israel hezbollah war

Israel, Hezbollah Prefer Status Quo to Risk of War

Posted: September 29th, 2017

By Aurélie Daher

Aurélie Daher is a researcher at Sciences Po, CERI in Paris, where she received a PhD in Political Science. She held a postdoctoral fellow position at the University of Oxford from 2010-2011 and a postdoctoral research associate position at Princeton University from 2012-2013. Her work focuses on Hezbollah, the Shiites, Lebanese and Middle Eastern politics. Her publications include Hezbollah. Mobilisation and Power.

On August 21, Hussein Jaber Ansari, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, arrived in Beirut for a two-day official visit. A detail that did not escape notice: during his 48 hours on the ground in Lebanon, the Iranian diplomat failed to schedule a meeting with Saad Hariri, who happens to be no less than prime minister and “incidentally” the principal representative of the Lebanese state under its constitution.

This public thumb in the eye, openly directed by the Syro-Iranian camp against the pro-Western, pro-Saudi March 14 coalition, crowns years of continued, steady advances by Iran and its allies in the Middle East region, but also, in a more local fashion, by Hezbollah, on the Lebanese chessboard. Unquestionably, the rise in power of both is connected, but Hezbollah has particularly succeeded in converting its regional success into national dividends.

“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

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+