Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, public concern about international terrorism has largely focused on Sunni extremist groups such as al Qaeda, al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, al-Shabaab, and the Islamic State. Often overlooked is Hezbollah, a Shiite terrorist organization in Lebanon whose origins date back to the early 1980s. Prior to 9/11, Hezbollah was responsible for more American deaths than any other group.
Hezbollah’s origins are somewhat difficult to discern. It appears to have first emerged in 1982 in response to Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon intended to evict the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from its safe haven in that part of the country. Militant Lebanese Shiite activists who admired the leaders of Iran’s 1979 revolution established Hezbollah with the help of 1,500 troops from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a way to combat the Israeli occupation and the subsequent deployment of international peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, most of which came from Western countries. The group espoused a vision of Islamic governance along the lines of Iran’s theocratic regime.
Over the next fifteen years, Hezbollah changed the face of international terrorism. In his 2005 book Dying to Win, Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, described Hezbollah as “the first modern suicide terrorist organization.” In April 1983, it used a suicide car bomb to attack the U.S. embassy in Lebanon, leaving 63 people dead, 17 of whom were Americans. Six months later it struck again with suicide bombers, mounting simultaneous attacks against the U.S. Marine barracks and French headquarters in Beirut, killing 241 American troops and 58 French paratroopers. These attacks succeeded in persuading U.S. president Ronald Reagan to withdraw U.S. troops from Lebanon. However, the U.S. remained involved in the region, and Hezbollah continued to resist American influence. In March 1984, it abducted and subsequently murdered William Francis Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut. In September of that year, it hit the U.S. embassy annex in East Beirut with another suicide bombing that caused the deaths of 23 people. The following summer, Hezbollah hijacked TWA flight 847 bound from Athens to Rome, holding the passengers hostage for three days and murdering a U.S. Navy diver who was aboard the aircraft. In 1992 the group bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in retaliation for the Israeli assassination of Abbas al-Musawi, Hezbollah’s secretary general and cofounder. Two years later, Hezbollah struck again in Buenos Aires, bombing the Jewish Mutual Aid Association in an attack that claimed 85 lives. Throughout this period, Hezbollah carried out ongoing attacks against the Israeli forces that remained in southern Lebanon.
Today, Hezbollah remains publicly committed to its original goals. According to Casey Addis and Christopher Blanchard of the Congressional Research Service, “Hezbollah continues to define itself primarily as a resistance movement and remains viscerally opposed to what it views as illegitimate U.S. and Israeli intervention in Lebanese and regional affairs.” However, it has had to adapt to a changing environment in recent years, including the end of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. In 1992, Hezbollah, under the new leadership of Hassan Nasrallah, opted to participate in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections, winning eight seats. In addition, the group began to take on many responsibilities of the state, providing health, educational, and welfare services to Shiite citizens living in areas under its control. It is unclear whether or not Hezbollah still seeks the establishment of a Shiite Islamist government in Lebanon. Its leaders seem cognizant of the fact that the idea is unpopular among most Lebanese, and its most recent political statement issued in November of 2009 made no reference to the creation of an Islamist state.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. [Source: New York Times]
Hezbollah was able to claim an important victory when Israel withdrew from its remaining strongholds in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2000. Hassan Nasrallah described it as "the first Arab victory in the history of Arab-Israeli conflict." At the same time, the withdrawal deprived the group of much of its raison d'être, in particular undermining its justification for maintaining armed militias. Other developments have complicated the situation for Hezbollah. The rise of al Qaeda beginning in the late 1990s and, more recently, the Islamic State, has resulted in Hezbollah being eclipsed as the leader of global jihadism. In addition, Hezbollah’s decision to actively support Bashar Assad’s Alawite regime in Syria’s civil war has been costly both in terms of manpower and resources. Its participation in the conflict has also caused it to lose popular support in a region where public opposition to Assad is strong. According to Charles Lister, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center, “The organization went from being perhaps one of the most popular sub-state Arab movements to one viewed as hostile by a majority of the region’s Sunni populations.”
The key question about Hezbollah facing the American intelligence community and U.S. policymakers is: how much of a threat does Hezbollah represent to the United States and its interests? It is still regarded as a very dangerous organization by U.S. officials and other international observers. In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, the CIA initially (and erroneously) concluded that Hezbollah was responsible. In early 2003, a year-and-a-half after 9/11, Richard Armitage, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, observed that “Hezbollah may be the 'A-Team of Terrorists' and maybe al-Qaeda is actually the 'B' team.” In June 2010, two State Department officials, Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and Daniel Benjamin, Coordinator for Counterterrorism, jointly testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “Hezbollah remains the most technically-capable terrorist group in the world and a continued security threat to the United States.” There are some indications that the tempo of Hezbollah’s operations has increased recently. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on worldwide threats to U.S. security in January 2014, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper noted that Hezbollah “has increased its global terrorist activity in recent years to a level that we have not seen since the 1990s.”
There is little doubt that Hezbollah’s capabilities remain formidable or that its orientation remains fundamentally anti-American (and anti-Israeli). However, the threat posed by Hezbollah should not be overstated. It is important to recognize that there are number of important differences between Hezbollah and groups such as al Qaeda, its affiliates, and the Islamic State, the most obvious of which is sectarian. Hezbollah is distinguished by the fact that it adheres to the Shiite branch of Islam that is practiced in Iran, while groups in the latter category are Salafist Sunnis. In addition, Hezbollah is a sub-state actor. It is an autonomous organization, but it has a very close relationship with Tehran that dates back to its founding. They are bound by a strong ideological kinship that is reinforced by shared geopolitical interests. Hezbollah is heavily reliant on Iran for funding and supplies, while Iran uses its relationship with Hezbollah to exert influence in the broader Middle East. The group also maintains an important relationship with the Assad regime in Syria, as evidenced by its active involvement in that country’s civil war on his behalf. In addition, Hezbollah has become a stakeholder in the status quo in Lebanon and now holds ten seats in the Lebanese parliament.
In contrast, the Salafist groups mentioned above are non-state actors. They have not been created, and are not overtly patronized, by nation states. These groups are dedicated to the overthrow of Arab governments in the Middle East, which they believe to be apostates regimes. Al Qaeda central has sought to attack the United States – the “far enemy” – in the belief that if the U.S. can be driven from the region and forced to withdraw its support for its local allies (particularly Saudi Arabia) then the apostate governments will inevitably collapse. The Islamic State has focused less on direct attacks against the homelands of the United States and its European allies than al Qaeda, at least for the time being, and instead dedicated itself to the establishment of an Islamic caliphate. Like al Qaeda, it rejects the existing regional order in the Middle East and seeks to overturn it.
Hezbollah represents less of a threat to the U.S. and its allies because it is more easily deterred than al Qaeda or the Islamic State. Its ambitions are more circumscribed than those of its Salafist counterparts, and it has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Hezbollah’s propensity to commit terrorist acts has declined since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. It does still engage in terrorism and other forms of violence, but when it does so it generally to protect its existing interests. For instance, Hezbollah was responsible for the July 2012 bombing of a busload of Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria, that left six people dead – a terrorist act that is widely believed to have been in response to the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists (most likely by Israel). Similarly, Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian civil war is motivated not by a desire to expand its influence, but rather to preserve the regime of one of its key allies, Bashar Assad.
While there is a general consensus among terrorism experts that Hezbollah retains the ability to mount terrorist attacks in Europe, Asia, Africa, and in the Western Hemisphere, it seems unlikely that the group will engage in engage in such acts unless it believes it has been provoked. Testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 2, 2010, former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dennis Blair stated: “We judge that, unlike al Qaeda, Hezbollah, which has not directly attacked U.S. interests overseas over the past 13 years, is not now actively plotting to strike the Homeland. However, we cannot rule out that the group would attack if it perceives that the United States is threatening its core interests.” Three years later, former director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) testified Matthew Olsen testified that “Hezbollah does have a presence that extends to many countries around the world. We've seen plots and activity from Hezbollah across the globe, but we haven't seen anything like the capability or activity that we've seen from al-Qaida over the last 10 years.” It is worth noting that the current DNI, James Clapper, made little mention of Hezbollah during his presentation of worldwide threats facing the United States to the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2015. Similarly, Nick Rasmussen, current head of the NCTC, said nothing about the group in his submitted testimony to the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee on October 21, 2015.
Hezbollah does represent a clear threat to the United States and its allies, and its activities should be closely monitored. If the U.S. were to engage in hostilities with Iran or take direct military action against Bashar Assad, the risk that Hezbollah would engage in terrorist attacks against American targets – perhaps including those located in the U.S. homeland – would be significant. However, the group poses a latent threat rather than an active one. As a result, the primary focus of U.S. counterterrorism efforts should be Salafist groups that seek to overturn the existing order in the Middle East.
-- Richard Purcell
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