- It's like something out of an action movie.
- A shadowy organization with global reach
and powerful backers shocks the world
with a string of brutal terror attacks.
Wanna guess who I'm talking about?
I'll give you a hint: they're based in Lebanon.
They're stronger than the Lebanese army.
And they're obsessed with Israel, and not in a good way.
That's right: I'm talking about Hezbollah.
So, who are these guys?
Or, more specifically, who is this guy
and why does he say stuff like this?
And why is a group based in Lebanon so bent
on destroying Israel?
The answer is a little more complicated
than you might expect.
So get comfortable.
And let me draw back the curtain
on the world's most powerful non-state actor.
The story of Hezbollah starts
somewhere you might not expect.
A non-Arab country over a thousand miles away.
One that used to be Israel's closest ally
in the Middle East.
Got any guesses?
Yup, that would be... Iran.
Hard to believe that Iran and Israel were once BFFs.
But that warm relationship took a serious nosedive,
when a firebrand Shia cleric known
as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took control of Iran
in what he called the Islamic Revolution.
Ayatollah Khomeini had lots of strong opinions
about lots of different things.
Including America, which he called the "Big Satan."
And Israel,
alternately known as the "Little Satan"
or "the cancerous gland of the Middle East."
Charming, right?
But Ayatollah Khomeini wasn't just about name calling.
See, the Ayatollah had a vision.
One he'd been cultivating for decades.
He believed that God had appointed him
to export the Islamic Revolution
and spread his particular brand of faith
and politics throughout the Muslim world.
And where was the best place for him to start?
You got it: Lebanon.
Let me explain why.
In the 70s, Lebanon was a mess.
The PLO, or Palestine Liberation Organization,
had just been kicked out of Jordan
and set up shop in south Lebanon.
And very few people were happy about this state of affairs.
Because the PLO inflamed existing sectarian tensions
in Lebanon, tensions that burst
into a brutal civil war in 1975.
But you know who was delighted
by the PLO's presence in a tiny, divided country?
You guessed it: Iran.
Here's the thing about the PLO:
since their inception in 1964,
they'd been attacking Israel relentlessly.
And in the 70s, the attacks came
from their HQ in southern Lebanon.
I'm talking hijackings, the murder of Olympic athletes,
massive, indiscriminate rocket barrages,
a massacre of school children.
It was bad.
Well, for Khomeini, though, it was all good.
This was his thinking.
He'd team up with the Palestinian terror groups
and get his fighters into their training camps.
The Palestinians would be happy to get support
for their cause.
Khomeini would get decent military training
for his fighters, and a foothold in Lebanon.
It was a win-win situation for everyone, but Israel!
As you'll see in a minute,
the Ayatollah was planning something big.
And the PLO was only a small part of his plans for Lebanon.
The PLO were useful, but they were secular and Sunni.
They had little interest in Khomeini's brand of Shia Islam.
You know who was, though?
The large population of Lebanese Shia Muslims,
who were sick and tired of the status quo.
The Shia had spent decades getting the short
end of the stick from the powerful
and connected Christian bloc.
And they were not too happy
about the PLO turning their towns into a war zone,
especially when Israel came to visit in 1978.
Khomeini saw this discontent as fertile ground
for his Islamic Revolution.
So the Ayatollah's forces invested
in the long-neglected Shia population, providing food,
healthcare, infrastructure,
social and religious institutions.
Even welfare programs.
You know, all the things
that the Lebanese government had failed to give its Shias.
And in return, most of Lebanon's Shias
repaid the Iranian forces with loyalty.
Loyalty that would soon pay off big time.
So, that's the background.
Hang on,
because we're about to get to the good stuff.
1982: the year of EPCOT, Thriller, E.T.
and one of the biggest messes the Middle East has ever seen.
Remember, by 1982, Israel had suffered years
of PLO terror attacks coming from Lebanon.
Including the June 3rd assassination attempt
on Israel's ambassador to England
that left the man permanently paralyzed.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
The PLO splinter group responsible
for the assassination attempt probably
didn't anticipate Prime Minister Menachem Begin's response.
Less than 72 hours after the attack on the ambassador,
IDF tanks had rolled into southern Lebanon,
eager to impose a 25-mile buffer zone
between PLO bases and northern Israel.
But things got very messy, very fast.
Because, as we said, Lebanon was deep into a civil war.
And soon Israel was deep in it too.
This played right into Khomeini's plans.
Because after years of investing in Lebanon's Shia,
the time was right to launch a new Shia guerilla force
in southern Lebanon.
He called it Hezbollah.
Or, in English, the Party of God.
It's a pretty grandiose name, right?
That's because its founders had pretty grandiose plans.
And it didn't take long for this new militia
to start flexing.
In November of 1982, Hezbollah sent a suicide bomber
to the IDF HQ in Tyre, killing 76 Israelis and 27 Lebanese.
They targeted the American embassy in Beirut next,
killing 63 people in April of 1983.
That October, they set off nearly twenty thousand pounds
of explosives outside the US Marine
and French army barracks, killing 299 people.
I could go on, but you're probably getting the picture.
Hezbollah, and its primary backer Iran, meant business.
And their business, as per their 1985 manifesto,
was as follows.
To expel the Americans, the French,
and their allies from Lebanon.
To bring the Phalanges,
a Christian Lebanese political party and paramilitary,
to justice.
To permit all the sons of our people
to determine their future,
we call upon all of them
to pick the option of Islamic government.
Oh, and to destroy Israel.
Or, in their words, "our struggle will end only
when this entity is obliterated."
Pretty straightforward, and very dangerous.
It took fifteen bloody, miserable years,
but Lebanon's civil war finally ended in 1990.
The truce that ended the war demanded
that all camps put down their weapons.
Except for two.
The first was the Lebanese Army.
And I bet you can guess the second.
That's right.
Hezbollah was allowed to keep its weapons
and continue its struggle to "obliterate" Israel.
Think about that: a guerilla fighting force,
founded and funded by another country,
with a pretty insane manifesto, was being treated
like a legitimate army.
And that's not all, because what happened next
would change the entire Middle East forever.
After the war, Hezbollah focused on a new goal:
controlling the Lebanese parliament.
Within a decade, Hezbollah was a dominant military
and political force in Lebanon,
and a major headache for the rest of the world.
Including, of course, Israel.
They kept up the offensive by striking the IDF
on the front lines, firing rockets at Israeli cities
and towns, and attacking Israelis abroad.
Israel's not the type of country to suffer threats idly.
But increasingly, hunting Hezbollah operatives felt
like a game of Whack-a-Mole.
Or whatever the Israeli equivalent is.
Israel would assassinate a high-ranking Hezbollah leader.
Hezbollah would celebrate this new martyr for the cause.
And then they'd replace him.
Which is exactly what happened
with Hezbollah's Secretary-General in 1992.
Hussein Abbas al-Mussawi was not the best guy.
Israel hoped that assassinating him would weaken Hezbollah.
But that's not what happened.
Because Hezbollah chose someone real special
to replace al-Mussawi.
And he made al-Mussawi look like a teddy bear.
That's right, our friend from the start of the video:
super-fanatic Shia cleric Hassan Nasrallah.
You know, the guy saying that Israel is a cancerous tumor?
He swiftly turned Hezbollah's top priority away
from consolidating power in Lebanon
and towards attacking Israel.
But it wasn't enough for Hezbollah
to hammer the north of Israel with rockets.
Or to launch attacks on the thin "security zone" Israel
had set up in southern Lebanon.
Or to pick off members of the Southern Lebanon Army,
which was allied with Israel.
No, Hezbollah had global plans.
In 1992, the terror group activated its sleeper cells all
over the world.
They attacked an ambassador in Turkey.
A Jewish community center in Argentina, killing 90.
A tour bus in Bulgaria, full of Israelis.
And even though Israel completed its withdrawal
from Lebanon in 2000,
Hezbollah has continued its obsession with the Jewish State.
Their new manifesto, released in 2009, states:
"We categorically reject any compromise with Israel
or recognizing its legitimacy, this position is definitive,
even if everyone recognizes 'Israel'".
And yes, they were petty enough to put "Israel" in quotes.
Petty or not, it would be a mistake
to underestimate Hezbollah,
which continues to get massive support from Iran.
Khomeini may have died in 1989,
but his vision for a global Islamic Revolution outlived him.
Even as Iran's economy collapses,
the current Ayatollah manages
to cough up an estimated $700 million
for Hezbollah every year.
I bet you can guess what that money is used for.
Yup: military stuff.
That's a technical term.
Hezbollah is estimated to have 150,000 rockets
and 100,000 troops, making the once-small militia larger
and more powerful than the Lebanese Army.
And their military capability isn't limited to rockets.
In 2018, the IDF destroyed a network of tunnels,
one of them more than twenty stories deep,
that snaked from Lebanon into Israeli territory.
The tunnels, carved in places from solid rock,
and graffitied with slogans like on the way to Jerusalem!
provided a sobering glimpse
into Hezbollah's military strategy.
Had the IDF not discovered and demolished the tunnels,
the tunnels could have been used to kidnap
and/or kill Israelis
and to penetrate the country during a ground offensive.
The tunnels may have been destroyed,
but Hezbollah remains a serious threat to Israeli lives.
(cannon booms)
The group is battle-hardened,
having cut its teeth on the battlefields of Syria
during the Syrian Civil War.
And though Hassan Nasrallah might look like a jolly grandpa,
he's dead serious and crystal clear
about his intentions towards Israel.
But there's good news.
Sort of.
See, a number of Lebanese folks
are growing increasingly disenchanted with Hezbollah.
Why? And why now?
Well, since its inception,
Hezbollah has positioned itself as the sole savior
for Lebanon's beleaguered Shias.
Yet even its supporters are beginning
to wonder why the group pours hundreds of millions
of dollars into arming itself
while Lebanon slides towards total economic collapse.
Many Lebanese folks have started to ask, "Why the heck
are we spending money we don't have just
to mess with our neighbor?"
Hezbollah's too powerful to disappear
without significant military intervention.
But there's maybe a faint glimmer of hope
in the frustration of ordinary Lebanese people
that suggests that Israel's northern neighbor
might someday be an ally, or at least a neutral force.
It's a pretty vision, isn't it?
And I hope to be around to see Israel
and Lebanon find true peace.
But as long as Hezbollah
and its benefactor Iran are running things,
Israel remains prepared
to face the most serious threat on its borders.
Because as Hezbollah has proven time and again since 1982:
they're another branch
of the Ayatollah's Islamic Revolution.
And they won't stop until someone stops them.