Berkley Center

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah’s recent speech on August 25, celebrating the Second Liberation (of Lebanese territory against the Islamic State), sheds light on the party’s view of its evolving role within the wider region, the Lebanese state, and its community base. While Shiite victimization and martyrdom content still prevails in the address, it is now woven into an integrative community and state narrative, clearly targeting the wider Lebanese population.

Unlike other speeches given by Hezbollah’s general secretary, the Second Liberation address carries fewer Shiite eschatology references and appears to appeal to a broader Lebanese and regional audience. Nasrallah seems to be keen on showcasing the party as a member of the wider Iran-led “Resistance,” a nation builder, and a community defender. 

By thanking the large audience (mostly from the party’s Shiite popular base) for showing solidarity on this day, not only with the Resistance but also with the Lebanese and Syrian armies, he created an association between the three in a clear reference to the “Resistance Axis” (composed of Syria, Iran, and the latter proxies from the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units, as well as Yemen Houthis and Hezbollah). In the speech, Hezbollah highlights its successes in hindering Western partition plans for the Arab region. The “triumph” in Syria linked by Nasrallah to that of July 2006 (during the war against Israel) is unlike previous speeches where the victory was for “Arabs, Islam, and Muslims.” This time, it is dedicated to resistance fighters, the Lebanese Army, the Syrian Army, and Palestinian factions.

Nasrallah’s association between the Resistance and the Lebanese Army has nonetheless clear limitations, as the secretary general works on minimizing the army’s defensive role and underlining instead its complimentary and internal policing functions. In itself, the celebration of the “Liberation” of Lebanese territories allows the party for the second year to take ownership of the 2017 battle of the “Dawn of the Jouroud,” when the Lebanese Army defeated ISIS, considered at the time as a major credibility booster for the Lebanese Armed Forces. Nasrallah is thus quick to remind his followers that Hezbollah was the first to battle ISIS and that the army joined later. “Today, when one recalls this great Lebanese national victory, the resistance and the Syrian army are left out…This is ungratefulness and a denial,” he said. Instead of focusing on the defensive efforts of the Lebanese Armed Forces, Nasrallah prefers to focus on its positive attempts in maintaining security in the Bekaa, one of the party’s popular bastions, which is rife with instability. The latest rhetoric has certainly strayed from previous speeches in 2007, when the Lebanese Army was accused of shooting at men, women, and children associated with Hezbollah.

More importantly, Nasrallah appears to be also framing the Hezbollah-state relationship and the preeminence the party has in all military matters more specifically in terms of the conflict with Israel. By commending Lebanese state attempts to denounce and put an end to Israeli drone incursions, Nasrallah separates between the diplomatic effort, clearly assigned to the state, and the war effort, attributed to Hezbollah, which he tasks with the defense of the “country’s border.” Nasrallah also states that rules of engagement between Israel and Lebanon have changed. He maintains that the party will not accept the country’s sovereignty to be violated or the militant group’s members to be killed in Syria and that Hezbollah will retaliate from Lebanon, despite UN Resolution 1701, which calls for the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon. “This is a red line to us, and we must all take responsibility.”

Besides the regional and national dimension of his discourse, Nasrallah’s other main preoccupation appears to be internal communal cohesion through the use of unity and victimization narratives. Nasrallah reminds his audience that the Resistance largely hinges on the (Shiite) Amal Movement (from which Hezbollah splintered in the 1980s). Unity has allowed Hezbollah and Amal to block any decision that could sideline the militant group on the basis that such a decision would go against the Taif Agreement, a “consociational” treaty. Nasrallah thus plays on siege mentality of its popular base by stating that the battle against ISIS was to prevent an existential threat (linked to the war in Syria) that ultimately targeted the Resistance. He accuses indirectly the party’s Lebanese political opponents of playing a part in the conspiracy against the Resistance by supporting the Syrian insurgency. He also warns that the “conspiracy” on Syria and the wider Resistance was blocked not only by Hezbollah, but also thanks to the support of Iran, the party’s patron. He continues to claim that the United States—Tehran’s nemesis—is working “to revive Daesh in Iraq.” 

This last speech shows a clear break from Hezbollah’s opposition to the state, which started with its dismissal of Lebanese sovereignty in its infamous 1985 manifesto and from its rivalry with a government it accused of illegitimacy and collaboration with the United States in 2007. Nasrallah’s discourse is one of clear consolidation with the Lebanese state, in which the party shows it has clear hegemony. Hezbollah’s semantics crystallize the evolution of its regional role, from a pan-Islamic and pan-Arab one to a narrowly defined one, framed firstly by Tehran’s regional interests and to a lesser extent by the war against Israel.