Strategic Assessment

Common wisdom dictates that the recent shifts in the Middle Eastern balance of power and the regional rise of political Islam will highly benefit groups like Hamas or Hizbollah. However, a closer look at Hizbollah’s current security and political environment reveals serious cracks in the group’s self-portrait as a paragon of internal control and external strength. Hizbollah finds itself under threat because of ongoing political change at the regional level, increasing domestic tensions within Lebanon, and internal organizational setbacks. Taking into consideration both the possibility of Hizbollah losing its current political backing within Lebanon, as well as the threat represented by the potential fall of the Assad regime, the group is now facing one of the most serious challenges since its foundation in the early 1980s.