The axis of resistance...the idea and its limits (4): Hezbollah and strikes within the rules of engagement

Axis of resistance, Hezbollah flag (Al Jazeera)

The Al Jazeera Net website publishes an integrated file entitled “The Axis of Resistance... The Idea and Its Limits,” which discusses in detail the idea of ​​the axis, the indications for its founding, the history of formation, and its contexts.

The file also addresses the edges of the axis that revolve in its orbit and are linked to its nucleus, and the spaces in which they operate, and describes the states of polarization and repulsion between its components and their surroundings.

In the file, we examine the relationship of the axis with the Palestinian resistance, which in the Gaza Strip - led by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) - is waging the “Al-Aqsa Flood” battle against the Israeli aggression that has been ongoing for 110 days.

The file will be published as a series of episodes. We will begin by talking about Iran as the nucleus of this axis, then we will talk about Syria, the golden link in it, and then we will discuss how did the Houthis reach the sea? Speaking about Hezbollah, we will discuss the attack strategy within the rules of engagement, and in Iraq, the militias affiliated with the Axis from its founding until Operation Flood.

Link to the first episode: Iran...the idea of ​​the axis and its limits

Link to the second episode: The idea and its limits (2): Syria, the golden circle

Link to the third episode: The idea and its limits (3): How did the Houthis reach the sea?

Hezbollah...strikes within the rules of engagement

Ahmed Al-Arouri

The “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation on the morning of October 7th represented a surprise not only to the Israeli occupation state, but also to the allies of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the region, led by Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which was confirmed by statements from the highest political and military levels in the region. sides.

However, since the morning of the second day of the battle, Hezbollah announced that it had targeted military sites of the occupation army in the Shebaa Farms. These attacks were a signal from the party of its participation in the battle, but this participation remained subject to the calculated rules of engagement.

For several weeks to follow, as targeting operations developed up to a distance of 3 km from the border between occupied Palestine and Lebanon, “ambiguity” prevailed regarding Hezbollah’s role in the war.

Confusing ambiguity

But the "ambiguity" that was confusing the occupation was cleared on November 8, when the party's Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, delivered a long-awaited speech in which he said that southern Lebanon represented a "front of solidarity and support" for the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip.

While he left the options open between continuing the operations in a gradual manner or entering into a wide-scale war, he set implicit conditions for escalation and entry into the war, the first of which is harming Lebanon, then the presence of a danger to the resistance in the Gaza Strip, and he announced that the party “will not allow Hamas to be defeated” and will work to “ "You emerge victorious."

The party's operations on the border remained focused on targeting the occupation forces, Israeli spy services, camps, and bases in the areas surrounding southern Lebanon. With the high number of dead and wounded among soldiers and settlers, the occupation forces launched raids on Lebanese homes and civilian facilities, which prompted the party to use new weapons such as “Volcano” missiles and targeting settlements, as happened in the missile strikes on the “Kiryat Shmona” settlement.

As a result of these attacks, more than 230,000 settlers were displaced from northern occupied Palestine, according to the Wall Street Journal, and according to the United Nations Development Programme, more than 64,000 Lebanese were displaced from southern Lebanon, after about 91 villages for about 1786 attacks. Since the start of the confrontations between Hezbollah and the Israeli army, 133 members of the party have been killed.

In conjunction with the party’s operations from the southern front, the “Al-Qassam Brigades,” the military wing of the Hamas movement, the “Jerusalem Brigades,” the military wing of the Jihad Movement, and Lebanese groups such as the Lebanese Islamic Group, carried out operations from the same areas, which confirms the strength of coordination and the development of the relationship between these parties over the years. past.

In the context of the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” the southern Lebanon front carries signs of greater combustion, and perhaps the outbreak of war, in light of the settlement blocs that were displaced after these operations announcing that their residents will not return before Hezbollah is removed from the border.

In addition to this, there are media leaks about pressure and communications from various parties, including the United States and France, to persuade the Lebanese state to achieve this goal, in the context of implementing United Nations resolutions, and the party’s leaders have confirmed until now that these demands are not achievable.

Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah (Al Jazeera)

Establishment of the party

The Israeli occupation army’s invasion of southern Lebanon and the Western Bekaa, all the way to the capital, Beirut, starting in June 1982, with the aim of destroying the capabilities of the Palestine Liberation Organization and removing its forces from Lebanese territory, constituted a strategic event at various levels, including ripening the conditions for the emergence of a new Shiite Islamic movement, whose strength was Young people distributed among different movements, including the "Amal Movement" founded by Imam Musa al-Sadr, and they were influenced by the Islamic Revolution in Iran led by Khomeini.

After the invasion, a committee representing the scholarly group in the Bekaa, the Islamic committees, and the “Islamic Amal” movement met, and they came up with a document known as the “Document of the Nine,” and then they brought it to the Iranian guide as their “legitimate and jurisprudential authority,” who approved it for them and granted them “legitimate approval.” Accordingly, after deliberating among themselves about the name of the new baby, they agreed on the name “Hezbollah.”

Thus, the party’s relationship with the “Guardian Jurist,” whom Khomeini represented, began with its establishment and intellectual influence, then with the opening of the line of political and authority relations.

After the invasion, Iran sent a delegation from its military establishment, headed by the Revolutionary Guards, to Lebanon, then a group of them entered the Bekaa Valley and set up a camp in the Jinta area to train the first generation of the party’s fighters, including former Secretary-General Abbas al-Moussawi, who was killed in an operation. Assassination of an Israeli woman in 1992.

Hezbollah's relations with the Iranian state in that period focused on figures from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, including Mohsen Rezaei, the ambassador to Syria, Ali Akbar Mohtashami, and Ali Khamenei, who was appointed by Imam Khomeini to coordinate with the party.

This relationship was multi-dimensional, and the “guardian jurist” remained a reference for the party on issues that he believed should be discussed from a “legitimate basis,” as in the issue of the siege imposed by the Israeli occupation army on villages in southern Lebanon, after the martyrdom operation on Ali Safi al-Din in 1997. 1984, when a protest arose from other parties over the price paid by the people after these operations, so the party went to interrogate Khomeini about the case, and he said that the military operations must continue.

In another case, Hassan Nasrallah narrates that the party approached Imam Khomeini during the First Gulf War (1980-1988), to resolve the debate on how Hezbollah would act if the occupation army launched a complete invasion of Lebanese territory.

During the conflict between the party and the Amal Movement in the late 1980s, which was known as the “War of the Brothers,” Iran was a representative and defender of the party before the Syrian administration, of which Amal was an ally in Lebanon.

Under the shadow of the Quds Force

During the years of Hezbollah’s fighting with the Israeli occupation army, which remained in various regions of southern Lebanon and the Western Bekaa within what it called the “security zone,” until liberation in May 2000, relations between the party and the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which is responsible for coordination With the party and the factions allied with Iran in the region, the Palestinian resistance forces are strong, as the legion worked to provide the party with weapons, provide its cadres with combat courses, and coordinate in the field of plans and development of combat work.

In 1998, Major General Qassem Soleimani’s assumption of responsibility for the Quds Force had a qualitative impact on the relationship with the party. He began his duties in managing the Corps by heading towards Lebanon, getting to know the party’s leaders, and visiting its positions that faced the occupied region from the south. He established firm and strong relations with the party’s leaders, led by Hassan Nasrallah, Imad Mughniyeh, Mustafa Badr al-Din and others, and he completed the path of increasing the strength of the party. The party and the development of its combat operations.

In the following years, until his assassination in 2020, Soleimani was central in relations with the party, coordinating with it on the various fronts they entered together, and even in relations with the Palestinian factions and those in Iraq and the regions with which Iran established relations and invested in the war on Syrian soil.

In the 2006 war, Soleimani was present alongside Nasrallah and Mughniyeh in managing the battle and coordinating with the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ali Khamenei.

The relationship with the Palestinian factions

In parallel with the multidimensional relations with Iran, central figures in the party maintained relations with the Palestinian factions, even with the Fatah movement, headed by President Yasser Arafat. Imad Mughniyeh, Abu Hassan Salama, and others from the party, who had ties with the Palestinian revolution during its presence in Lebanon, saw the return of Palestinian forces to the occupied territories after the 1993 Oslo Accords as an opportunity to continue contacts in order to provide the Palestinians with weapons and support to resist the Israeli occupation.

The relations of Mughniyeh and his team with President Arafat, in parallel with the historical relations with "Hamas", "Islamic Jihad", "Popular Front - General Command" and other factions affiliated with the resistance.

The Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 was an opportunity to develop the path of "supporting the Palestinian resistance", even with parties within the Fatah movement, and one of the most prominent manifestations of this was the case of the "Karen A" ship, which the occupation army announced control of before it reached the shores of the Gaza Strip.

In the years after the Al-Aqsa Intifada, the party’s role, in partnership with Soleimani, in coordination with the Palestinian factions and their military services, especially in the Gaza Strip, continued to take on broader dimensions in light of the resistance brigades’ efforts to develop their military structure, through building a system of tunnels and developing specific weapons such as missiles and others.

Stand against the revolution

At the beginning of Hezbollah and the consolidation of its military presence, its relationship with the Syrian administration that controlled Lebanon was not positive.

Leaders in the party narrate that figures in the Syrian regime were pushing towards a clash with the party, and these leaders accuse Ghazi Kanaan, the former commander of the Syrian Military Intelligence Division in Lebanon, who was considered at the time to be in control of political life in the country, of being behind the clash with the party. In the “Fath Allah Barracks” incident in 1987, in which the Syrian army killed a number of party members, Major General Jameh Jameh was personally accused of being behind it.

In the “Grapes of Wrath” aggression launched by the occupation army against Lebanon in 1996, leaders from the party, including the political assistant to the Secretary-General, Hussein Al-Khalil, narrate that Ghazi Kanaan clashed with the party and showed anger at the party’s military behavior, before relations headed towards a positive path, after Hafez al-Assad assigned his son Bashar to coordinate with the party.

The relationship between the party and the Syrian regime continued to mature until it reached Nasrallah’s description of it as a “strategic relationship,” after Syria became a path for transferring weapons to the party from Iran, until the relationship reached the building of an axis in which Iran, Syria, and the party are the main sides.

The outbreak of the Arab revolutions, beginning in Tunisia and then Egypt, then reaching other Arab countries, including Syria, was a new stage in the history of the party and the region. Hezbollah announced welcoming and “positive” positions on the revolutions, especially in Tunisia and Egypt, but their arrival in Syria represented a huge “shock” in its vision of the course of events and its relations at the regional level and what is known as the “axis of resistance.”

Trying to reach settlements

The party says that at the beginning of the revolution, it made contacts to reach settlements, but later announced a clear position of standing behind the regime, in what it said was a “war on the axis of resistance” and the regime, which represents its strategic artery in political and military supply and support. In the summer of 2013, the Secretary-General of the party officially announced his involvement in the battle that began in the city of Qusayr, as he considered that the presence of the revolution’s military formations there constituted a threat to him.

The years of the revolution represented the party’s full involvement alongside the regime, Iran, and the rest of their allies. Iranian General Hossein Hamedani narrates in his memoirs “Fish Letters” that Hassan Nasrallah represented a central reference in assessing the events in Syria and developing plans to deal with them.

The party, in coordination with Soleimani, pushed forces into Syria, and a number of its historical leaders were killed in battles. This participation was not limited to Syrian territory, as the party announced the participation of its leaders in supporting the Iraqi militias in confronting ISIS, which invaded large areas of Iraq, starting in 2014.

The relations between the party and Iraqi Shiite forces allied with Iran were not the result of this stage, as historical sources indicate that Imad Mughniyeh, one of the party’s most prominent military leaders, had established relations with these forces before the fall of the Iraqi regime, as stated in a speech by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Commander of Staff of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, during the stage of resistance to the American occupation.

The events in the Levant and Iraq coincided with dramatic changes in Yemen, represented by the rise of the Ansar Allah Houthi group allied with Iran. Despite the murky details of relations and accusations against Hezbollah by the Gulf states, which launched a military campaign in Yemen in 2015, of training the Houthis and participating in fighting alongside them, the party denied this and confirmed its support for them only on the political and moral level.

These events may be considered a key to the formation of what later became an established term in Arab and international political and media deliberations, which is the “axis of resistance.”

Did the “Squares Unit” see the light?

Despite the deterioration of relations between Hamas, the Syrian regime, and Iran against the backdrop of the position on the Syrian revolution, the movement’s relations with the party remained alive, as leaders from the movement confirm, especially at the level of relations with the Al-Qassam Brigades.

In the years after 2015, relations between Hamas, the party, and Iran returned to the path of strengthening, leading to the announcement of the concept of “unity of the arenas,” which is dated to the year 2021 after the “Saif al-Quds” battle. It is a concept that is still being crystallized, although it has not taken shape. It can be judged that it has become effective in military and field operations.

Although the interventions carried out within limited rules of engagement, carried out by the party and Islamic factions in Iraq and the “Ansar Allah” group in Yemen, can be read as an expression of “unity of the arenas,” it is “unity” that remained within the framework of preoccupation and opening fronts with the Israeli occupation without Go to a massive war.

The complex reality created by the Al-Aqsa Flood battle revealed complexity at the level of relations between the Axis powers. The party, which declared that its duty was to work “not to allow Hamas to be defeated,” and carried out a series of operations against the occupation sites on the border with Lebanon, appeared to be operating within the context of well-known rules of engagement, and lines that it did not precisely determine when to depart from and expand its operations.

Those who follow the party's history will notice that the trend towards building relationships in the region with various forces, especially those supporting the resistance line, is a ruling pattern in its strategic philosophy, in parallel with its established relations with the Iranian regime. On the Palestinian scene, he established relations with Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and other national forces that opposed the settlement agreements.

Hezbollah is central to the “axis of resistance,” although it is linked ideologically, morally, and politically to the “Guardian Jurist” regime in Iran. However, limiting its relations to the “dimension of dependency” hides many details.

Although the party has different contexts in this relationship, in terms of compliance at the legal level with the “guardian jurist,” and high coordination at the political and military levels with Iran, it has Lebanese social and historical dimensions, and a historical connection with the Palestinian issue, which makes analyzing its positions without This consideration is often far from accurate, and the institutions that it built over the years have an independent status in analysis and decision-making.

Source: Al Jazeera