Lebanon held elections for its parliament on Sunday for the first time since 2009. Not unexpectedly, Hezbollah was the big winner.
Hezbollah’s representatives and allies now control a majority of the seats in Lebanon’s parliament. Sunni candidates allied with – or rather controlled by – Hezbollah won seats that had been controlled by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Future Movement.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun’s party lost several seats, making Aoun more beholden than ever to Hezbollah dictates.
Foreign policy experts will no doubt argue that the election results change nothing on the ground in Lebanon. The Lebanese constitution’s division of power along confessional lines, which reserves the premiership to a Sunni, the presidency to a Christian, and the speakership of Parliament to a Shiite, will force Hezbollah to cooperate with Hariri and Aoun, who are expected to remain in their positions.
This “business as usual” argument bears consideration.
The assumption behind it is that Hezbollah is just a domestic political force. True, it has a relationship with Iran. True, it has its own army. But, the thinking goes, Lebanon is full of sectarian militias, so it makes sense that the Shiites would have one — even one that has an arsenal of 150,000 rockets missiles and constitutes one of the largest, best armed, most powerful, and battle-hardened armies in the region.
In March, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech in Persian to an audience of Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Beirut where he explained Hezbollah’s actual relationship to the Lebanese state. READ MORE
