Idées et analyses sur les dynamiques politiques et diplomatiques.
11 Septembre 2024
While the world remains focused on the endless war in Gaza, Hezbollah has only recently come fully into view, as a widespread conflict threatens to engulf Lebanon with missile strikes exchanged between the Shiite militia and Israel.
But Hezbollah is not just a powerful Shiite army, boasting at least 50,000 fighters hardened by a decade of fighting in Syria alongside Bashar Al-Assad. It is also not “just” 150,000 missiles of all types, supplied by Iran, capable of reaching the entirety of Israeli territory.
No, Hezbollah, a subsidiary of the Tehran regime, is now the true master of a failed state: Lebanon, once dear to France. Certainly, the Lebanese political class—a veritable gang of criminals—bears much of the responsibility for this collapse. However, numerous other harmful forces have also contributed to the gradual destruction of the country, leaving it in Hezbollah's hands.
The civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s, the Israeli war of 2006, the American fiasco in Iraq, the disaster of the Syrian war since 2011, the influx of Palestinian and later Syrian refugees, not to mention the Beirut port explosion in 2020 that destroyed the country's grain reserves, just as the war in Ukraine sent food prices soaring. To top it all off, a constitutional system based on sectarian divisions serves the interests of a minority of ultra-wealthy elites.
Lebanon’s collapse began in 2019, and its consequences are disastrous, as the World Bank reports make clear: a Lebanese pound that has lost 98% of its value, an economy now dollarized (46% of GDP), fueled by funds from Iraq or Iran; inflation that went from 3% in the early 2000s to 85% in 2019, then to 221% in 2023; poverty affecting 44% of the population, which has seen prices increase fifteenfold in ten years and has had to cut its consumption of meat or fish by a third.
In 2020, Lebanon defaulted on its $32 billion debt. As a result, the IMF refuses to release the promised $3 billion, while the European Union only provides $1 billion to help Syrian refugees, fearing a mass migration to Europe. As for Lebanese depositors, they have seen their accounts drained by banks whose funds have disappeared overseas. To cap this chaos, the Parliament recently voted to lower taxes on financial products, awaiting a hypothetical external bailout.
In this context, Hezbollah has replaced the state: it provides social and health services for the poorest, supplies electricity through generators operated by municipalities affiliated with Amal or Hezbollah, and finances loans in exchange for gold through a charitable organization, Al Qard Al Hassan Association, which even has ATMs dispensing dollars. It also imports cheap Chinese solar panels and lends money to purchase them, while ensuring salaries for its soldiers and employees.
To supplement its resources, Hezbollah has turned to drug trafficking, relying on Lebanese and Syrian diasporas in Latin America, while in Maduro’s Venezuela, Iranian oil is imported in exchange for gold, again stored in Tehran.
Four years ago, in August 2020, in a Beirut devastated by the port explosion, Emmanuel Macron, with his sleeves rolled up, addressed the crowd, promising a “new political pact” and shouting “Long live Lebanon!” He condemned “the profiteers,” “the corrupt system,” and “the deadly game of corruption.”
And then, nothing. The corrupt are still in place, and Hezbollah remains too...