Hezbollah's Many Faces

Designated by the United States as a terrorist group in 1997, Hezbollah is a Shia extremist organization and political party based in Lebanon that wears many faces. Today, with its outspoken ambitions of destroying Israel, staunch military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad throughout the Syrian civil war, and status as a proxy group in the broader power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah has positioned itself at the crux of several conflicts in the Middle East.

“Once limited to jockeying for political power in Lebanon and fighting Israel, the group is now a regional player engaged in conflicts far beyond its historical area of operations, often in cooperation with Iran,” explains Matt Levitt, Cipher Brief expert and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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