Hizballah’s Ideology of Resistance and Its Discontents

To understand the Islamic Republic’s current attempt to establish its hegemony over the Middle East, writes Hanin Ghaddar, one must understand Hizballah, which plays a pivotal role in Iranian strategy. And to understand Hizballah, one must understand its Shiite “sacred narrative,” according to which its wars with Israel, Syrian rebels, and Sunni Muslims more generally—collectively termed “resistance”—are part of an ongoing struggle to reverse a 7th-century Shiite defeat by the early Sunnis for supremacy over Islam. This, combined with the idea that Iran’s supreme leader has pope-like authority over the world’s Shiites, and with its provision of social services to the poor, has won Hizballah the hearts and minds of much of Lebanon’s Shiite population. Yet even as Iran’s network of alliances is at the peak of its power, Hizballah is in danger of losing its popularity: