated by the Palestinian fundamentalists after the Goldstein massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

The United States could afford to leave Afghanistan, albeit with tragic consequences for the Afghan people, who would again be subjugated by the Taliban, because that country was thousands of miles away from America. But an Israeli withdrawal from large areas in Judea and Samaria would place the Islamists a few thousand meters from all of our major cities. We would hand the hills around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to Hamas. A terrorist organization supported by Iran and committed to our destruction would take over the heart of our homeland and threaten our survival. US officials repeatedly underestimated the power of the Islamists and overestimated the power of their non-Islamist allies. Unless you have forces with an equal commitment to fight and die to defend their country, the Islamists eventually win. As long as Israeli forces held on to territories adjoining Israel, the Islamists would be kept at bay. The minute we vacated those territories, the Islamists would take over, as did Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

called in Boogie Yaalon, whom I had recently appointed as defense minister, to hear the American proposal with me. Allen laid out a presentation of US technological monitors that would be placed along the border. He said this would obviate the need for permanently stationed Israeli forces along the Jordan. As for the internal policing against terrorism within the Palestinian areas, the US would train the Palestinian security forces to do the job. I responded that shortly after Israel left Gaza, those same Palestinian Authority security forces caved to Hamas terrorists. “This is different,” Kerry said. “These forces would be trained by us.” He then made an extraordinary proposal. “Bibi, I want to arrange a clandestine visit for you to Afghanistan. You’ll see with your own eyes what a great job we did there to prepare the Afghan army to take over the country once we leave.” Yaalon and I looked at each other. Our glances said everything. “John,” I said, “the minute you leave Afghanistan the Taliban will mop up the force you trained in no time.” Boogie concurred completely. In 2021, that is exactly what happened. Once the US withdrew its last forces, the US-trained Afghan military crumbled into dust in a matter of days. I remembered a similar discussion with another secretary of state, George Shultz, who made the same argument to encourage our withdrawal from Lebanon. The US was training the Lebanese Army to take over the country. I argued that once we left Lebanon, radical forces would grab control. Lacking the cohesive zealotry of the radicals, the American-trained forces would collapse or become irrelevant. That’s exactly what happened when we withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000. Hezbollah took over the country in no time.

The country was still recovering from a savage civil war, the government was weak to non-existent in some parts of the country, and there were areas where terrorist groups like Hezbollah and HAMAS operated pretty much with impunity. As Luke was to find out. He turns and puts up a press

Beyond the shops though, Shtawrah was no different from the rest of the Biqai' The day I arrived there, I passed by the smouldering ruins of a training camp for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command on the edge of town. A squad of Israeli F16s had flattened it the day before. I was curious about the raid and asked Ghazali, whose supermarket was Shtawrah's main grocery store, if the raid worried him. He shrugged, "We're in business, what can we do?" Actually, Ghazal's answer made perfect sense. There was nothing any of the Lebanese in the Biqai' could do about a roster of neighbours that included Hezbollah, the Japanese Red Army, Baader-Meinhof, Sendero Luminosa, the PFLP, Abu Nidal, ASALA and half a dozen other suicidal and or genocidal terrorist groups. As long as the Israeli airforce continued to shoot straight, the Lebanese could get on with life and make a little money, especially if they took care of their own safety. Ghazali's clerks carried 9mm semiautomatics in shoulder holsters; and his assistant, whose office was behind a bulletproof window, kept an AK47 with a drum magazine on his desk and a clear field of fire down the aisles.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah wanted to come from Lebanon to Syria to help the regime. One way was through al-Qusayr, because it’s right on the border.

Forces from Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia encircled the town.

He ticked off the “four factions” he believed were behind the protests: the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and Hamas. Neither of these leaders’ analyses stood up to scrutiny.

did not create this confused situation. However, it took every opportunity to vigorously exploit it. Tehran does not control the Houthis, but it funds, arms, trains, and advises them. In terms of history, religion, politics, and even family ties, Iran’s recent relationship with the Houthis differs substantially from its deep, long-standing connections with Lebanon’s Shia community and Hezbollah—but the Saudis found little solace in that distinction.19 From Riyadh’s perspective, the Houthis have been a vehicle for Iranian expansion into the Arabian Peninsula. That is something that no Saudi king could accept, and planning for intervention in Yemen began while King Abdullah was still on the throne.

It is worth remembering that in March 2015, Mohammed bin Salman was not the king of Saudi Arabia nor the crown prince or even the deputy crown prince. He was the newly appointed minister of defense. The experienced Saud al-Faisal, though ill, was still foreign minister. The popular view that 30-year-old Mohammed bin Salman recklessly took his country to war and that ten sovereign states, including Britain and the United States, blithely followed him, is a misreading of history. King Salman made the decision in order to stop the “Hezbollahization” of Yemen. Major Western powers supported the Saudis in order to prevent the expansion of Iranian influence into the Red Sea, especially in the strategically important Bab al-Mandeb strait, and to maintain Saudi support for then-ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran.

The future threat won’t be neatly divisible into the categories we use today (state versus nonstate, domestic versus foreign, or war versus crime). As the Mumbai, Mogadishu, and Kingston examples illustrate, future threats will be hybrid: that is, they’ll include irregular actors and methods, but also state actors that use irregulars as their weapon of choice or adopt asymmetric methods to minimize detection and avoid retaliation. Neither the concept nor the reality of hybrid conflict is new—writers such as Frank Hoffman, T. X. Hammes, and Erin Simpson have all examined hybrid warfare in detail. At the same time, Pakistan’s use of the Taliban, LeT, and the Haqqani network, Iran’s use of Hezbollah and the Quds Force, or the sponsorship of insurgencies and terrorist groups by regimes such as Muammar Gadhafi’s Libya, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and the Soviet Union, go back over many decades.

The Iranian presence in neighbouring Syria has given Tehran a ‘land bridge’ across the Middle East, stretching from its capital to Beirut. It has used this bridge to increase its arms shipments to the huge Hezbollah Shia militia. Analysts suggest Hez-bollah now has an arsenal of up to 150,000 missiles, some of them guided, others long range. If and when Hezbollah in Lebanon uses its larger and longer-range rockets to reach deep into Israel on a significant scale, the response will be massive.

Syria has become, like Lebanon, a place used by outside powers to further their own aims. Russia, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah support the Syrian government forces. The Arab countries support the opposition, but different states support different opposition groups: the Saudis and Qataris, for example, are both vying for influence, but each backs a different proxy to achieve it.

The German Socialists allied with the Islamicists during World War II and the Soviet Socialists were the Islamicists’ biggest financial, military and diplomatic benefactors throughout the Cold War. It should not be surprising, then, that the Democratic Socialists would side with the Islamic supremacists of today. Obama, for example, joined with the enemies of America by giving billions of dollars to the Ayatollahs and Mullahs in Iran, supporting the efforts of Hezbollah in Lebanon and ordering the military to “stand down” so the thugs of ISIS could do their work in Syria and beyond.

The Obama administration submitted a budget request to Congress in 2012 that called for cutting in half U.S. funds for Israeli missile defense—this at a time when Israel faced the threat of rocket attacks from Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the midrange missile technology developed by Iran.30 • In 2013 Obama nominated former U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense. Hagel had voted against tougher sanctions against Iran, was one of four senators to refuse to sign a letter condemning anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, and chaired an organization that denounced Israel for practicing “apartheid.

The Lebanese banking system helps Iran, Syria & Hezbollah evade sanctions.

Biggest mistake Reagan ever did re: foreign policy? 1984 decision to appease Hezbollah with Lebanon withdrawal

Hezbollah is not a mammoth force, there is only so much they can do in Syria. Iranian role more critical for the regime.