The International Crisis Group has issued this paper of information and proposals for ending the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon and move the peace process forward: Israel/Palestine/Lebanon: Climbing Out of the Abyss 07/25/06. They write of Lebanese Hizbullah:
Hizbollah's armed status is part of a far larger puzzle that at the very least needs to be taken into account. It is related to Lebanon's confessional structure and,principally, to the treatment of its Shiite community and long overdue political reform. To undermine Hizbollah’s standing without at the same time addressing Shiite grievances would, again, run the risk of renewed sectarian conflict. In this sense, Resolution 1559, in its insistence on disarmament and international backing in that regard, implicitly threatened the country’s delicate sectarian balance since it meant a significant weakening of the Shiites' principal representative. The goal, in other words, should not be solely to weaken Hizbollah (or Syria, or Iran), but through an internal Lebanese dialogue, to seriously reform the political system as a whole. In parallel, there should be international commitment to a massive reconstruction effort in Lebanon and, above all, to significantly alleviate the country’s public debt.
Hizbollah’s fate also is related to Lebanon’s own security doctrine and how its army intends to credibly ensure its defence, as well as to still-open Israeli-Lebanese files: prisoners and the Shebaa farms, as well as the question of respect for Lebanon’s sovereignty. Tackling these problems would be an important way to promote Hizbollah’s political transformation, by removing justifications it invokes for continued resistance and increasing internal political pressure for its disarmament. The goal must be to dry up the sources of Hizbollah’s militant identity gradually. One of the most important issues in this respect is Shebaa: an initiative should be launched whereby Syria would formally recognise Lebanese sovereignty there, while Israel would withdraw. (my emphasis)
Benjamin argues that Bush's policy of abandoning peace initiatives relating to Israel has contributed mightily to the current situation: "the immolation of Lebanon is the natural consequence of U.S. policy toward Iran in particular and the greater Middle East in general".
He emphasizes Hizbullah's ties to Iran:
Yes, Hezbollah is a Lebanese political party and social-welfare organization, but as a terrorist organization, it is an arm of Tehran. Everyone, it seems, has become so accustomed to hearing about the independence of terrorist groups like al-Qaida and its imitators that we have forgotten that some terrorists have state sponsors - and it would be hard to find any that are more creatures of their masters than Hezbollah is of Tehran. Syria provides the group with a supply line to Tehran, and it has an interest in supporting the group's effort to bleed Israel. But it is Tehran that provides the $100 million or more per year in funds and arms, as well as the organization's strategic direction. ...
As former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross has noted, Hezbollah had respected the Israeli-Lebanese border (save for a contested postage stamp of territory called Shebaa Farms) for the six years since Ehud Barak pulled Israeli troops out of southern Lebanon. Although Hezbollah may have had an interest in carrying out the latest attack as a push-back against internal Lebanese pressure to disarm, it is difficult to imagine that the group would have kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed several others without orders from Iran. (my emphasis)
I don't take this as the last word on the relationship of Iran to Lebanese Hizbullah, but I do put a lot of weight on Benjamin's analysis of such matters.
Support for terrorism offers Iran what it craves most today: options. Iran is at best a middleweight economic power, and its military is in a state of disrepair. Terrorism, however, gives Iran a role in the fight against Israel, a strong voice in Iraq's future, and a way to deter the United States. In the end, Iran may decide to push Hezbollah away from the brink or to be a constructive player in Iraq. But as the American track record of predicting Iranian moves ranges from poor to abysmal, we must recognize that Iran's ties to terrorist groups also give Tehran options to escalate such conflicts.
In Tactics of the Crescent Moon: Militant Muslim Combat Methods (2004), John Poole writes that Lebanese Hizbullah stresses martyrdom in training new fighters. "This may increase their willingness to engage in close combat". He reports that by the latter half of the 1990s, Hizbullah had become especially skilled in using human intelligence to target enemy forces. Some of the information may have come from symapthizers in the Lebanese Army, but the group "depended mostly for real-time intelligence on the local population and long-range observation". And he writes:
More often than not, Hezbollah guerrillas would take IDF [Israeli Defense Force] units under fire with small arms or antitank missiles from a populated area. They did so to draw enough return fire to alienate the local population. To evoke a full Israeli response, the Islamic guerrillas would lob a few Katyusyha rockets into their border settlements. In essence, the guerrillas had learned to turn their foe's mindset against him. (my emphasis)
In an observation that seems very relevant to what little we know of the IDF's experience on the ground in Lebanon the last two weeks, Poole writes that the villages in southern Lebanon could:
... closely resemble the Vietnamese border hamlets into which 17 fully supported Chinese divisions could only penetrate 30 miles in 1979. Those hamlets were being manned by local militiamen too, as all the Vietnamese regulars were off fighting the Khymer Rouge in Cambodia. If those Lebanese villages had also been linked by tunnel, they would constitute a "soft, underground strongpoint defense" - the state of the art in rural defense. Any intruder risks surprise fire from every direction.(my emphasis)
He quotes a 1997 report in the Financial Times saying, "Inside the zone [southern Lebanon] itself, the IDF is often pinned down in fixed positions, and no amount of air superiority can compensate for this weakness on the ground."
Poole says of Hizbollah's military methods, including some involving terrorist tactics:
While sneaky and immoral, it was nevertheless very effective. After 20 years of refinement in Lebanon, it had become a unique blend of Shiite martyrdom, high explosives, and guerrilla tactics. Because it spilled over into politics, media, religion, and psychology, it qualified as "4th-generation" warfare. Concurrently being developed (in large part by Sunnis) in Afghanistan and Chechnya was a similar approach.
