File Photo: A parade by the Iranian backed Lebanese Shiite militant group
The Arab League has removed Hezbollah from its list of designated terror groups, the organization’s assistant secretary-general on the Egyptian Al-Qahera News Channel.
In a televised statement, Hossam Zaki said, “The member states of the league agreed that the label of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization should no longer be employed”.
Hezbollah was classified as a “terrorist organization” by the Arab League on 11 March 2016, shortly after the Gulf Cooperation Council countries made the designation.
“In earlier Arab League decisions, Hezbollah was designated as a terrorist organization, leading to the severing of communication based on these decisions,” Zaki added. He stated that the Arab League “does not maintain terrorist lists and does not actively seek to designate entities in such a manner.”
The Arab League formally branded Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in 2016. The move aligned the 22-member league firmly behind Saudi Arabia and the Saudi-led bloc of six Gulf Arab nations, which made the same move against Hezbollah weeks earlier.
Hezbollah was outraged by the Gulf states’ decision to blacklist it, calling it “irresponsible and hostile” and urging the Saudi regime to “face the consequences”.
The reversal comes as tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have risen dramatically in recent weeks.
Hezbollah is the jewel in the crown of the Iranian proxy network
One of the most important elements of Iran’s regional and international power projection is its deployment of proxy militias. Over decades, and with only limited effective pushback from regional states or the international community, Tehran has assembled an adaptive, layered network of regional militias with discrete organizational structures and leadership and overlapping interests and ties to Iran’s security and religious establishments. This proxy infrastructure has enabled the Islamic Republic to wield significant sway and sow instability across the broader Middle East and beyond while preserving plausible deniability. Although these relationships are often highly opportunistic, that does not invalidate their utility for either side of the equation; in many respects, it reflects shared preferences for autonomy and self-interest. And the evolutionary nature of Iranian investments in its clients has worked to its advantage, enabling Iran’s security establishment to build partnerships of enduring strategic value.
Over four decades, militant proxy groups have become a core component of the Islamic Republic’s regional and international strategy, which relies on asymmetric warfare to gain leverage against more powerful adversaries, including and especially the United States. In seeking to entrench its own influence at the expense of its adversaries, Iran’s power projection via proxies is purposeful rather than wanton, conscious of the balance of costs and benefits, determined to exploit openings or weaknesses, inventive in its implementation, and wide-ranging in scope. Iran’s access has been boosted by the elimination of its historic competitors among the radical camp in the Middle East. As dictators like Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi were eliminated from the scene, the Islamic Republic has become one of the only games in town.
Tehran’s operational governance of its proxies has proven versatile and dynamic, utilizing umbrella groups and joint operation rooms to coalesce and direct diverse factions, while at other times fragmenting existing groups as a means of maintaining its sway. While Iran’s provision of funding and materiel support has long been a central dimension of sustaining its relationships with individual militias, increasingly, Tehran is equipped to transfer not just weaponry but the means of production and modification to enable independent manufacturing as well. Any risks of obsolescence seem to be outweighed by the opportunity to build redundancy of supply, seed innovation, and enhance deniability.
Hezbollah in Lebanon, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq , and the Houthis in Yemen. These groups have emerged as the most powerful nodes of Iran’s militia network, but they represent only a small minority of the multitude of groups across the world that Tehran has patronized over the past 45 years.
Iran’s proxy network emerged organically from the transnational operational and ideational networks that facilitated the 1979 revolution. From the inception of the Islamic Republic, its leadership has harbored expansive ambitions. The ideology that shaped Iran’s post-revolutionary state was explicitly universalist, and its first leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, maintained that exporting the revolution was necessary for its survival, arguing that “If we remain in an enclosed environment we shall definitely face defeat.” Determined to spark a wider wave of upheavals, its leaders developed an infrastructure dedicated to toppling the status quo across the Muslim world through proxy groups , and the instrumental use of extraterritorial violence. To extend the regime’s vision of an Islamic order, Tehran sought to subvert its neighbors through attempted coups, assassinations, and bombings.
Despite wide-ranging efforts, the anticipated revolutionary wave failed to materialize. Still, the Islamic Republic’s early investments yielded one enduring asset: the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) played a foundational role in forging the organization after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon . Hezbollah’s long and bloody track record includes a devastating series of suicide bombings in 1983 and 1984 that targeted U.S. and French government facilities in Lebanon, as well as kidnappings, hijackings, and actions further afield, such as the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Argentina and the 2012 suicide bombing that killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. Hezbollah has fought and survived multiple wars with Israel, maintains tens of thousands of active fighters, and with Tehran’s help has amassed a massive arsenal estimated to include 150,000 rockets and missiles, mostly short-range and unguided, as well as drones, precision missiles, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and anti-ship missiles
Through its political wing, Hezbollah has insinuated itself firmly in the fraught Lebanese government, with members serving in parliament and in the cabinet. This political role has not tempered the group’s reliance on coercion; several Hezbollah members have been convicted in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.
Today, Hezbollah is the jewel in the crown of the Iranian proxy network according to military observers . Its ideological affinity with Tehran is unique, and it proved be central to the Islamic Republic’s existential struggle to sustain Bashar Assad’s regime after the eruption of the Syrian civil war. That conflict elevated Hezbollah to first among equals, working closely with the IRGC to provide training and coordination among a wider transnational network of Shiite militias from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.
Tehran’s deep involvement in Lebanon also provided the springboard for its patronage of various Palestinian groups, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a small Sunni group that fused Muslim Brotherhood doctrine with an affinity for the Iranian revolution. Embraced by the IRGC, PIJ’s commitment to militancy made it a valuable partner for Tehran in its efforts to sabotage U.S.-led efforts to advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
In its outreach to the Palestinians, Tehran has consistently sought to court Hamas, which emerged in the 1980s as the most influential opponent of Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking.
News Agencies
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