The Mythology of a Mideast ‘Axis of Resistance’

Iran: Analysis

What then of Iran: like Syria, its response has been to do nothing, while attempting to hold back its allies to avoid ‘escalation’. Nevertheless, even its cultivation of these forces, and its louder “anti-Zionist” rhetoric than neighbouring reactionary regimes, deserves some analysis.

In the 1979 Iranian revolution the US-backed dictatorship of the Shah was overthrown and the mullahs, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, elevated to power. Popular hatred of the US for backing the Shah’s tyranny was overwhelming; and reflecting the popular rejection of the Shah’s pro-Israel policy, the new regime handed Israel’s embassy to the PLO.

One interpretation of Iranian policy is that anti-American and anti-Zionist mass wave still impacts the reactionary regime, that “the revolution still lives” at base, keeping the ruling class in line. However, such a time has long ago passed; if anything, today the situation is reversed, popular rejection of the regime often leading to mistaken pro-Israeli views among sections of the population; state-sponsored demonstrations in support of Gaza have been modest in size (unlike the enormous gatherings of the 1980s); in one incident, Iranian football fans booed during a minute’s silence for Gaza. While Palestine may have corresponded to the feelings of the revolutionary masses, who remained in a mobilizational state for several years after 1979, the Islamist regime crushed the revolutionary masses in rivers of blood in the 1980s, so a different explanation is needed. This explanation is two-fold.

First, while the symbolism of Palestine was associated with revolution it was also used by clerical counterrevolution. Smashing the Iranian workers, women, leftists, liberals, Kurds and other oppressed nations required the mullahs using the mobilised ‘Islamist’ petty-bourgeoisie as a fascist-like weapon against the revolutionary masses; as with European fascism, to mobilise plebeian layers to do their dirty work of the bourgeoisie requires some populist ideological ‘glue’, with symbolic concessions to the masses. The ‘socialist’ element in ‘National-Socialism’ (Naziism) was entirely bogus, but by identifying ‘the Jews’ with rich capitalists stealing from ‘good German workers’ the Nazis shielded big German capital (overwhelmingly non-Jewish) while giving confused, disoriented German petty-bourgeoisie, battered by the Great Depression, the illusion they were fighting the rich and powerful while slaughtering workers and the left in street battles. For Khomeiniism, ‘anti-imperialism’ (the US as ‘Great Satan’) and the harmless quest for distant Jerusalem replace the Nazis’ ‘socialism’ as this populist glue.

The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 demonstrated how meaningless this was. Saddam Hussein’s Baathist tyranny (another anti-Israel ‘resistant’ regime) started this war by invading Iran, but from 1982 to 1988 the war became an attempted Iranian invasion of Iraq, Hussein suing for peace on the border in mid-1982. The mullahs’ six-year war, aimed at seizing the Iraqi port Basra, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranian and Iraqi workers, was pushed as a war against the US ‘Great Satan’ to ‘liberate Jerusalem’. Yet Israel was so unconcerned that it provided arms to Iran throughout the war – arms sent in trucks across Assad’s Syria and NATO-member Turkey – and openly advocated Iranian victory; the US armed both sides (US arms to Iran in the Iran-Contra Affair facilitated by Israel), wishing, according to Kissinger, for both sides to “lose.” Although the ability to mobilise vast reactionary forces has diminished, to maintain even the core of this ‘mobilised’ support still requires the bluster.    

Secondly, the virulent ‘destroy Israel’ rhetoric also became useful to the new strategy of Iran – a sub-imperial capitalism emerging from its shell – competing with regional sub-imperial rivals like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The Shah regime’s point of distinction with right-wing Arab regimes was its alliance with Israel, which made it the key ally of US imperialism. But while arms and money flowed as a result, this put it at odds with the Arab world, and the potential economic inroads in the region; the new Iranian regime reversed this by becoming rhetorically “the most” anti-Israel, competing with powerful Arab regimes for regional hegemony by trying to expose their timidity (a somewhat similar process began two decades later in Turkey with Erdogan and the ‘pro-Palestinian’ AKP). Meanwhile, the fiery rhetoric could remain safe and untested due to Iran’s geographic distance from Israel.

Iran’s need for some special quality is further heightened because the dominant nation in Iran is Persian, rather than Arab, and are mostly Shiite Muslim, while the vast majority in the Arab world are Sunni. While this cannot explain everything, capitalist ruling classes base their rule on the ‘nation’ (or religious community), for ideological and economic cohesion. It was not difficult for Iran to exploit sectarian Shiite identity in the Arab world, especially given the oppression Iraq’s Shiite majority faced under Hussein and the marginalisation of the Shiite plurality in Lebanon’s sectarian system, for example. But such a limited base of support within the vast Arab world would not satisfy Iran’s expansionist capitalism; expressing a vocally radical ‘support’ for the largely Sunni Palestinians, to rhetorically outdo Sunni-majority Arab regimes, was one ‘way in’.

Israel’s virulent anti-Iranian stance can be explained in similar terms. The fact that it armed Iran while ‘revolutionary’ firebrand Khomeini was in power yet has upped ‘Iranian threat’ rhetoric as more pragmatic Iranian leaders arose since the 1990s, suggests Israel does not actually feel ‘threatened’ by Iranian bluster. Rather, the Zionist project, based on the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people, finds the presence of a powerful ‘enemy’ state, a ‘Fourth Reich’, an ‘existential threat’, a useful tool for ideological homogenisation of the Israeli working class, in the same way as Iran’s theocratic project uses ‘liberate Jerusalem’ rhetoric. In the 1980s, this was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, explaining Israel’s support to Iran, as Ariel Sharon declared; but following the US destruction of Iraq in 1991, Israel adopted Iran as its necessary demon. Once again, geographic distance means the rhetoric goes untested. Obama’s attempt to remove Iran from ‘enemy’ status via the JCPOA (Iran nuclear accord), while entirely rational from the perspective of US ruling class interests – the region’s biggest population, a great market for western capital, a regime playing its role in regional counterrevolution – was anathema to Israel’s need for a Fourth Reich.

Trump’s irrational decision to scrap the JCPOA was not motivated by US capitalist interests (except perhaps arms companies who profit from having a regional ‘enemy’) but by ideological interests similar to Israel’s – US imperialism’s use for a mythical ‘enemy’. Iran had served that purpose well since the 1979 starting point, and this corresponded to the views of Israel’s far-right Netanyahu regime which Trump was tightly allied to. But this move, leading to the reimposition of sanctions, froze Iran out of what it considered its rightful place as a major regional capitalist power, reincentivising ‘resistance’ rhetoric.

This double edge – fiery anti-Zionist rhetoric and safe geographic distance – is key to understanding Iran’s alleged ‘resistance’ role till today. But distance is an insufficient excuse when the Zionist regime conducts genocide; the question arises of what decades of fiery rhetoric were actually about. Hence both continual attempts to ‘avoid escalation’ while basking in credit by association for the actions of others – which, however, are rooted in their local realities. This puts a capitalist state – which has no interest in confronting imperialism, which rather wants its “rightful” place in the regional capitalist order recognised, but which does not wish to see its ‘credibility’ vanish – in quite a contradictory position.              

Within this general scenario, there are also some specific factors in the current period which have encouraged Iran’s do-nothing approach.

First, while Biden’s attempts to restore the JCPOA were half-hearted, the US imperial interest in restoring some kind of working relationship with Iran in the interests of capitalist business and ‘stability’ remained. Over the year before October, the US and Iran had engaged in quiet negotiations for an ‘Iran deal lite’. In early August, they reached a deal for the US to unfreeze $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues (which the US had been preventing international banks from transferring to Iran) in exchange for Iran freeing five detained Americans.

According to the New York Times, “attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria diminished significantly” following the deal. The Economist reported that, in the half-year before October 7th, Iran “cut by two-thirds production of uranium enriched to 60% u-235,” stopped “harassing American shipping in the Strait of Hormuz” and “discourage[d] proxy attacks on American targets.” The US “turned a blind eye to trade in Iranian oil, which it subjects to sanctions,” Iranian oil exports soaring “from 300,000 barrels a day (b/d) in 2022 to more than 1.2m b/d today.”

However, following October 7, the US has withheld the $6 billion it agreed for Iran to access, implying Iran was responsible for Hamas’ action; despite since claiming to have no evidence of Iranian involvement, the funds have not been released. On the other hand, in November the US allowed Iraq to transfer $10 billion it owed Iran in electricity payments in another sanctions waiver. According to The Economist, this was a reward to Iran for holding back its proxies after Hamas’s attack. Clearly, Iran has an interest in continuing along this track.

Secondly, in the year preceding October 7, Iran had re-established ties with long-term regional rival Saudi Arabia, under Chinese auspices. Both remain committed to détente, the first meeting of the Saudi-Chinese-Iranian Tripartite Joint Committee taking place in Beijing in December at which both delegations “pledg[ed] their commitment to implementing the Beijing Agreement.” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s first visit to Riyadh was in November. Iran therefore has less incentive to ‘expose’ Saudi Arabia on Palestine, indeed, escalation may threaten relations, especially if it impacts their new arrangements in Yemen (ceasefire), Syria (Saudi recognition of Assad), Lebanon or Iraq.

The Gaza genocide also means the rhetorical Saudi position is ‘harder’ on Israel. While western leaders entertain the idea of Saudi Arabia replicating its Iran détente with Israel, Saudi leaders emphasise this can only happen if a sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is established; the Saudis forcefully re-stated this in February following US hinting they would settle for less. So rhetorically the two regimes are closer. While Saudi Arabia has done nothing to aid Gaza, it refused to join the US-led, anti-Houthi naval force; in response to US-UK strikes on the Houthis, it called for ‘de-escalation’; and it refused to allow the US-led coalition to use its airspace to attack the Houthis.

This Saudi-Iranian détente reflects mutual exhaustion in their regional rivalry. On Syria, Saudi Arabia long ago gave up its attempt to influence the anti-Assad uprising, soon after launching its intervention in Yemen in 2015, and the Russian intervention to save Assad the same year, which Saudi leader MBS silently supported (motivated more by rivalry with Qatar, Turkey and the MB than genuine opposition to Assad, the Saudis cautiously drew behind the Egypt-UAE pro-Assad/Putin position to ‘share’ Syria with Iran). Meanwhile, by 2022, both the 7-year Houthi attempt to conquer southern and eastern Yemen, and the Saudi attempt to reconquer north Yemen from the Houthis, had come to nothing, leading to ceasefire; the different governing bodies held on where they had their base of support.

This Saudi-Iran détente may involve other areas of convergence, given the rise of new sub-imperial rivals such as the Saudis’ erstwhile UAE ‘allies’ who back south Yemen secession against the Saudi-backed government! Iran has begun supplying arms to the repressive Sudanese military regime, engulfed in horrific conflict with its former ally, the paramilitary RSF, engaged in the genocidal subjugation of Darfur. While the UAE has been arming the RSF, its erstwhile Saudi and Egyptian allies support the regime. Now Iranian planes bringing arms to Sudan fly through Saudi airspace!

The Iranian-Saudi aim of mutually recognising separate spheres of influence (and some areas of shared influence) reduces Iran’s incentive to use ‘resistance’ rhetoric to compete with the Saudis; it may even incentivise pacifying the region so that as a respectable capitalist power it can properly dominate business in its sphere. The Economist, in an unauthored article likely representing editorial opinion in this flagship of British capitalism, suggests:

“Over time, some analysts hope, the regional restraint the country has shown since October 7th might become the norm. Iran might begin to prefer maintenance of the status quo to revolutionary chaos. Its regional satellites already have dominant roles in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen; it might seek to consolidate rather than expand further.”

Such stabilisation would aid its vision of an ‘Iranian Silk Road’ from Iran to Lebanon, involving a railway connecting ports in southwestern Iran to Mediterranean Sea ports in Syria and Lebanon. This is “a strategic avenue for Iran to broaden and solidify its influence along the transportation route, essentially reshaping its political axis with Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon into a cohesive ‘geographical axis’,” according to Syria TV.

So much for Iran; what of the actions of its Shiite-based quasi-state allies in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen? As shown above, Iran has tended to hold them back from the danger of “going rogue” by taking on Israel or the US “in ways that could severely damage the deterrent architecture” that Iran needs from them – while accepting the credit for them actually doing something. Those who see them as Iran’s “proxies” therefore believe Iran is fomenting at least limited action against Israel. But rather than “proxies,” as Sara Harmouch and Nakissa Jahanbani explain, “Iran provides resources and coordination, but each group maintains its own agenda and local support base, functioning more as partners than proxies,” and its relationship each member “is unique.”

Iraqi Shiite militia in Iraq and Syria: Analysis

The array of Iranian-backed Iraqi-Shiite militia operating in Iraq and Syria must be understood in the context of the devastating 2003 US invasion of Iraq, replacing Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship with a US-controlled colonial regime. Naturally, this created an enormous armed resistance to US occupation; as US armed forces are still present in Iraq, it is hardly surprising that they come under attack, independent of anything happening in Gaza.

However, the relationship between resistance to US occupation and the Iranian-backed forces is not as straightforward as this introduction suggests.

These militia arose following the US invasion, though some descended from Iranian-backed paramilitary groups long opposed to Hussein. Initially many were in league with the US-installed occupation authorities, which reflected Iran’s position: while not thrilled at the US presence on its border, it was thrilled that the US had ousted its arch-enemy. This gave space for Iran to influence Iraq’s political regime, since Shiites are the majority in Iraq but had been frozen from power by Hussein’s dictatorship, based among a section of the Sunni minority. The most pro-Iranian forces – eg the Badr Brigades of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) – were then the most supportive of US occupation authorities; while “moderate” opposition leader, Ahmed Chalabi, who the US had groomed for power, was exposed to be concurrently an Iranian asset. The US-Iran joint-venture regime in Iraq was established, a mind-boggling problem for ‘Resistance Axis’ discourse.

Overwhelmingly, the anti-US resistance was led by Sunni-based forces, the Sunni now feeling frozen from power by the Iranian-backed Shiite authorities; but a more nationalist wing of the Shia, led by Moqtada al-Sadr, feeling the occupation jackboot, also began fighting the occupation from Basra, even carrying out joint actions with Sunni resistance, but al-Sadr’s ‘Mahdi’ movement was also the most independent of Iran.

Shiite-led collaboration with the US occupation led the Iraqi resistance into an increasingly Sunni-sectarian dead-end; amidst this chaos, al-Qaida in Iraq arose, and its horrendous crimes (eg bombings of Shiite mosques) helped lead to sectarian civil war by 2006, Iranian-led factions carrying out horrific crimes against the Sunni population.

Due to this sectarianisation, the Shiite leadership’s collaboration with US occupation, and Hussein’s symbolic support for the PLO, Hussein’s fall led to a surge in violent attacks against the 34,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq by Shiite militia, reducing their numbers to a few thousand. This raises questions about today’s weaponisation of Palestine by these forces while carrying out an unrelated battle.

In 2008, the US signed a strategic agreement with pro-Iranian Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; in 2010 both the US and Iran backed Maliki against a non-sectarian challenger. Maliki’s repression against an April Spring-influenced civil Sunni-based democracy movement was the context of the rise of the Sunni extremist ISIS. When the US returned to fight ISIS in 2014, it again found itself in league with these Iran-backed Shiite militia, who organised themselves into a coalition called the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU).

Meanwhile, thousands of Iraqi Shiite militia poured into Syria to engage in the slaughter as part of Iran’s support to Assad’s genocidal dictatorship. While the US sided neither with Assad nor the rebels, it began bombing ISIS in Syria in September 2014, but here its main ally was not Iran but the leftist, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who were also essentially neutral in the conflict between the regime and the rebels. So while the US was not specifically allied to the Iranian militia in Syria, once the Assad regime and its allies finally entered the war against ISIS in 2017-18 (after the US and SDF had done the hard work), they were again loosely allied, sometimes fighting in the same battles.

Later, following the 2018-19 defeat of the Syrian rebels (by Assad/Russia), and of ISIS (by the US/SDF in Syria, and US/Iran in Iraq), the arrangement between the US and Iran-backed forces exploded into rivalry over the turf. Thus, while it is true that these attacks on US bases greatly intensified after the Gaza war began, and the militia have linked this to Gaza, at base, this conflict is not about Palestine, but is a ‘sideways’ conflict with its own logic.

In Syria, the conflict today partly stems from Iranian support to Assad’s aim of retaking the northeast from the SDF, especially as this region contains Syria’s main oil fields. This puts Assad, Iran and Turkey in league against the US in the northeast (despite Turkey’s backing of anti-Assad rebels in the northwest).

In October 2023, the SDF-aligned North Press reported that the Iranian-backed Usud al-Uqaydat militia had crossed the Euphrates River “with other militants to fight the SDF.” SDF Commander Mazloum Abdi claimed the Iranian-backed militias “are not only attacking US bases” noting that “an Iranian kamikaze drone attacked an SDF ammunition depot in Deir Ezzor,” causing injuries and significant damage.

In Iraq, the US-Iran understanding died with Trump’s cancelation of the JCPOA and imposition of harsh anti-Iran sanctions to please Netanyahu, followed by his 2020 assassination of IGRC head Soleimani when he was on his way to negotiate détente with the Saudis. Thus begun the tit-for-tat strikes between US forces and these Iraqi Shiite militia.

Yet the Iraqi regime remains a fulcrum containing US-Iran conflict within their joint-venture. Following the assassination of Soleimani (and deputy PMU commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis), the Iraqi parliament voted for US troops to leave Iraq; but the vote was non-binding and the government never enforced it. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani, in January 2023, stated that Iraq still needs US troops. To complicate matters further, in 2017 the PMU became part of the Iraqi armed forces, meaning US troops are in Iraq at the behest of a government whose army includes militia attacking US bases! This in turn places limits on the actions these militia will take; hence the largely theatrical nature of the conflict.

Notably, following US retaliatory strikes on 86 Iraqi militia bases in mid-January for the Jordan mishap, all attacks ceased; this alleged “theatre” of “resistance” to Gaza genocide is no longer. But US assassination of militia leaders in Baghdad is an affront to sovereignty, leading the Iraqi government to renewed discussion of plans for US withdrawal.  Interestingly, this corresponds to indications of US plans to withdraw from Iraq and Syria, for its own reasons, further highlighting the theatrical nature of the conflict, while suggesting another reason the attacks have stopped (aside from pressure from Iraq and Iran); the nationalist goal of removing US troops is more fundamental to this conflict than Gaza.

Before ceasing attacks, the main response to the US strikes was an attack in Syria killing six Kurdish SDF fighters but no US troops, further underlining how little this “resistance” is related to Gaza. They hit the US al-Omar base, where SDF commando units are trained. This Iran-backed attack on the SDF coincides with a larger-scale Turkish offensive against the SDF in northeast Syria – just as Assad spouts “anti-Zionist” rhetoric while using Gaza as cover to heavily bomb Idlib, Erdogan spouts louder “anti-Zionist” rhetoric to use Gaza as cover to heavily bomb the Kurds.

In similar vein, whatever the ‘anti-imperialist’ bluster spouted by Iran-backed Iraqi Shiite parties and militias, they played the decisive role in brutally crushing the anti-sectarian 2019 Iraq uprising, urged on by Khameini who reminded his Iraqi (and Lebanese) allies how Iran had crushed its own recent uprising; we need to understand that those who recently played tit-for-tat ‘pro-Gaza’ theatre with US troops are the murderers of the Iraqi people..

‘Anti-Zionist’ bluster, from Iran, Iraq, Turkey alike, can be useful for non-anti-Zionist purposes; counterrevolution, oppression and genocidal bombing ‘bounce off’ each other.

Hezbollah & southern Lebanon: Analysis

We now come to the Lebanese border and Yemen, where components of the alleged “Resistance Axis” have actually done something, in contrast to the passivity of repressive states and the Iraqi militia’s ‘sideways conflict’.

To understand both why Hezbollah has actually acted, and the limited, calibrated nature of it, we need to consider context: southern Lebanon was under Israeli occupation from 1978 until 2000; the south is mostly Shiite-populated, i.e. Hezbollah’s natural base. The Shia were not traditionally pro-Palestinian – in Israel’s 1982 invasion many welcomed the invaders to free themselves from alleged ‘PLO oppression’; in June 1982, Amal – the major Shiite communalist militia – “watched the Israeli tanks and troops roll up the coast.” Regardless of colourful discourse, the PLO was then heavily entrenched among the Sunni population, while the Shia were the most marginalised in Lebanon’s sectarian system, playing second fiddle to the Sunni, while Maronite Christians held the dominant position. Many marginalised Shiites may have also experienced the large Palestinian refugee population as competition for informal sector jobs; and their presence invited Israeli bombing.

However, the brutal reality of Israel’s larger occupation after 1982 changed the minds of the Shia; together with Sunni pockets in the south, they launched a resistance war against the occupation, led by two Communist Parties, Nasserite Sunni militia, the PLO, Amal, and the new Iran-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah. Having driven Israel from substantial parts of the south by 1985, however, the disparate forces had space to turn on each other. Above all, Amal, still mobilising the anti-Palestinian Shiite viewpoint despite also resisting Israel, launched a year-long murderous attack, backed by Syria’s Assad regime, against Palestinian camps in Beirut. At this point, the Iranian regime seized the opportunity to bypass Assad and Amal to promote Hezbollah as pro-Palestinian; Hezbollah did not fight Amal to protect the Palestinians, but condemned its aggression against them. Combined with violence by both Amal and Hezbollah against the Lebanese left, Hezbollah eventually emerged as the leading force in the resistance to Israeli occupation.

This benefited Iran’s “resistance” credentials; even while using Israeli arms to invade Iraq using “resistance to Zionism” bluster, now a genuine resistance against actual Israeli occupation existed in a Shiite-dominated region; almost by luck, Iran was positioned to gain from resistance led by its new Lebanese ally.

However, in 2000 Hezbollah won; Israel quit Lebanon. But in 1990, the US-backed Taif Accord had subjected Lebanon to a Saudi-Syrian condominium that forced all militia which had engaged in the 1975-1990 civil war to join the Lebanese army; only Hezbollah could keep its own militia due to its resistance role. Now that the job was done, why should it have rights not available to others, which effectively allowed Iran to control a militia in Lebanon?

Therefore, the myth arose that a “Resistance Axis” between Iran and Hezbollah, running through Iraq and Syria, was necessary to “resist” Israeli occupation, but with Israel gone, what defined this “resistance”? Few take seriously the pathological Zionist and Iranian discourse, that Iran builds Hezbollah so as to one day invade Israel to “liberate Jerusalem.” Leaving aside the question of whether these forces would “liberate” anything, and the sheer impossibility of such a fantasy, the obvious question, in class politics, is “why would they want to do that?” Either an oppressive Iranian regime, anathema to liberation everywhere, just happens to be truly dedicated to liberating Palestinians; or Iranian imperialism is so irrational that it imagines it can add Palestine to its empire. Perhaps better to accept the third option: that this is just homogenising ideological nonsense on both sides, with no reality to it.

So again, what now does Hezbollah’s “resistance” mean? And since Iran has no intention of “liberating Jerusalem,” what are its aims in bolstering Hezbollah? And to what extent does Hezbollah have its own aims, independent of Tehran?

Until October 8, the answer to the first question was nothing. In 2006, Hezbollah killed some Israeli border troops, allegedly aiming at ‘unfinished business’, namely a tiny piece of land, the Shebaa farms, which Israel still occupied. Israel laid waste to Lebanon, killed 1300 civilians, injured a million, destroyed years of post-war construction. Even Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that if he’d known Israel would react this way, he would not have undertaken the operation. It was a disaster for Hezbollah, until Israel saved it by launching a ground invasion, enabling Hezbollah to actually be a resistance again, imposing a defeat upon the invader, momentarily rescuing its “resistance” credentials.

But this meant that Hezbollah could never do this again; Lebanese society does not accept having their children killed for Hezbollah games. From 2006 until 2023, the Israeli-Lebanese border remained stone quiet, yet Iran built Hezbollah into a force with some 150,000 missiles. But with the absence of any practical mission, this represented an existential crisis.

In 2013, Hezbollah, at Iran’s behest, sent troops into Syria to help Assad crush the Syrian uprising. For years, Hezbollah, alongside Iraqi-Shiite and Iranian forces, aided Assad’s butchery, sometimes playing a decisive role, e.g. in the starvation siege of the liberated southern town Madaya in 2015-16. Thousands of Hezbollah cadre returned dead. This did significant damage to Hezbollah’s image: doing nothing to fight for Palestine while killing fellow Muslims on behalf of a tyrannical regime. Nasrallah told Russian minister Mikhail Bogdanov to “tell the Israelis that Lebanon’s southern borders are the safest place in the world because all of our attention is focused on” Syria, as Hezbollah “does not harbor any intention of taking any action against Israel.”

In 2019, Hezbollah’s counterrevolutionary role was exposed in Lebanon itself; the Lebanese people had risen up against all sectarian warlords – Christian, Sunni, Shiite – and the system itself, and Hezbollah (and Amal) thugs attacked the protest camps. Meanwhile, the recent precipitous collapse of the Lebanese economy adds another reason for Lebanese people to not want war; even if one had illusions that Hezbollah aimed to “liberate Jerusalem,” the Lebanese reality makes any such adventure even more impossible than previously.

Why then does Iran build Hezbollah and keep it independent of the Lebanese armed forces? There are two main aspects.

The first is that Iran wants a Hezbollah with rockets that can hit Israel as an insurance policy against Israel’s forever threat to attack Iranian nuclear assets, a kind of ‘forward defence’; it is imperative that “Hezbollah’s capacity to launch a retaliatory or pre-emptive attack on Israel” is assured. If that happened, Israel would also visit horrific destruction on Hezbollah’s missile sites, while Hezbollah wasted these missiles on Israel. Therefore, Hezbollah’s role in the ‘Axis’ “is to preserve its deterrent capacity by avoiding an all-out war with Israel,” as Iran will not want “to sacrifice Hezbollah on the altar of Hamas.” Former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin claims Nasrallah’s behaviour suggests “he still cares more about Lebanon and the need to protect Iran — and deter Israel from attacking its nuclear program — than he does about saving Hamas.” He will not “sacrifice Lebanon and destroy Beirut for the sake of Sunni Palestinians that started this war without consulting him.”

The second is broader, related to the Iran analysis above. We need to recall the reasons behind Iran’s rhetoric; the desire of a sub-imperialist regional power to cut out its own sphere of influence, where its leading role is recognised. Lebanon is access to the Mediterranean Sea; it is not difficult to understand why Iran would want a piece of Lebanon’s sectarian system as ‘its own’.

But now we must also consider is Hezbollah’s own objectives, separate to the Iran factor, related to Lebanon’s reality. Whatever it once was, Hezbollah has long ago become the main leadership of the Lebanese Shiite bourgeoisie, aiming to consolidate its place in Lebanon’s sectarian system. This position, combined with geographic and demographic factors, leads to specific kinds of action and inaction. Once again, there is more than one aspect.

Firstly, while 2006 demonstrated that full-scale war with Israel is not a good way to finalise the border issues with Israel, this unfinished business nevertheless remains. It is not only a Hezbollah issue, but Hezbollah dominates the south bordering Israel due to demography. In 2022 the US-negotiated Israel-Lebanon maritime agreement – with a Lebanese government that includes Hezbollah, led by Hezbollah-allied president Aoun – enabled demarcation of drilling rights in the Mediterranean Sea gas fields. It was welcomed by Iran, some analysts claiming it was essentially an Iranian deal with Israel. It led to a significant decline in Israeli attacks on pro-Iranian targets in Syria for some months. Could the calibrated conflict today result in a deal on the land border as well? It is not insignificant that Hezbollah’s opening shots on October 8 were not on “northern Israel,” as widely reported, at all, but on the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms, Hezbollah’s opening statement declaring it to be “On the path to liberate the remaining part of our occupied Lebanese land” as well as “in solidarity with the victorious Palestinian resistance.”

Following a brief January flare-up when Israel assassinated two leaders in Lebanon, Nasrallah’s speech added little, but hinted at negotiations on demarcating the border. Amos Hochstein, Biden’s energy adviser, had already been exploring border demarcation with Israel and Lebanon. Nasrallah’s language – “We are now faced with a historic opportunity to completely liberate every inch of our Lebanese land” – had a militant tone, but indicated the possibility of a deal focused on specifically Lebanese issues, that Hezbollah would be able to claim resulted from its “resistance.” Iran also stressed that this “is a domestic thing for the Lebanese.”

The second aspect specific to Lebanon’s reality is the presence of up to half a million Palestinian refugees, especially throughout southern Lebanon. If there was once a somewhat conflictual relationship between impoverished Shiites and Palestinians, and this turned to cooperation against occupation, this ongoing complexity remains a reality either way. Hezbollah kept the border quiet throughout 2006-2023, but the elephant in the room remains the large presence of Palestinians who aim to return to Palestine, who at times attempt attacks on Israel regardless of Hezbollah.

For example, following the Israeli attack on the Al-Aqsa mosque in April 2023, Hamas militants in Lebanon launched rockets on northern Israel. Hezbollah allegedly “passed messages to Israel through several international mediators that it wasn’t part of the attack and didn’t know about it,” which was accepted by Israeli intelligence. Israel responded with attacks on the Palestinians, not touching Hezbollah. Clearly, the Palestinian issue will not leave southern Lebanon as long as an enormous refugee population remains; they would not have remained quiet after October 7. Indeed, it is significant that the second attack from Lebanon, on October 9, following Hezbollah’s attack only on occupied Lebanese territory on October 8, was by Palestinian militants, not Hezbollah, to which Israel responded by attacking Lebanon and killing Hezbollah cadres.In this situation, Hezbollah’s “resistance” credentials would have looked hollow if it did not respond.

A final point is that resistance to Israel’s vastly disproportionate counter-attacks on Lebanon and solidarity with Palestinians has its own Lebanese logic. Alongside Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance forces, the resistance has been joined  by the Al-Fajr Forces of the Sunni organization Jamaa al-Islamiyah (Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood). Based in Sunni pockets in the mostly Shiite south, Al-Fajr has also been firing rockets across the border. Al-Fajr is not an ally of Hezbollah in the Lebanese context, indeed it is aligned to Islamist forces in Syria’s anti-Assad uprising, but is closely connected to Hamas. According to Ali Abou Yassine from Jamaa al-Islamiya, this “does not mean that it is aligning itself with a foreign axis;” rather, as secretary-general Sheikh Mohammed Takkoush explains, they joined the battle “as a national, religious and moral duty … to defend our land and villages” and also “in support of our brothers in Gaza.” Their operations are “in coordination with Hamas, which coordinates with Hezbollah,” but direct cooperation with Hezbollah “is on the rise.” When Israel assassinated Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut on January 2, it also killed several Jamaa al-Islamiyah cadre, and more have been killed since.

This highlights the problem of seeing south Lebanon as an “Resistance Axis” issue. In its monstrous role in Syria Hezbollah acted as a tool of Iran’s counterrevolutionary regional role, but its current action (and its limitations) on the Israeli border cannot be adequately explained as acting as Iran’s pawn. When we take into account the border issue, the long history of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, and the huge Palestinian presence, Hezbollah becomes a more contradictory formation than the Iranian regime.

In any case, Israel’s current threats to escalate into a more full-scale war – which could well be rhetoric given the stakes involved on both sides – may have more to do with both the crisis the Netanyahu clique is in – the need for ongoing war to protect his power given the legal trouble he is otherwise in – as well as the desire in some Israeli circles to escalate as a means of bringing in the US, as discussed above.