Who are Hezbollah?

Last Tuesday, Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets within half an hour at the port city of Haifa. In total, the terrorist group has fired 8,000 missiles at Israel since October 7, 2023. At the same time, large parts of the group’s leadership have now been eliminated. But who are Hezbollah really?

In mid-June, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that “there will be no place safe from our missiles and our drones.” Nasrallah was killed by an Israeli missile on September 27. Photo: Khamenei.ir.

Most of the rockets in recent days were intercepted by the Iron Dome system. Meanwhile, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hashem Safieddine, billed to succeed Hassan Nasrallah – who was killed in an Israeli airstrike late September – was likely killed in another airstrike in Beirut last week.
Hezbollah began firing missiles at Israel a year ago in support of Hamas after the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack that killed around 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Hezbollah has repeatedly said over the past year that the group would not stop its fire until a ceasefire in Gaza was reached. Israel stepped up its attacks on Hezbollah in recent weeks to push the terror group back from the border to force them to comply with a 2006 UN resolution. This escalation followed Israel’s decision to make the return of those living in the north an official war objective. About 60,000 residents were evacuated from the Lebanonese border shortly after the Hamas attack on October 7. Analysts estimate that Hezbollah has between 130,000 and 150,000 rockets and missiles, more than four times what Hamas was thought to have.

Hezbollah is a Shiite terrorist organization that follows Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamist ideology and is controlled by Iran. Hezbollah, which is a ‘state within a state’ and occupies parts of Lebanon, also has extensive military and economic cooperation with Syria, Russia, North Korea and Shia militias in Iraq.
From its formation until today, the destruction of the state of Israel has been one of the organization’s main goals. Hezbollah has been trained, organized and financed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, with the stated aim of fighting Israel and “Western colonialism” in Lebanon where the largest Christian group, the Maronites – who existed in the country long before Islam even existed – is also seen as an enemy.
Hezbollah is listed as a terrorist organization by a number of countries including the EU, US, UK, Australia, Argentina, Canada, France and the Arab League.
Hezbollah finances its activities, among other things, through drug trafficking from the Bekaa Valley and, with the support of Iran, has increased its influence in Lebanon, where it is popular among Shia Muslims but unpopular among Sunni Muslims and Christians.

In 1932, Maronite Christians were the largest population group in Lebanon, Sunnis were the second largest, and Shiites the smallest. The number of Christians has since decreased due to Muslim persecution.
Swedes with a background in the Christian part of the population who are currently in the country do not dare to travel back to Sweden for fear of losing their homes to Shia Muslims who then seize them, an anonymous source told Israel Report.
The US government estimated at the end of 2023 that Iran finances Hezbollah with approximately 700 million dollars (roughly SEK 7 billion) annually. Hezbollah increased its influence following the assassination of Sunni Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 which occurred after Hariri had confronted Syrian President Bashar Assad and Syria’s involvement in Lebanon. Syria was suspected of being behind the assassination, which forced Assad to leave the country.
Hezbollah assisted the Assad government during the Syrian civil war when half a million people were killed and 12 million were made refugees.

Hezbollah was behind the bombing of the US embassy and the bombings against US and French forces in Beirut in 1983, the kidnapping of a number of Westerners in the 1980s and was responsible for the attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1992 and the bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Argentina in 1994, which claimed a total of 124 lives.
Researcher Robert A. Pape believes that “from 1982 to 1986, Hezbollah carried out 36 terrorist attacks with a total of 41 suicide bombers against American, French and Israeli targets in Lebanon… Altogether, these attacks took the lives of 659 people”.
Of those who carried out these suicide attacks, two-thirds were from left-wing political groups, while a quarter were Islamists (The Guardian, 6 Aug 2006).