For Iran, Hezbollah Remains Indispensable

 

By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Daily Gleaner

During the latest Mideast conflict, Tehran has signaled that its red lines extend far beyond its borders. On June 7, that point was driven home with force. An Israeli strike that hit Beirut’s southern suburbs was followed by Iran launching multiple waves of ballistic missiles toward Israel, the first direct attack on that nation since April.  Iran’s leadership and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are increasingly willing to accept greater risks in a bid to project power across the region.

Lebanon, and Hezbollah in particular, remain among Iran’s most important red lines in any potential agreement with the United States. Hezbollah is not merely a political or military ally but an integral component of its long-term strategic vision for the Middle East. It is part of a partnership forged over decades.

Muhammad Javad Habibi, a political scientist and contributor to the Tehran Times, feels that the war has fundamentally altered how Iranian policymakers understand future confrontations with the United States and Israel.

“The recent war appears to have strengthened a belief among many Iranian policymakers that future confrontations with the United States and Israel will not be limited to a single battlefield or a single issue,” Habibi told the left-wing American news website Mondoweiss.

“From Tehran’s perspective, the conflict demonstrated that military pressure, economic pressure, information campaigns, and diplomatic pressure are increasingly being applied simultaneously. As a result, Iranian decision-makers appear less willing than before to compartmentalize regional alliances and security concerns from negotiations,” Habibi stated.

That helps explain why Lebanon has moved closer to the centre of Iran’s strategic calculations. Iran’s support for Hezbollah is a signal to allies and would-be partners: Tehran will not abandon you. Support for Hezbollah is tied not only to military considerations but also to credibility.

Like other regional and global powers, Iran relies not only on military capabilities but also on its reputation for standing by its allies. From this perspective, support for Hezbollah is about maintaining a regional network that policymakers consider essential to Iran’s deterrence posture.

Lebanon is more than a regional flashpoint. It is emerging as a test case for a broader Iranian effort to redefine the terms on which future negotiations with Washington will be conducted.

“The issue of Lebanon is not only related to Iran,” according to Farshad Shariat, a professor of political science at Imam Sadiq University in Tehran. “It concerns the broader Islamic world.” Developments in Lebanon, Shariat told Mondoweiss, are often viewed by Iranian political elites as part of a wider struggle over sovereignty, foreign intervention, and the future direction of the region.

Since it’s unlikely that Hezbollah will give up its war against Israel, one that the Lebanese government is incapable of stopping, Israel’s ongoing campaign is unlikely to end anytime soon. And so the Israeli war with Iran will continue in some form, regardless of whether Washington and Tehran stop fighting.

Disarmament was the purpose in theory of the November 2024 ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that the Iranian proxy violated at the beginning of the current war. But that task was left to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), which proved they were not up to the job. The man in charge of the LAF, General Rodolphe Haykal, has been politically aligned with Hezbollah for years. Obviously, Israel is in no mood to trust its security to the promises of weak politicians in Beirut.

Hezbollah’s power rests with Lebanon’s Shia Muslim population, which before the 1980s was by far the poorest and most marginalized community in the state. That began to change when Imam Musa al-Sadr emerged as a prominent advocate for greater Shia political recognition and socio-economic development. He became one of the leading social and political figures within the Shia community, founding the Amal Movement, before his disappearance in Libya in 1978. 

In the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Tehran deployed operatives of the IRGC to Lebanon to establish Hezbollah amid the country’s civil war. Hezbollah and Amal emerged as the dominant representatives of the Shia community and political heavyweights in Lebanon. 

Hezbollah’s power rests not only on its military apparatus, but also in its ability to maintain extensive patronage networks throughout Lebanese institutions. Since the 1992 parliamentary elections, the Amal Movement and Hezbollah have largely commanded the 27 seats in the parliament reserved for Shia Muslims.

“There is Shia opposition, but we still do not see a real structured political opposition with a vision and a project,” Bashshar Haydar, professor of philosophy and the Mohammad Atallah chair of ethics at the American University of Beirut, told the news website This is Beirut. 

Amid escalating fighting with Israel, Hezbollah’s ability to mobilize its traditional support base may be weakening, Mona Fayad, added professor of psychology at the Lebanese University. The main obstacle facing the Shia opposition is the social and psychological legacy of Hezbollah’s decades-long dominance. This requires overcoming fear. Only then, she contends, can a sustainable Shia opposition take shape, one that can both challenge Hezbollah and offer a credible alternative to the system that has sustained it for decades.

While Hezbollah’s capacity to mobilize its base has visibly declined, those Shia who challenge the party remain vulnerable, reinforcing the need for institutional protection. Until that changes, Hezbollah will continue to rule southern Lebanon as an Iranian proxy.