Hezbollah Continues to Wreak Havoc Across the Region

This is stating the obvious: an undeniable, well-established fact that has long been beyond dispute. Yet two major developments – one in Syria and the other in Yemen – have once again brought into focus, on Tuesday, November 3, the continued destabilizing, destructive and deadly role played by Hezbollah in parts of the Middle East. This is despite the successive heavy blows dealt in recent years to the party, which remains under Tehran’s control. Those who, out of opportunism or ignorance, continue to bury their heads in the sand on this issue would do well to take note. The facts speak for themselves...

In Yemen, the Interior Ministry disclosed on Tuesday that seven Hezbollah “experts” and 14 members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are directing the Houthi militia’s military operations in the country. These “advisers”, deployed in six governorates, are guiding the Houthis in their use of ballistic missiles and drones, the official source said. Later that evening, Yemen’s Foreign Ministry condemned “the repeated interference of the Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah in Yemen’s internal affairs.”

In plain terms, Hezbollah is actively contributing its “expertise” to the near-daily attacks launched by the Houthis against Saudi Arabia’s airports and infrastructure, particularly its oil facilities. This should give serious pause for thought to those who criticize the Lebanese authorities’ and government’s policy on the urgent need to disarm Hezbollah and end its military role, as well as to those who adopt an ambivalent and accommodating stance on the issue.

A Terrorist Plot in Syria

To cap it all, security authorities in Damascus announced on Tuesday that they had foiled a “terrorist plot orchestrated by Hezbollah’s militia to target the Homs refinery.” A Syrian official source said that a “Hezbollah cell preparing an attack on the refinery had been dismantled and its members arrested.” Large quantities of explosives intended for use in the attack were also seized.

It is worth underscoring that the Homs refinery is one of the main pillars of Syria’s economic and energy infrastructure. This highlights the gravity of the operation Hezbollah was preparing to carry out in Syria, undoubtedly at the instigation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Shiite group’s intellectual and ideological mentors and religious guides.

Hezbollah did, admittedly, deny late Tuesday that it was playing any destabilizing role in Syria. But the facts disclosed by the Syrian authorities appear irrefutable. In any event, they expose the fundamentally deceitful and duplicitous nature of the “desire” for openness toward Syria’s new leadership that Hezbollah professed last September, at Türkiye’s urging.

The supposed “policy of easing tensions” that Hezbollah had then hypocritically professed in its dealings with Damascus once again reveals, in light of the Homs affair, the strategy of “concealment” (taqiyya), elevated to the status of doctrine by the pro-Iranian party and its mentors as a guiding principle for political conduct in times of acute crisis. Incidentally, this same “concealment” of the actors’ real intentions and objectives seems to be something that certain Arab and Western experts and academics either completely fail to recognize or deliberately choose to obscure...

The Fallout in Lebanon

The repercussions of the foiled attack on the Syrian refinery will soon be felt in Lebanon, bolstering the position of the country’s sovereigntist forces, which have for more than two decades consistently denounced Hezbollah’s relentless campaign of destruction across the region, carried out solely in the service of the Iranian mullah regime’s geostrategic interests.

Moreover, the disclosure of the terrorist attack the Shiite group was preparing against the refinery could add further evidence to the case involving the large quantity of high-powered explosives – half a ton – that Hezbollah was transporting from the Bekaa Valley to Beirut before it was recently seized by the Internal Security Forces at Dahr el-Baydar. A separate cache of explosives, weighing more than 300 kilograms, was also seized around the same time in Hermel and remains in Hezbollah’s hands.

The explosives case, the foiled plot against the Homs refinery, and Hezbollah’s guidance of the Houthis in their war against Saudi Arabia all expose the deceptive nature of the slogan “resistance against Israel.” More than ever, they also bring into sharp focus the multifaceted problem posed by Hezbollah’s transnational political project, its parallel military arsenal operating outside state authority, its unacceptable regional role, and its blind and unconditional allegiance to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic. In this regard, accommodating, half-hearted, timid and equivocal positions should no longer be tolerated. The very survival of a pluralistic, liberal Lebanon committed to humanist values is at stake in the current regional context.