A history of Hezbollah

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack and Israel's invasion of Gaza, tensions have been high across the Middle East. Israel and Hezbollah, the most powerful military and political force in Lebanon, have been exchanging missile fire across their shared border. Fear of an all-out war across the Middle East is growing. Well today, Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei from NPR's history podcast Throughline bring us the story of how Hezbollah came to be.

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RUND ABDELFATAH: 1978 Iran - unrest broke out all over the country. Iran's king, or shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a close ally of the United States, was on his back foot, unable to stop the protests.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Hundreds of thousands of marchers carrying banners and chanting slogans in support of Ayatollah Khomeini, the country's religious leader who was living in exile in Paris.

RAMTIN ARABLOUEI: Protesters rallied against a lack of political freedom and economic inequality. It was a revolution, and it had a de facto leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, an Iranian Shia Muslim cleric.

ABDELFATAH: The government's response got more and more violent, but the crowds of protesters just got bigger and bigger until one day...

ARABLOUEI: It was over. The shah left Iran, and Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in Paris. He almost immediately started trying to consolidate power.

ABDELFATAH: The Iranian Revolution didn't start out as an Islamic one. There were secular actors and leftists also involved. But by the end of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters had forcefully taken over the revolution in the name of Islam, Shia Islam.

MATTHEW LEVITT: We cannot overemphasize the importance of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979.

ARABLOUEI: This is Georgetown University professor, Matthew Levitt.

MATTHEW LEVITT: The Shia Islamic Revolution in Iran was never intended to end at the borders of Iran. And so they immediately created departments and agencies whose sole purpose was to export that revolution. And their first targets were those countries in the region that had large Shia populations, and first among equals was Lebanon.

ABDELFATAH: The ties between Iran and Lebanon Shia communities date back to the 1500s when the Safavid Empire forcefully converted Iran from Sunni to Shia Islam. They brought Shia clerics from Lebanon to help convert the Iranian population. And in the following centuries, Iran became the power center of Shiism.

MATTHEW LEVITT: There was such strong historical connections between the clerical elite in Lebanon and in Iraq and Iran because the elite Shia clerics had studied in the holy cities in Iran or in Iraq.

ABDELFATAH: And because Lebanon's Shia community had long been oppressed, the prospect of having a state like Iran as an ally changed the balance of power in Lebanon, but Iran's plan to export the revolution...

MATTHEW LEVITT: Went on pause in a big way because of the Iran-Iraq War.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Yelling in non-English language).

ABDELFATAH: In 1980, seeing Iran weakened by the revolution, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's dictator, unleashed an all-out invasion of Iran's oil-rich southern county of Khorramshahr.

MATTHEW LEVITT: This was an existential fight for Iran, and the effort to export the revolution was secondary.

ABDELFATAH: But that would all change in 1982.

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ARABLOUEI: The Israeli military forces invaded southern Lebanon to push back against the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, a militant group that represented the Palestinian cause who were in Lebanon after being expelled from Jordan.

KIM GHATTAS: So the goal became not just to push the PLO away from the border with Israel, but to push them out of Lebanon completely.

ARABLOUEI: This is Kim Ghattas. She's a journalist based in Lebanon. And she says the PLO and associated militias tried to fight back but were overwhelmed by Israel's advanced weapons and tactics. Eventually, the Israeli military laid siege to Beirut.

GHATTAS: The siege of Beirut was painful and devastating - no water, no fuel, no food. And it came also at great civilian cost, and the toll was high in Lebanon.

ARABLOUEI: Israel laid siege to Beirut in order to push out PLO fighters hunkered down there and to install a new, friendly, pro-Israeli government. Meanwhile, several Lebanese Shia clerics went to Iran and convinced Iranian leaders to help.

GHATTAS: Iran sends a planeload of Iranian Revolutionary Guards to come and assist Lebanon.

MATTHEW LEVITT: And they start training Shia militants. And the idea was to create some superstructure and to provide some training including, by the way, ideological training.

ABDELFATAH: With this support from Iran, the Lebanese Shia clerics were able to start a military organization called...

MATTHEW LEVITT: The resistance, the Muqawama.

AURELIE DAHER: The Islamic resistance in Lebanon.

ARABLOUEI: This is Aurelie Daher, author of "Hezbollah: Mobilization and Power." She says the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, the IRL, soon realized it needed more than just military power.

DAHER: The IRL will feel the need to add to that military structure a whole network of civilian institutions.

ABDELFATAH: That network of civilian institutions was called Hezbollah, which translates to Party of God. The group was tasked by its leaders to do three things. First...

DAHER: Communication, basically, explaining to the Lebanese society who they are, what they're doing, the point of their fight.

ABDELFATAH: Second...

DAHER: Recruiting.

ABDELFATAH: ...Basically raising an army.

DAHER: To promote that resistance discourse.

ABDELFATAH: And Hezbollah's third objective...

DAHER: To help the Lebanese cope with collateral damage. If you're wounded in an Israeli attack, then basically they will take care of you for free.

MATTHEW LEVITT: They had Iranian funds to be able to pay salaries and to empower people to be able to build grassroots institutions, not just political, but much more importantly - social, welfare, religious, educational, medical.

ABDELFATAH: With this three-prong approach, Hezbollah started to be seen by some people in Lebanon as a force for good, and in the Shia community, Hezbollah increasingly became its defender.

MATTHEW LEVITT: It helped drive recruitment. People wanted - people within the Shia community wanted, aspired to be able to join Hezbollah.

ABDELFATAH: Despite Hezbollah's resistance, Israel ultimately reached its goal and expelled most of the PLO from Lebanon. But Hezbollah didn't go away. As the 1980s and '90s went on, they only got stronger with the Islamic Republic of Iran's partnership. They eventually became a kind of state within a state with their own military and civilian infrastructure and seats in the Lebanese government.

ARABLOUEI: Today Lebanon is in a state of economic and social freefall. The country's banking system is almost in collapse. Unemployment is rampant, and corruption is everywhere. The country is barely being held together, and many observers blame Hezbollah for this situation because in many ways, they call the shots for the government from the shadows.

ABDELFATAH: And it's in this context that Lebanon must navigate escalating tensions with Israel since the October 7 Hamas-led attack.

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KELLY: That's Throughline hosts, Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arablouei. And you can hear the whole episode on NPR's Throughline podcast.

(SOUNDBITE OF ELMIENE SONG, "MARKING MY TIME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.