Has Hezbollah become too big to fail?

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Damascus is not the only Middle Eastern capital that experienced acute violence this month. A serious incident flared up in Beirut last Thursday, when members of Christian militias opened fire on a demonstration by Hezbollah and Amal, which want to put an end to the investigation of the August 2020 disaster in the city’s port, where an explosion killed more than 200 people.

The findings of the investigating judge are casting a strong light on the dark activity in the port on Hezbollah and businesspeople close to the organization; thousands of tons of explosives were stored negligently and without supervision in the port, apparently causing the disaster.

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The coverage of the incident on Israeli television played up the concern that the battles in the streets of Beirut augur the looming eruption of a new civil war in the country. However, according to Dr. Shimon Shapira from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, whose research focuses on Lebanon and Hezbollah, a civil war remains a relatively remote possibility. Shapira notes a somewhat surprising remark by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in his last speech, to the effect that he has 100,000 fighters at his disposal.

The inflated figure cited by Nasrallah, Shapira says, is intended to send a message to Hezbollah’s rivals that the organization is no longer a state within a state, but has become a state in its own right, wielding military might far in excess of the Lebanese army. Shapira, a brigadier general in the reserves who recently published a book (in English) about the Hezbollah-Iran-Lebanon triangle, maintains that the organization’s behavior during the latest crisis demonstrates that it has no desire to bring about a civil war.

“Iran and Hezbollah are continuing to pursue the same strategic line,” he says. “They are preserving the achievements they have already recorded – control of the ports and growing influence in the army, the other security branches and in parliament – but are taking care to operate through the legitimate institutions, not to topple them. The disaster in the port showed them for what they are. They didn’t expect such broad public support for the work of the investigating judge. Hezbollah’s display of force is intended to thrust him aside, but without completely dismantling the system that holds the state together.”

Shapira believes that Hezbollah is coping with the challenge in the same way it worked to scuttle the investigation against it over the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, in 2005. “Everything now depends on the staying power of the rival camp,” Shapira says. “Hezbollah has already succeeded in splitting the Christian camp through the political alliance it forged with the president, Michel Aoun. Nasrallah is also presenting himself as the leader of the Christians in the face of ISIS and other forces.”

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The whole story, he asserts, is only indirectly related to Israel, and there is no reason for it to intervene. “It’s an internal Lebanese event. The concern is over what will happen if the anarchy spreads from Beirut to the south of the country. At the moment, Hezbollah is making sure to prevent this and to contain the event within Beirut. But it’s all up in the air – there is always the danger that the events on the streets will lurch completely out of control.”