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NABATIEH, LEBANON – Hezbollah flags fly from lamp posts and billboards show the faces of Hezbollah members killed in action in this southern Lebanese city, which by some estimates is now Lebanon’s fifth-largest city. Bearded men belonging to the group drive through the streets in new BMWs, the lack of license plates reaffirming their position above Lebanese law.
Nabatieh is the heartland of Hezbollah, less than fifteen miles from Lebanon’s border with Israel. When Israel occupied a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, Nabatieh was just outside and therefore a front-line post for Hezbollah. During Operation Grapes of Wrath (or the “April War” as Hezbollah calls it), Israel bombed sites in the city. Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in May 2000 strengthened Hezbollah, making it the first Arab force to defeat the Jewish state in war. Hezbollah – and Nabatieh – both suffered during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, but the end of hostilities and Hezbollah’s subsequent rearmament against it allowed the Iranian-backed militia to present itself as strong.
Sitting in a tea house on the outskirts of the city, the locals, including veterans of the fight against Israel, now tell a different story. There are three types of Hezbollah members now, they say. The former are the true ideologues, the latter initially embraced Hezbollah’s mission but are now embarrassed by their actions and antics, and the third just signed for the money.
Everyone has trouble reconciling the group’s rhetoric with reality. Whereas Hezbollah slogans once written on banners and pasted on billboards promised security and prosperity, today the locals have neither. Members of Hezbollah may still receive salaries well above the local rate, but Iran’s financial troubles and the consequent decline in its subsidies to Hezbollah lead the group to half their pay, leading to internal complaints and ridicule. from outside.
Meanwhile, the true ideologues who once painted themselves as the vanguard of a new order must now explain how they and Iran remain powerless in the face of the US assassination of the head of the Iranian Quds Force Qassim Suleimani on the 3rd. January 2020 and, more recently, the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the father of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program, who was assassinated on November 27. Iran, many locals and Western journalists attribute the murder to Israel. Iranian leaders and Hezbollah vowed they would avenge both attacks, but have been unable to do anything more than get like-minded representatives to fire some missiles at US forces and facilities in Iraq, most of which failed or did little damage.
Locals also point to the four thousand Hezbollah members killed in Syria and wonder not only why an organization that described itself as a Lebanese nationalist not only allowed its members to serve as mercenaries for Iran and President Bashar al-Assad. in Syria, but also why they did well. as bad as they did. Some ridiculed Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah as the fifth Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, as he must be hiding in the sewers of the southern suburbs of Beirut for fear that if he emerges in person, he will quickly join Soleimani and Fakhrizadeh.
Importantly, the citizens of Nabatieh and other cities controlled by Hezbollah or its rival-turned-ally Amal no longer limit their criticism to whispered conversations. The protests broke out last October against the political elite in Lebanon, and young Lebanese men and women from Nabatieh joined them. The women removed their scarves and the men removed their masks. Simply put, as Hezbollah becomes a shell of what it was before, the locals are losing their fear. It is a certain irony that in Washington, DC, the Democrats aloud and the Republicans a little more softly suggest that the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran will be a failure, but in the heart of Hezbollah country, residents count a different story. Hezbollah is short of cash, resentful and has lost its luster.
The late Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden famously said: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” By that standard, the locals no longer regard Hezbollah as a thoroughbred racehorse, but rather a lame pony. The question going forward is whether the Biden administration, in its animosity with President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by injecting resources into the Islamic Republic of Iran, a gravy train that it will benefit the ordinary. Iranians or citizens of cities in southern Lebanon like Nabatieh, but groups like Hezbollah that, according to the locals, are a shadow of what they were.
Michael Rubin is an academic resident in the American Institute of Business and frequent author of TNI.
