Despite the announcement by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to suspend attacks on Iran for five days – for negotiations, according to Washington, requested by Tehran, which continues to deny this – a country it has been bombing, alongside Israel, with the aim of overthrowing the theocratic regime that has ruled this Persian nation since 1978, when they came to power through the so-called Islamic Revolution that installed the government of the ayatollahs, led by Ruhollah Khomeini, on the other side of the Middle East, on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, Lebanon, a country bordering Israel to the north, has been hit in recent hours by intense waves of air strikes – a strategic bridge over the Litani River in Lebanon was completely destroyed – with the aim of completely eliminating the extremist group Hezbollah, which means ‘Party of God’, the Shia group that controls much of the south of the country, and which, immediately following the elimination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed responsibility for the attacks on the Israeli coastal city of Haifa, north of Tel Aviv, citing retaliation for his assassination.
Hezbollah, composed of Shia Arabs—like the majority population of Iran—who are not Arabs but Persians, has been receiving support from Tehran—as has Hamas in Palestine—in its targeted actions against the State of Israel, provoking large-scale responses from its army. This is not the first time Israel has faced the Lebanese terrorist militia militarily, and it is worth recalling this here.
Israeli armoured military vehicles are lined up in formation amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel in northern Israel – REUTERS/ JIM URQUHART
In 1978, they invaded Lebanon with the aim of expelling the Palestinians from the then Palestine Liberation Organisation – PLO, now the Palestinian National Authority – to Peru, State of Palestine – who were in the south of the country. At the UN’s insistence, Israel decided to withdraw.
Later, in 1982, they invaded Lebanon again, going so far as to occupy Beirut, its capital. A few years later, in 1986, Hezbollah appeared on the scene for the first time, and could not be decimated by Israel, despite the enormous casualties inflicted.
The Israelis withdrew in 2000 to the so-called ‘Blue Line’, a sort of demarcation drawn by the United Nations, which was never respected by either side. In fact, in 2006, Hezbollah attacked the northern cities of Israel, prompting a fierce response from its army.
In 2023, following the massacre of 1,200 Jews at the hands of Hamas extremists, Israel responded vehemently by killing Hamas members and civilians in Gaza, which provoked a reaction from the extremist group Hezbollah – which had shown solidarity with the Palestinians – once again against Israeli towns in the north of the country, triggering a military response involving a high degree of engineering and cyber systems with surgical precision (walkie-talkies and beepers), which Hezbollah had not anticipated, simultaneously inflicting numerous casualties upon them.
The recent events are now well-known history. Israel, then, strikes at Hezbollah, as it is one of the closest allies of Iran, its principal patron of war. That is the main reason.