The surprise of the Arab (particularly Gulf Arab) community at Hezbollah's behavior in Syria and its dedication in fighting to defend Bashar Al-Assad's regime resembles the surprise of the international community at Iran's behavior on the nuclear issue, after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) only now "discovered" that dialogue with Tehran was moving in a "vicious circle". It is as if the Arabs were saying that what Hezbollah did before the war in Syria was acceptable, and that the change that has occurred in its stances was not rooted in its very structure. This is just like when the world refuses to admit that Iran has been engaging in maneuvers ever since the first IAEA report was issued in 2003 about it hiding information concerning its nuclear activity, and that it has done nothing but increase its ability to enrich uranium, while keeping the world busy with promises and false hopes. If the Arabs had listened to what the Lebanese have grown tired of repeating about their experience with Hezbollah ever since it was founded three decades ago, and their complaints about the practices it has engaged in throughout those years, they would have reached the conclusion that its current stances are the natural result of its emergence, its structure, and its wagers. Indeed, Hezbollah began as an Iranian-Syrian security unit and remains so today. Yet some consider that the clearest manifestation of its organic alliance with the Syrian regime appeared with the Hariri assassination in 2005. At the time, questions had been raised about the reasons for the "inability" of Hezbollah's security apparatus, efficiently deployed in the capital and in all of Lebanon's regions, to discover the existence of a truck loaded with two tons of explosives moving around in the streets of Beirut waiting for its target to drive by. This is until it became clear from the investigations of the international tribunal that it had participated in the assassination, both in terms of planning and execution. This alliance later manifested itself in the massive demonstration organized by Hezbollah in which it offered "thanks" to Syrian regime, providing political and security cover for the campaign of assassinations that targeted pro-independence politicians and journalists, a campaign to which it doubtless contributed. Finally, their alliance became consecrated in the July War of 2006, which Hezbollah had sparked in hopes of altering local and regional factors and of solidifying Iran's role in the region. Is it then strange for a group that began its career with a wave of eliminations within its own community that included liberals, secularists, and even religious individuals who opposed turning it into a sectarian political party, to stir up its community's fanaticism in order to justify fighting the majority of Syrians on their own soil in defense of another sectarian regime of rule? Did the Arabs really believe Hezbollah's call for dialogue among confessions? And did they think that there was any hope for it to turn one day into a Lebanese political party and to hand over its weapons to the state, whose foundations it is undermining every day? By entering the war in Syria on several fronts, Hezbollah has proven that it had never been miscalculating or misestimating, as some Arabs believed. The latter had adopted with good intentions the illusion of the possibility of it changing its convictions and its course. Rather, what it had done and what it did was the result of precise calculation and of a plan carefully designed in Tehran and Damascus to allow Hezbollah to gradually eat away at the authority of the Lebanese state and take control of its institutions, as the Assad family had done in Syria. This is why no speech by its Secretary-General has ever been devoid of attacks against the state, its "powerlessness" and its "shortcomings". Hezbollah will remain part of the joint Syrian-Iranian security apparatus, carrying out what the latter requires in service of the interests of one or both of them, as long as it remains outside of the Lebanese state and continues to hold an arsenal superior to that of its army, as well as the ability to engage in political blackmail through security at any time. And it will move after the battle of Qusayr, without any apprehensions, to the remaining fronts in Aleppo, Damascus, and other places, in defense of the alliance between its own "regime" in Lebanon and the regimes in Syria and Iran. As for the Arabs finding its behavior strange, it only means that the Arabs have not yet decided to wage the battle of defending the Syrian people.
