Hezbollah

In response to countrywide street protests, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his cabinet resigned on October 29, 2019 setting off a nearly two-month search for a replacement. Finally, this past Thursday, President Michel Aoun tasked Hassan Diab – a former education minister and American University of Beirut (AUB) professor – with forming a government after he received 69 votes from parliamentarians in support of his premiership.

Hassan Diab

Lebanon once again finds itself without a functioning government. Saad Hariri’s January 2019 cabinet – painstakingly formed 10 months after the country’s last parliamentary elections – resigned on October 29, and the prospect for a new government seems increasingly distant. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s economy is rapidly failing, and foreign donors have dismissed the possibility of providing Beirut with any aid until it forms a new government.

Nine days after the United States accused Iran of attacking Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany – known as the E3 – issued a statement agreeing with the American assessment and condemning Tehran. The statement was unusual for the European powers, highlighting not only Iran’s nuclear program – heretofore their near-exclusive focus – but also Tehran’s destabilization of the region.

On October 8, 1997, the United States created its Foreign Terrorist Organization list, pursuant to 1996’s Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and added Hezbollah to the first batch of designated groups. Twenty-two years on, the designation has been ineffective in weakening the group. In the two decades since, Hezbollah has continued to expand its global reach, becoming more of a critical player in Lebanon and in furthering Iran’s hegemonic ambitions.

On September 1, at 4:15 PM, a Hezbollah cell dubbed the “Martyrs Hassan Zbeeb and Yasser Daher Group” fired Anti-Tank Guided Missiles at an Israeli military patrol and base near Moshav Avivim. The group claimed the strike was a revenge attack for Israel killing the eponymous Zbeeb and Daher, two low-ranking operatives, in Syria a week earlier.

On June 6, 1982, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invaded Lebanon to eliminate the threat from Palestinian militias on its northern border.

By David Daoud

Lebanon announced the formation of a new government today, headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri, nine months after Beirut held parliamentary elections. However, this otherwise auspicious occasion for a U.S. ally is marred by Hezbollah’s increased empowerment in Beirut’s new government lineup.

By: Bob Feferman 

The recent discovery of Hezbollah terror tunnels under Israel’s border with Lebanon made a tense situation even more dangerous.  In fact, as I write this blog, we do not yet know if there will be open hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. The context for these events can be found in Iran’s dangerous regional ambitions. 

On the morning of October 23, 1983, Imad Mughniyeh and Mustafa Badreddine perched atop a building in south Beirut with their binoculars fixated on the four-story U.S. Marine Barracks attached to the International Airport.

The U.S. has accelerated the pace with which it is sanctioning Iran’s terrorist proxies in the Middle East as part of a concerted strategy to curtail Tehran’s malign efforts to dominate and destabilize the Middle East, which have sharply escalated since the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The intensified sanctions campaign keeps with the letter and spirit of the nuclear deal.