The Ayatollah, Hizbollah, and Hassan Nasrallah

There is no doubt about Iran’s deep involvement in Hizbollah activity. Iran founded the organization, constitutes its main source of inspiration, and sees it as the best success story of exporting the Islamic Revolution. Supplementing its strong ties with Syria, Hizbollah is attached to Iran at the hip. Iran supplies the organization with most of its weaponry, including the majority of its rocket arsenal, and offers financial support totaling tens of millions of dollars every year. Iran trains Hizbollah fighters at camps in both Iran and Lebanon, and since 1982 has maintained a Lebanon-based unit of the Revolutionary Guards, whose members also serve as military advisers to the organization. The Hizbollah leadership maintains regular, direct contact with the heads of the Iranian regime, consults with them on fundamental and ongoing matters, and coordinates its moves with them. Without Iranian military support, Hizbollah would not have dared to provoke Israel. Iran is building Hizbollah’s military strength not only to bolster it vis-à-vis Israel and the Lebanese arena, but also to use the organization’s military capabilities – primarily the rocket arsenal – in order to strike at Israel for its own reasons, if it sees the need to do so.