#### Interview with Emirati newspaper *al-Khaleej*, March 1986 >[!quote]- Summary of *Velayet e-Faqih* >*"We do not believe in multiple Islamic republics; we do believe, however, in a single Islamic world governed by a central government, because we consider all borders throughout the Muslim world as fake and colonialist, and therefore doomed to disappear... Therefore, in order for this project to be realised, priority should be given to removing Israel from the scene, because it was established for the express purpose of dividing and partitioning the Muslim world... this explains why we see no alternative to fighting Israel, with all means at our disposal, until it ceases to exist."* #### Interview with pan-Arab newspaper *al-Wahda al-Islamiya*, February 1989 This interview was conducted shortly after the conclusion of Tehran-Damascus agreement, a four-way ceasefire which aimed to end the intra-Shiite conflict in Lebanon. This would be the second attempt at reconciliation between Hezbollah and their rival party, Amal. The deal was particularly welcomed by Syria, as it would allow his allies in the Amal movement to go militarily unchallenged by Hezbollah, particularly in Beirut and in the South where Assad hoped to maintain control. For Hezbollah, it bought them official recognition from the Syrian army as well as the Amal movement. The deal would ultimately collapse a few months later with clashes between Amal and Hezbollah in Beirut, the Beqaa and in the South. Throughout the interview, Nasrallah is notably opaque when discussing certain practical details of the agreement. In typical Nasrallah fashion, his ambiguity immediately fades when the subject of Israel is brought it. In this interview, he challenges Arafat's decision to recognise Israel's right to exist and to pursue a settlement with the Jewish state one year earlier. >[!quote]- Warning to Arafat >*"The future is one of war, not settlement; the line that Arafat is pursuing will only lead him to a closed door, and the day will come when warfare and the elimination of Israel will be the only options... We believe that gambling on a settlement with Israel would never bring integrity and dignity to the Muslims; the only option open to everyone is that of resistance."* #### Eulogy for Sayyed Abbas Mussawi, February 1992 This speech was delivered after Hezbollah's second Secretary-General was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack along with his wife and baby son. A relatively pragmatic voice in the party, Mussawi was only elected a year before his death but had already made a commitment to take part in Lebanese elections, despite the harsh opposition from his predecessor, Sheikh Subhi Tufeili. Nasrallah, Mussawi's successor, was far more colourful in his rhetoric against Israel than he would become in the 2000s when peace between Syria and Israel seemed close. At one point, he makes it clear that he believes Israel's military success against the Muslim world is only possible due to its Western patrons. >[!quote]- On Israel and America *"We blame Israel for this blood-soaked carnage, and blame its protector, the United States of America, which is responsible for all Israel's massacres and all the destruction, murder and displacement it wreaks. Everybody knows that Israel would not have been able to stand on its own in the region had it not been for Western and American support."* >[!quote]- "You Jews, leave our land..." *"You Jews, leave our land, you have no home among us, go back from where you came, for there will never be peace or reconciliation between us, only war, resistance, and the language of war and bullets. You are leaving and we are staying; dawn is upon us, the sun will shine and the entire nation will rise to greet its God. This era will witness the victory of the dispossessed over the oppressor; it is the era of our beloved Islam and of the Great Khomeini, in spite of the hatred that the Godless and tyrants harbour toward us."* #### Post-assassination, February 1992 In an interview for the Lebanese leftist daily newspaper *As-Safir*, Nasrallah presents himself in more moderate terms than what his opponents had portrayed. He defends Hezbollah's rejection of the 1989 Taif Agreement on the grounds that it enshrined Lebanese sectarianism, despite purporting to strive for the opposite. Nasrallah, at this point, was still reiterating Hezbollah's refusal "*to take part in a government that has for its objective the implementation of the Taif Agreement.*", claiming that *"we are unimpressed by the status that a ministerial position, a parliamentary seat, or a presidency confers; those who chose that path o f martyrdom are naturally not familiar with such phenomena"*. The fact that he would announce Hezbollah's intention to stand for election only a few months after this interview highlights his flexibility on key issues, especially if such shifts can be seen to help in their uncompromising goal of continuing the resistance against Israel. The decision to take part in elections required the Ayatollah's approval and also that of a special Hezbollah delegation which ultimately voted in favour of the decision by 10:2 (p. 74). On their traditional goal of bringing the Iranian revolution to Lebanon, Nasrallah's tone is soft and reassuring. He argues: *"...we should not build an Islamic government on oppression and compulsion. Any Islamic government anywhere in the world that does not, as a necessary precondition, have a very wide popular base that adopts, defends, and remains loyal to it, cannot succeed."* Though he points to Iran - a regime hardly free of oppression and compulsion - as his model example, he is clearly aware that the demographic realities of Lebanon would never achieve the same level of popular support that underlined the Iranian Revolution. #### Victory at the polls, August 1992 50 days after announcing their intention to participate in Lebanon's first post-war election, Hezbollah performed unexpectedly well and managed to win eight seats in and around the Bekaa Valley, some of which were won by Sunni and Maronite candidates from the party. Their performance expectedly disappointed most Christians, but it also led to the resignation of the Shiite Speaker of the Parliament, Hussein al-Husseini. Husseini, who had once been the Secretary General of the Amal Movement, accused Hezbollah of sending armed men into voting stations - a charge which Nasrallah denies in this interview with *An-Nahar*. Husseini's position would soon be taken up by Nabih Berri, the head of the Amal Party who has remained Speaker of the Parliament until the present day. The President, Elias Hrawi's son lost his seat in Zahle and a small handful of cabinet ministers resigned. Despite Nasrallah's agreeable tone towards Amal, whom Hezbollah had participated with on joint lists, relations between the two groups would sour again in the future, particularly around Syria. Damascus would occasionally force Hezbollah to water down their parliamentary demands in favour of Assad's preferred Shiite ally, Amal. #### "Not an Iranian Community", September 1992 Having now achieved 12 seats in the new national parliament, Hezbollah had formed an alliance with Amal which would soon hold 22 out of 23 seats in the south. Nasrallah highlighted the importance of spreading a culture of resistance across Lebanon, which could only succeed on the basis of widespread public support. He blames the Lebanese political system for the party having limited influence, being fully aware that a system more approximating a proportionately representative democracy would greatly benefit the Shiite community. On his aspirations for the resistance, he is unequivocal: >[!quote]- "a country of resistance" *"we shall, in fact, work to turn the whole of Lebanon into a country of resistance, and the state into a state of resistance. In the past, a number of state officials promised that if negotiations did not lead to the liberation of the land, the entire population, and the state itself, would be transformed into a resistance force. We said before, and are saying again now, that negotiations will not succeed, and that it is now time to act on that promise."* On the question of Hezbollah's aspirations for an Islamic State in Lebanon and their adherence to the *vilayet al-faqih*, Nasrallah - to the apparent frustration of the interviewer - is less clear. >[!quote]- On an Islamic State *"We do not deny the fact that it is our wish and desire to see the emergence of an Islamic system, because we are first of all Muslims, and not about to give up on our religious identity. What others object to, we will not propose in the first place; in other words, we do not want to establish an Islamic government by force. However, we are calling upon the people to join Islam, and saying that Lebanon should be an open space for all. We fully understand that a communist would want a communist state, and a Muslim or Christian would want a state that reflects his own faith or ideology. What we do not understand, however, is someone who wants to impose on others by force, or through violent means, his own beliefs and a governance system of his choice. This we will never do."* Already, in the early 90s, Nasrallah is aware of the inspirational role Hezbollah's actions could play for Palestinians. He has no shyness in saying: >[!quote]- On the Intifada *"Do you think the miraculous intifada within the occupied territories would have been possible if not for the resistance in Lebanon? The leaders of the intifada themselves say that they found revolutionary inspiration and were able to overcome the obstacle of fear, thanks to suicide operations in Lebanon."* On the subject of resistance, Nasrallah outlines a simple theory which ultimately proved successful in the Israeli-occupied south, but also applies it equally to the "1948 territories" (Israel proper) where it would be doomed to fail. >[!quote]- A war of attrition *"Be certain that the theory of the sane will not bear fruit, but that of the insane - the mujahideen, the martyrs and suicide bombers - has already caused the enemy to bleed, and has doubled the number of its dead and wounded. The bleeding within the Zionist entity has added public pressure on the enemy's government and put in front of it two clear options: either it remains in the south and suffers additional human losses, or withdraws."* ... *"In my estimation, a war of attrition rather than a classical war is liable to destroy the Zionist entity; this war might be ongoing even while negotiations are underway, or reconciliation is in the offing."* Though Hezbollah's formal inception is dated at 1985, Nasrallah would generally refer back to the movement's inception as *"a self-propelled movement launched in the wake of the Israeli invasion of 1982"*. Note: Since the 1991 Madrid Conference, US and Lebanese officials had been in talks about a negotiated Israeli withdrawal from the south. This process, however, was frequently hamstrung by two roadblocks. The first was the "Syria First" stance of Hafez al-Assad which dictated that that any deal between Lebanon and Israel could only be concluded after a deal with Syria. The second was the Israeli demand to keep monitoring stations on Lebanese territory - a red line which Lebanese officials argued was unacceptable. #### The first understanding with Israel, August 1993 Between June and July 1993, Hezbollah engaged in a series of back-and-forth escalations with the IDF. The clashes involved IDF helicopter attacks on a refugee camp, a Shia village in the south and an attack on the PFLP-GC headquarters. The attacks from Hezbollah and their allies resulted in the death of 6 IDF soldiers and also included rocket barrages on civilian areas in northern Israel. After two weeks of Israeli warnings that Hezbollah stop firing at the north, the exchange culminated in Operation Accountability, a 7 day Israeli assault on Lebanese villages, which the IDF claimed were being used as militant headquarters. Though the IDF [claims](https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/wars-and-operations/operation-accountability/) to have given 40 days of extensive evacuation warnings to Lebanese civilians in the south, others have contested that these warnings were sparse and confused. According to the IDF's own [documents](https://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/Israel.htm#P177_30383), they seem to have only asserted that most southern villages were emptied in July 27th, two days after the strikes had started. Out of the operation, which resulted in over 150 deaths and the destruction of thousands of homes, was born the first unwritten "Understanding" between Israel and Hezbollah. In essence, this understanding - which would eventually become a written agreement in 1996 - was that Hezbollah would not fire rockets at Israel unless Israel attacked Lebanese civilians first. Though Hezbollah claimed this to be their justification for firing rockets in the first place, a Human Rights Watch report [conceded](https://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/Israel.htm) that the claim was *"difficult to verify"*. In this interview, Nasrallah discusses the new "Understanding" and credits it largely to the introduction of their Katyusha rockets. Interestingly, he provides a subtle concession that the Israelis targeted by Hezbollah's rockets are, in fact, civilians: *"Then, finally, came the proposal preventing the Katyusha rockets from targeting Israeli civilians in the settlements in northern Israel."* However, he also explains his policy in a way that lends to an interpretation which permits Hezbollah to carry out rocket barrages on Israeli civilians, even if Israel targets Hezbollah combatants directly. *"This is known, and the formula is simple: let the aggression on Lebanon stop, along with the bombing of the civilians, and we will stop firing missiles."* The separation of 'aggression on Lebanon' and 'bombing of civilians' as two separate acts suggests that Katyusha rockets may still be used, even without the latter act. Indeed, this was what Hezbollah would ultimately do in later wars, particularly the most recent one where Katyusha rockets were fired routinely at civilian areas, even when the overwhelming [majority](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-strike-lebanon-kills-four-including-senior-hezbollah-commander-2024-06-11/) of Lebanese deaths were Hezbollah militants. >[!quote]- On the Katyusha *"The Katyusha bombardment has led to a new formula based on mutual forced displacement, mutual destruction, and equal terror. This formula was imposed by the Katyusha, and not the operations of the resistance in the border belt. there is a very sensitive topic for the Israelis right now - namely the security of their settlements in northern Palestine. If the settlements are bombarded again, then Rabin will be forced to stand in front of all his people and all political forces to answer the question: What did the seven day operation achieve? This is why Rabin understands that there is a new formula. This formula was not imposed by the Israelis, but for the first time by the resistance"* Note: Interestingly, Nasrallah predicts in this interview that Israel would not withdraw from Lebanon without a peace agreement. 7 years later, he would be proven wrong. *"\[Israel] will not withdraw without imposing a peace agreement on Lebanon"* #### "Who is Hassan Nasrallah?", August 1993 In the wake of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Nasrallah became dissatisfied with the Amal movement, which he thought was not up to the task of dealing with the IDF. In the same year as the invasion, he left Amal and - along with a small group of fellow religious scholars - established the nucleus of a new movement, which would later become known as Hezbollah. Early on, the movement which consisted of, at most, 2,000 core members, received support from the IRGC who assisted in military training and organise them into a viable movement: *"Their role was limited to firing us up with the spirit that prevailed on the front in Iran, but we also benefited from their advanced abilities in our training camps. On the organisational level, they helped us delineate the operational context, and form a new movement and political line all to ourselves."* The movement, according to Nasrallah, initially had no agenda for the Lebanese political system. *"The only reality for us was the fact that there was a country under occupation whose future and fate nobody knew. We are therefor a movement born as a reaction to the occupation of part of our country."* Their operations were limited to recruiting young men, enrolling them into military camps and assigning them to small groups for carrying out operations. Accompanying this was also *"an awareness-raising campaign among the people to lift their morale, re-energise them, instil in them the feeling of enmity towards Israel, and spread among them the policy and objectives of the resistance regarding the occupation."* For Nasrallah, *"People at the time needed instigation, not lectures; they also needed freedom."* As the movement, which initially consisted of a central command overseeing three areas (the Bekaa, Beirut and the south), began to rapidly grow, so too did their organisational infrastructure. In 1989, after some time working in the position of "president of the Executive Council", Nasrallah left his post in order to travel to Qom where he hoped to continue his religious education. His leave, which was expected to last a minimum of five years, was cut short due to the conflict between Amal and Hezbollah and he had to return home in 1991. In the interview, he laments: *"In spite of my involvement in politics, I was very eager to continue my education, and I still feel that way... I wish someone else were secretary-general in my place, so that I could fulfil this personal desire."* In February 1992, Abbas Mussawi was assassinated and Nasrallah - then president of the Executive Council - was unanimously elected secretary-general. Some have speculated that Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's the deputy secretary-general, was passed aside due to Nasrallah's closer ties to Khameini. The secretary-general is elected by the Shura council every 4-5 years and is the highest position in the movement. They are the party's spokesman, the supervisor of the party's internal activities as well as the head of the Jihadi Council, effectively making them the head of both the political wing and the military / security apparatus. Hezbollah's original rules placed a two-term limit on this position, which was removed through an amendment in 1998. Nasrallah held the position for almost 33 years. When asked about Iran, Nasrallah argues that the *wilayat al-faqih* - the head of the Islamic Republic and the Muslim world - doesn't necessarily have to be Iranian (note: this concept of a supreme leader actually breaks with traditional Shia theory which generally separates the political sphere from the religious one). *"You will therefore notice that the Constitution of the Islamic Republic says that the president of the Republic has to be an Iranian, but not necessarily the wilayat al-faqih. This means that the wilayat al-faqih, who is at the very head of the Islamic Republic and of all the Muslims, can be from the Hijaz, Bahrain, Lebanon, or Iraq; and the president of the Republic, who is an Iranian, would therefore be under his command... Right now, this person happens to be an Iranian; therefore our relationship now is with someone in Iran." This section suggests that Nasrallah is somewhat sensitive about Hezbollah's image as an Iranian proxy, given that this somewhat long-winded rebuttal was offered when the interviewer's question didn't even imply that assertion. He further goes on to deny any rumours that the Iranians had interfered in the selection of Hezbollah's leaders. Nonetheless, he does openly assert is faith in the Ayatollah as the spearhead of Islamic redemption. *"From the very beginning, we believed in the wilayat al-faqih, the guiding supreme leader, as someone who can lead the Islamic nation towards regaining its identity, its existence as an entity, and its self-esteem. We believed that Imam al-Khomeini, to whom we gave the name of 'Imam of the Dispossessed,' could have helped the weak and dispossessed of this world get rid of their oppressors"* That said, he does concede that the Ayatollah has the right to interfere with Hezbollah if he wishes to. *"In fact, we believe that the wilayat al-faqih does in fact have the right to appoint our leaders, because our movement has voluntarily handed its reins over to him."* *"We do not receive instructions from any ministry, nor any other authority. The same goes for the supreme leader and the Imam; they do not interfere in our personal affairs - they just formulate the general policy line."* Note: Some of Hezbollah's funding comes from *Akhmas* (plural of *Khums*, meaning 'five'), which is a requirement that Shiites pay one fifth of their surplus annual income to charity, usually through religious institutions. Note 2: Nasrallah denies Hezbollah's involvement in the kidnapping of American, French and German citizens, but does concede that Hezbollah took advantage of hostage incidents to secure the release of their own detainees in Israeli prisons. #### The April Understanding, April 30th, 1996 The unwritten "Understanding" of 1993, had managed to hold in the sense that Lebanon did not suffer a repeat of Operation Accountability in the following years. However, this situation started to unravel in 1996 as Hezbollah operations escalated against the IDF and the SLA. The exact chain of events is unclear but Hezbollah's escalations appear to have coincided with the March 13th Sharm al-Sheikh Agreement, a US-led conference which ended with a declaration by 29 world leaders (including 14 Arab leaders) condemning terrorism, including against Israel and an initiative to bring instigators of terror to justice. Earlier that year, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had claimed responsibility for several attacks against Israeli civilians, including four suicide bombings in 9 days. Because these movements were headquartered in Damascus at the time, the US demanded a crackdown from Assad. Assad, unwilling to acquiesce, was thus excluded from the Sharm al-Sheikh conference - a move which might explain Hezbollah's retaliation. The escalations from Hezbollah prompted Israel's 17 day-long Operation Grapes of Wrath. Over 150 Lebanese civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced, along with 20-30,000 Israelis who were uprooted by Hezbollah's rocket fire. The operation, particularly with the infamous Qana Massacre, dealt a serous blow to Peres' credibility and the IDF were finally forced to admit that they didn't have a military solution to Hezbollah's rockets. The United States moved from a position of full support for Israel's campaign towards attempting to broker a ceasefire, which was likely to hurt Peres' standing ahead of the elections in May. The final written agreement. promoted by the French was taken as an implicit recognition of Hezbollah's right to attack Israeli military positions in Lebanon. >[!quote]- The April Undertanding >*"The United States understands that after discussions with the governments of Israel and Lebanon and in consultation with Syria, Lebanon and Israel will ensure the following: >1. Armed groups in Lebanon will not carry out attacks by Katyusha rockets or by any kind of weapon into Israel. >2. Israel and those cooperating with it will not fire any kind of weapon at civilian targets in Lebanon. >3. Beyond this, the two parties commit to ensuring that under no circumstances will civilians be the target of attack and that civilian populated areas and industrial and electrical installations will not be used as launching grounds for attacks. >4. Without violating this understanding, nothing herein shall preclude any party from exercising the right of self defence. >[!quote]- Side text by US Secretary of State, Christopher Warren to Peres >*"Dear Mr. Prime Minister >With regard to the right of self-defence referred to in the Understanding dated April 26, 1996, the United States understands that if Hezbollah or any other group in Lebanon acts inconsistently with the principles of the Understanding or launches attacks on Israeli forces in Lebanon, whether that attack has taken the form or firings, ambushes, suicide attacks, roadside explosives, or any other type of attack, Israel retains the right in response to take appropriate self-defence measures against the armed groups responsible for the attack. With regard to the prohibitions on the use of certain areas as launching grounds for attacks, the United States understands that the prohibition refers not only to the firing of weapons but also to the use of these areas by armed groups as bases from which to carry out attacks."* In this interview, Nasrallah frames the launching of Katyusha rockets as *"purely reactive"* to Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilian areas: *"The resistance does not have a category of operations known as 'launching a Katyusha rocket,' because these launchings are not operations per se, but purely reactive strikes. The resistance attacks a given target, executes a martyrdom operation, and plants an explosive device... but it only uses Katyushas to protect civilians and deter the Israelis from attacking them."* This raises the question as to why exactly Lebanese civilian areas were subjected to IDF fire. The most notorious example from this period is the Qana Massacre (April 18th, 1996) where over 100 Lebanese civilians were killed in the Israeli shelling of a UN compound. Though [Amnesty International](https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/042/1996/en/) acknowledged that Hezbollah had been firing at an IDF patrol from a cemetery within 200 metres of the compound and even accused them of *"using the civilian population as a shield",* they nonetheless argued that the IDF should have known the risks of a counter attack, which they ultimately determined was still unjustified. An Israeli [response](https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-187312/) admitted that the map used by Northern Command had inaccurately pinned the compound 100 metres north of its actual location and also failed to consider the space covered by the compound. The result was that they estimated the edge of the compound to be 350 metres away from the cemetery (as opposed to the actual 180) and therefore would not have even considered it possible to strike the compound, even by accident. A [subsequent analysis](https://www.army.mil/article/166556/a_most_painful_lesson_the_1996_shelling_of_qana_why_it_matters_today) also argues that operational errors in the artillery unit further contributed to the projectiles falling beyond their intended target. The UN Military Advisor, Franklin Van Kappen remained unconvinced by the Israeli claim of gross error, but did say *"it cannot be ruled out entirely."* In any case, this incident, accompanied by Nasrallah's assessment of Israeli strikes in this interview, does indicate Hezbollah's willingness to operate dangerously close to civilian areas. *"The aim of the first strike was not to stop the Katyushas, but to strike at Hezbollah's military infrastructure and paralyse its resistance activities... the location they shelled in the Southern Suburb is the home of ordinary people who are not even members of Hezbollah, let alone part of its leadership. Although it is true that in the area where the house is located there are various leadership headquarters, and the headquarters of the general secretariat are adjacent or just opposite the targeted building, the fact remains that they struck a building that belongs to ordinary people."* In Qana, it is also worth noting that [eyewitnesses](https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-187312/) had seen Hezbollah positioning a mortar near the compound, but UNIFIL personnel took no actions to remove it. Three days before the massacre, a Fijian UNIFIL worker had been shot in the chest after trying to prevent Hezbollah fighters from firing rockets. On the question of Iranian influence, Nasrallah is adamant to sidestep these accusations, insisting that Hezbollah are no more foreign influenced than a Christian who takes guidance from the Vatican or a Communist who follows Marx or Lenin. He even makes the comical argument that: *"While we do not speak in Farsi, many Lebanese Christians speak in French. Why do we continue to say that they are Lebanese rather than French citizens?"* On the fallout of Operation Grapes of Wrath, Nasrallah highlights Hezbollah's institutional capacity to repair the damages cause by Israeli operations. *"We have mobilised all our institutions in the south, including doctors, clinics, engineers, tractors, and reconstruction tools, and they are now ready. first of all, roads that were cut by the Israelis have to be repaired. As for damaged houses, our young men are supposed to have contacted their owners and proposed that each family rent a house in the same village, or in a nearby one, and that we will pay rent for a six-month period, until their own homes have been rebuilt. If at this point the rebuilding is not over, we will pay their rent for another full year, because we do not want our people to live in tents."* Executive Order 1995 #### The Martyrdom of Sayyed Hadi Nasrallah, September 1997 *"This young man, like all the martyred mujahidin of the resistance, the mujahidin who are still on the lines of confrontation, some of whom are on the frontlines as we speak - and like all these honourable and pure individuals - he consciously, willingly, and independently chose this path. If I, his mother or any martyr's father have played any role in this, it was to facilitate and not object to or prevent this or any other young man from going where he wished, or doing what he thought was right."* *"The martyr Hadi's martyrdom is the proof that we in Hezbollah's leadership do not spare our own sons; we take pride in them when they go to the frontlines, and hold our heads high when they fall as martyrs."* The fact that Nasrallah had not sheltered his son from taking part in frontline military operations was something that set him apart from other Arab leaders. This, coupled with the recent Hezbollah successes against elite Israeli commando units, offered a substantial boost in Nasrallah's credibility. In this speech, Nasrallah fully rejects the Oslo Accords, not because he thinks the terms could be more favourable to the Palestinians, but because it represents the very willingness to compromise on territory, no matter how much or little. *"And what a treachery Oslo was - the treachery of having abandoned Jerusalem and Palestine, and wasted the sacrifice, the pain and the suffering that the Arab and Muslim people have endured for 50 years. It is in the face of such treachery that these martyrs fell and wrote with their own blood: we reject these humiliating agreements and reject the humiliation of our nation, occupation, disgrace and arrogance. The land is our land and the holy sites belong to our nation... We want to forge our nation's peace with our own blood, guns, body parts and bones"* This speech is also the source of one of Nasrallah's most widely cited quotes which leaves no room for doubt about his anti-Semitism. *"The message of the incident at Ansariya is clear to the whole nation and to the Palestinian people: it tells this oppressed and struggling people in Palestine once again that the path to victory and justice and the path to the future is one chosen by the great mujahideen and martyrs in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and across the sacred land of Palestine. Everyone should understand this message, and should also know that our enemy is weaker than we think, and lowlier than we think. If we search the entire globe for a more cowardly, lowly, weak, and frail individual in his spirit, mind ideology, and religion, we will never find anyone like the Jew - and I am not saying the Israeli: we have to know the enemy we are fighting."* #### On Conditional Withdrawal, March 1998 In this interview, Nasrallah openly refuses not to disclose what Hezbollah would do if Israel were to exit Lebanon, although his answer strongly hints in the direction of continuing the conflict. *"The resistance here is fighting to liberate Lebanese lands. The rest - whether the Golan or elsewhere - is part of the hidden file of which we spoke earlier. It is a fact that what is taking place in Golan is occupation, and we believe that its liberation is part of a whole. For us, all of Palestine is occupied territory, and Israel is an illegitimate and illegal occupying and thieving state that enjoys some strength. We must all cooperate today to prevent this thief from taking over all of our region, from placing its hand over all of its resources and holy shrines, and from erasing both its past and future. There remains one point: Will the Islamic Resistance fight to liberate Golan or Palestine? We will withhold the answer to this question until a future date, because we don't like to give a commitment, whether positive or negative, on which Israel will base an attitude."* In contrast to his speech following his son's death, here, Nasrallah insists on distinguishing between a fight against Zionism and a fight against the Jews. *"Most assuredly our attitude towards Israel is not an attitude towards Jews or Judaism. Since the West doesn't want to understand that Hezbollah is anything other than an exact copy of Iran, let us consider Iran's attitude towards the Jews. They enjoy there all political, social, and economic rights, for they are citizens, and have representatives in the legislative authority. Thus our war is not against Judaism or Jews but against Zionism, which created its racial state in Israel."* As the author notes, Iran's Jewish population did and still does suffer from social, political and economic discrimination, hence their constant reduction in population size from over 150,000 in 1948 to 40,000 in 1998, to less than 10,000 in 2024. #### On Jews, May 1998 In contrast to his recent interview quoted above, this speech is far more inflammatory and seems to be a clear sign of Nasrallah's frustration with recent developments in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and growing fear of regional normalisation becoming imposed on the movement. A month before this speech, the Iranian culture and Islamic guidance minister, Ayatollah Mohajerani declared that *"if Israel withdraws from south Lebanon with guarantees for fixed and secure borders, there will be no further need for Hezbollah's resistance operation there".* Referring back to an older understanding of the Palestinian *Nakba*, Nasrallah acknowledges the *"fiftieth anniversary of the historic catastrophe and tragic event: namely, the establishment of the state of the Zionist Jews, the descendants of apes and pigs, on the land of Palestine and the holiest of our holy places."* Commenting on normalisation, he says: *"despite all these Jewish ambitions, we in this nation say that the dreams of the Israelis have come to an end... We promise and warn them that their dreams are over, and that the time has come for them to wake from their dreams and face reality, a reality in which people refuse to live in humiliation, and view life with the Zionist Jews as nonsense; a reality in which every man, young and old, loves to blow himself up to tear apart the bodies of the invading, occupying Jews."* Despite his inconsistency with regards to separating "Zionists" from "Jews", Nasrallah clear defers here to the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of a "Greater Israel" from the Nile to the Euphrates. In fact, he also adds to Israel's supposedly ingrained territorial ambitions: *"The waters of the Nile and the Euphrates, the mountains of Yemen, and the land of Khaybar are part of Israel's land. Is this not the dream?"* Note: Khaybar was an old Jewish-inhabited community north of Medina in what is now Saudi Arabia. The area was conquered by Muhammad in 628. Referring to the land percentages negotiated for the Further Redeployments (FRDs) of IDF in the Wye River Agreement, Nasrallah slams Arafat for his *"humiliation, loss, disgrace, and relinquishment of jihad,"* arguing that *"This nation will only accept every inch of the sacred land of Palestine."* In order to hammer home his disdain for the normalisation and peace treaties with Israel, Nasrallah leaves another strong indicator that Hezbollah's struggle against Israel wouldn't stop with an end to the occupation in Lebanon, nor would it be swayed by international recognition and financial support. *"Regarding Hezbollah's stance, some circles have said that a certain political deal has been made. I would like to say that Hezbollah's stance and \[its] pride are far too lofty to allow it to participate in this kind of deal. I want to clarify here that during the April \[1996] war, the foreign ministers of great countries have contacted us and suggested ideas sweetened with many political incentives. They said they would recognise us as a big political party in Lebanon, and as an important political factor in the Lebanese equation. They also said that the doors of financial and material assistance would open for our institutions, and that we would be recognised by the highest authorities in the world in return for abandoning our resistance and stabbing our friends in Syria in the back. But we categorically rejected all this, because we are the sons of Abu Abdullah al-Hussein, who know nothing of treason and who do not sell out their religion for the entire world."* #### Towards Liberation, June 1999 With the electoral victory of Ehud Barak and the accompanying promise that Israel would exit Lebanon within the year, Nasrallah reiterated that Hezbollah's cause for war did not end, simply with the liberation of the south. *"What Lebanon wants officially is now clear to all. It has three minimum demands: Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon and the western Bekaa; withdrawal from the Golan Heights; and the return of Palestinian refugees to their country, because Lebanon rejects the plan to settle Palestinian refugees in Lebanon."* When asked about Syria (which was still an occupying force in Lebanon at the time), Nasrallah shines a light on Hezbollah's reasoning for supporting Assad's actions. *"To express my real thoughts, and reflect an accurate measure of my feelings towards President Assad, I will give you a very simple example. When Israel invaded and occupied large parts of the Bekaa Valley, Mount Lebanon, and Lebanon's capital city in 1982, a contingent of multinational forces arrived to bolster this occupation, and many Lebanese groups opted to cooperate with it. Israel succeeded in imposing a president of the republic and the humiliating May 17 Agreement on Lebanon. Had there not been in the region a state by the name of Syria, led by a president of the stature of Hafez al-Assad, Lebanon would still be wallowing in the Israeli era... It was the Lebanese intifada and the resistance that force d the Israelis to withdraw in 1985... The Lebanese resistance and the handful of Palestinian factions would not have succeeded in doing what they did, had there not been a presence to protect, support, defend, and strengthen them, as President al-Assad's leadership had done."* Note: The May 17th agreement refers to an Israeli-Lebanese peace agreement in 1983 which pushed for a phased withdrawal of the IDF in exchange for the Lebanese army establishing a security zone in the south. The agreement was effectively rendered useless a year later with the withdrawal of the Multinational Force and the collapse of the army, which resulted in President Amine Gemayel traveling to Syria in order to make amends with the Assad regime. #### A Peaceful Resolution, February 2000 *"Israeli extremists, like the deputy defence minister, say that we violated their national territory; we believe, however, that the territory they are talking about is occupied Palestine. Their real land is Ethiopia, as far as the Falasha are concerned, and Russia, as far as the Russian emigres are concerned, and there will be a time when these people will really feel nostalgia for their original homeland."* As he credits the resistance in Lebanon for moving negotiations into a direction more suitable to them, Nasrallah gives somewhat of a premonition for the Second Intifada, which would break out only a few months later. *"The experience we went through could be a good example for the Palestinian people, especially when they compare the results of the final status talks with those achieved by Lebanon and Syria thanks to their steadfast attitude, over many years, until they achieved their national objectives."* On Lebanon's future after Israeli occupation, Nasrallah reminds the interviewer that Hezbollah will remain steadfast against Israel and the normalisation process: *"Israel will remain, in our minds and plans, an illegitimate, illegal, aberrant, and cancerous entity, which we therefore cannot recognise. We will instead work with others to combat normalisation with it, because fighting normalisation will impede its development into a regional superpower. Just as the wars of 1973 and 1982, the impact of the Lebanese resistance and of Israel's failure to occupy Lebanon \[have together led] to the demise of the military aspect of the Greater Israel plan, combating normalisation would lead to the demise of the political, economic, and cultural aspects of the Greater Israel Plan."* In what now looks like a dark irony, Nasrallah envisions the inevitable collapse of Israel and of US influence in the region: "*You want to know the future. Well, I do not see the United States or Israel in the region. Israel does not have the necessary means of survival in the region for more than a few decades, and those who live long enough will be witness to that." #### Victory Speech, May 26th, 2000 As Barak started what was intended to be an "orderly withdrawal" from Lebanon, Hezbollah attacks within the "security zone" continued. These operations played a part in the disintegration of the SLA and pushed the Israelis to withdraw even more quickly. After a mass demonstration in Meiss al Jabal - apparently uncoordinated by Hezbollah - where the IDF fired on and killed several Lebanese protestors, Barak announced that Israel would be out of the country within 24 hours. This exit, after 18 years of occupation, is lauded as the moment when Israel had been unconditionally pushed out of Arab territory, largely through armed force. With the Israeli-Palestinian peace process soon to collapse, Dennis Ross' comments read back as a harbinger of what was to come: *"Suddenly there was a new model for dealing with Israel: the Hezbollah mode. Don't make concessions. Don't negotiate. Use violence. And the Israelis will grow weary."* In this speech, delivered to a crowd of 100,000 people in the southern town of Bint Jbeil, Nasrallah is quick to emphasise the withdrawal as the ultimate validation of Hezbollah's resistance theory. *"We are standing here on our own land thanks to our martyr's blood, and to the people who need no one's help, neither the United Nations', which for 22 years failed to implement its own Resolution 425, the Security Council, the impure government \[the US], or negotiations. Neither is it thanks to Barak's government, which withdrew from this land because it had no other choice but to do so. These are the sacrifices which, for the first time, have totally liberated an Arab land through resistance and the force of arms."* Though Israel would have hoped for SLA positions to hold, especially near the border, the speed of the IDF's withdrawal left them with little chance in the face of Hezbollah. Nasrallah eagerly uses this betrayal to his own ends: *"The agent Antoine Lahd said, 'We were faithful to Israel for 25 years, but it betrayed and abandoned us in the span of a single night.' This should be a lesson for every Christian and Muslim Lebanese: Israel does not care about anyone in Lebanon; it lies to the Christians and lies to the Muslims, while pretending to care about the,. What Israel cares about in Lebanon and this whole region is its own interest, its own purpose and ambitions; in the eyes of these Zionists, we Christians and Muslims are mere servants and slaves of God's chosen people."* On the question of who holds military power in the south, Nasrallah gives an assurance that Hezbollah has *"no intention of replacing the state"* and is *"neither a security force nor aspires to be one... The state is in charge here; this region has returned to its control, and it alone can decide what to do: send security forces, reinforce police posts, or send other security apparatus. We do not bear any responsibility whatsoever for maintaining security in this region."* His omission of the Lebanese army here is not a mistake as the army's presence in the south had been long contested by Hezbollah and ultimately, Nasrallah's description here of the state being in charge of the south would not reflect the situation in the following years. Though the Israeli withdrawal saw a full IDF departure beyond the UN-recognised "blue line", Nasrallah promises that the resistance would continue against Israel, citing two motivations: 1. the Shebaa farms and 2: Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. The three people he names as high-profile examples of prisoners are Sheikh Abdelkarim Obeid (a firebrand Hezbollah cleric), Abu Ali al-Dirani (believed to have been behind the capture of a missing Israeli airman) and Samir Qintar (held on charges of murder and terrorism). *"Barak and his government have no choice: I advise him to leave Shebaa Farms and put the issue to rest. The coming days will demonstrate that he has no other choice. We do not much care about international resolutions; all we know is that there is Lebanese territory under occupation that should be returned to Lebanon. The prisoners will come back, the land will be liberated, and the defeated enemy will have no other choice."* Nasrallah closes the speech with an address to the Palestinian people, urging them to follow Hezbollah's path of resistance, assuring them: *"you can regain your land with your will, with the choice made by Izzeddin al-Qassam, and with the blood of Fathi al-Shiqaqi and Yahya Ayyash."* This choice of names leave little ambiguity around the kind of resistance Nasrallah is advocating for. Al-Qassam - the namesake of Hamas' military wing, the al-Qassam brigades - (1882-1935) was a Syrian migrant to Palestine, killed by the British for his role in the Arab revolt against their rule and against Jewish immigration. Fathi al-Shiqaqi - assassinated by Israel in 1995 - was the secretary general of Islamic Jihad and Ayyash was Hamas' chief bomb-maker, killed by an exploding cell phone in 1996. When Nasrallah calls for an *intifada* he doesn't mean for it to be in pursuit of a better deal; he sees it as the means to regain all of history Palestine. *"O, people of Palestine, the road to Palestine and your road to freedom follows the path of resistance and intifada - a serious and genuine intifada, not an intifada within the context of Oslo nor an intifada at the service of the helpless negotiator in Stockholm, but an intifada and a resistance that accepts only the restitution of all the people's rights, as has happened in Lebanon. Lebanon refuses to allow even a small piece of its land to remain under occupation; we offer this lofty Lebanese example to our people in Palestine. You do not need tanks, strategic balance, rockets or cannons to liberate your land, all you need are the martyrs who shook and scared this angry Zionist entity. You can regain your land, you oppressed, helpless and besieged people of Palestine; you can force the invading Zionists to return from whence they came, let the Falasha go back to Ethiopia and let the Russian Jews go back to Russia. The choice is yours and the example is clear before your eyes... the Israel that owns nuclear weapons and has the strongest air force in the region is weaker than a spider's web."* #### The Second Intifada, October 2000 This interview was given to the Kiwaiti daily newspaper *al-Rai al-Aam*, less than a week after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, and only a few days before Hezbollah abducted (it would later emerge that they had been killed) three Israeli soldiers in the Shebaa Farms. Though Nasrallah seems mindful of Barak's threats that Hezbollah attacks across the border would be met with a massive response, he nonetheless makes it clear that resistance operations would continue. On the failure of the Camp David Summit, he dismisses the Israeli offer of a Palestinian state as one which *"lacks sovereignty, has no army, borders Israel on all sides, \[has] its economy under total Israeli control, lives on foreign assistance, and is made up of several strips of non-contiguous territory."* At the time of this interview, these points were still being negotiated further at Taba and Nasrallah sees Arafat's tacit approval of the Intifada as a sign that he is trying to use the violence as a bargaining chip. That said, he also acknowledges the risks of using such a strategy. *"... the options available to Arafat are clear, and he obviously wants to improve his negotiating position. But we also have to watch his current state of mind, because this level of confrontation can have a negative impact on the negotiators, and on those who are willing to offer further concessions. I do not know how he will calculate, what the talks in Paris will amount to, or whether they will succeed in calming down the street and containing the situation. What I do believe, however, is that things will be a lot more complicated than before." In a rare moment, Nasrallah mentions the concept of a two-state solution on the 1967 lines and - whilst not endorsing it - does acknowledge that many Palestinians see this as the limits of a desired state. *"The victory achieved by Lebanon has given the Palestinians hope that their resistance will eventually succeed in expelling the Zionists from the Gaza strip, so that it becomes completely ours, and allowing us to force Israel out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem - the minimum conditions on which all Palestinians agree. However, while some Palestinians say that Palestine extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, others believe that it consists only of the territories occupied in 1967."* Speaking on a recent call from Lebanon's Maronite Catholic Church for the withdrawal of tens of thousands of occupying Syrian troops, Nasrallah vehemently rejects this call, arguing that it would lead to instability and also vaguely implying that calls for a Syrian withdrawal are being fuelled by foreign agents. *"Now that Israel has withdrawn from the country, we Lebanese have to ponder the fact that there were foreign agents among the Muslims and the Christians... If the Syrians withdraw from Lebanon and problems occur here or there, there will be voices raised. What I am telling you is that there are people working hard to push the Syrians out of Lebanon and stir up divisions among the Lebanese. One does not need large specialised organisations to do that; a small 'security network' capable of provoking a number of incidents that appeal to hardcore sectarian fanaticism in the country would be sufficient. This would thrust Lebanon's unresolved problems once again to the fore, amid a total lack of security and stability in the country, and the only solution would then be the dispatch of international peacekeeping forces to the country. In other words, the objective is to restart the civil war in Lebanon, and turn the country into another Kosovo; the only solution would then be the presence of an international force and the imposition of tutelage over it. The strong Lebanon that had allied itself to Syria and defeated Israel would no longer exist."* #### "The Americans have sent us a political bomb", Nov 16th, 2001 After 9/11, Hezbollah immediately halted their activities on the Israeli border, save for a couple of symbolic operations in the Shebaa farms on October 3rd and 22nd. They understood that the risks of any operations were massively raised, especially after President Bush's warning that *"Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."* In this interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper *al-Rai al-Aam*, Nasrallah claims to have been offered a deal through US intermediaries that called for disarmament and an end for support of Palestinian terror organisations in exchange for US recognition, economic aid and wider electoral power. The US - as was the case for a similar package in 2000 - denied that this was ever offered, but meetings between Hezbollah and officials in the UN, the UK and the EU did seem to hint at the potential of such an offer. Nasrallah, whose party had no love for al-Qaeda and had condemned the September 11th attacks, was dismissive of the US, which he claims was only trying to take advantage of the situation to further Israel's interests by deterring resistance groups. *"Of course, we rejected all these proposals because we believed them to be nothing but a political bomb meant to destroy Hezbollah, since they cannot of course destroy us by dropping a nuclear bomb on us. When we rejected these proposals, the United States placed Hezbollah once again on its third list of 'terrorist' organisations. If anything, this makes it clear that the United States is not willing to tackle the regional situation except from the perspective of Israel's interests." Interestingly, Nasrallah talks of an American attempt to coax Hezbollah into finding a common cause with the west against the threat of Sunni fundamentalism. He dismisses this attempt whole heartedly, although Sunni extremism would ultimately become Hezbollah's north star for intervening in the Syrian civil war to rescue Assad. *"They \[the US] tried to provoke us along these lines, on the grounds that, in the future, Sunni fundamentalism will pose the gravest threat to Shiism. They reminded us of the large-scale massacre that the Taliban committed against the Shia in Mazari sharif a few years ago, and the murder of Iranian diplomats. One should bear in mind that many Sunnis were also killed in that massacre, and that the Taliban's objective was to incite the Islamic Republic of Iran to retaliate, and thus provoke a worldwide Shia-Sunni confrontation. But Iran behaved reasonable, overcame its grief, and did not fall into the trap. Any talk about Sunni fundamentalism and its dangers, therefore holds no water with us; our position in this regard was clear from the very first day the Americans attacked Afghanistan."* #### "How can you afford that?", February 2002 In a speech, delivered on the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Abbas Mussawi, Nasrallah talks surprisingly little about Israel or the ongoing *intifada*, and instead focuses on the economic concerns of post-occupation Lebanon, particularly the Bekaa Valley. Several years earlier, Hezbollah's former secretary-general, Sheikh Subhi Tufeili had led a Shiite protest against Hezbollah and the government's negligence towards the area, known as the "*Revolution of the Famished". Nasrallah's populist rhetoric highlights the importance of Hezbollah's image as a party of *the people* as well as the ongoing marginalisation of Lebanese Shiites, which no other political body in the country had meaningfully addressed. "*Do not focus only on the newly rich who took advantage of the war, but also on those who took advantage of the peace to line their pockets. Your money, my dear Lebanese people, is in banks and company shares abroad, and should be brought back home. I would like to ask, however, how do we do that? In the past they used to ask the newly rich, "How can you afford that?", "How much money do you have?", and "Did you open special files for those who came after you?" I do not want to point the finger of blame at anyone, but there are poor people who secretly became rich as the result of corruption. How did they position themselves in a way that would enable them to steal money from various projects?" #### On the thirteenth anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's death, June 2002 This commemorative speech can be seen as a subtle display of Hezbollah's "*Lebanonisation"* and an assertion of the movement's Lebanese, nationalistic identity as opposed to their image as an Iranian proxy. The speech makes no reference to the *vilayat al-faqih* and reads more like a biography of a role model than a pledge of allegiance to a foreign regime. *"Therefore, on this day of remembrance of the Imam whose sun had never set, we should commit ourselves to the path on which we have indeed offered many martyrs and sacrifices, but have found at the end of it only victory, self-esteem, and dignity for ourselves, our people, the motherland, our citizens, our nation, and for every oppressed and suffering human being."* #### "Arabs are not Red Indians", October 2002 This speech is the source of the widely circulated quote, published by the English-language Lebanese newspaper *The Daily Star*: *"If they \[the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."* This line was later disavowed by the Star's managing editor and also does not appear in the excerpted version that was printed in Arabic the following day in *An-Nahar*. *An-Nahar* is known for having a generally critical stance towards Hezbollah, which means they might have little incentive to omit this sentence. However, there is a break in the original transcription where the comment could feasibly fit in. *"If the resistance used only Katyusha rockets, it could cause the displacement of 2 million Jews, and these would have to look for somewhere else to live, probably in the centre of Israel. How would it be, then, if Hezbollah's missiles , as Sharon says, could reach every single populated area in Israel? If these were launched, where would all the Israelis go? Would they run to where the intifada is raging in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and then the West Bank?* #### The impending Iraq War and "Muslim-Christian Alignment", March 13, 2003 One week before the US-led coalition began it's war in Iraq, some supporters of the war, including some Arabs e.g. Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi and Iraqi-American academic Kanan Makiya, believed the American assault on Saddam's brutal regime would be welcomed by the Iraqi people. Nasrallah correctly argued: "*Do not expect the people of this region to meet you with flowers, rice and perfume; peoples of this part of the world will receive you, rather, with guns, blood, weapons, and martyrdom operations. This is the reception the people are preparing for the American invaders, for we have never been afraid of the United States." On Syria, it was clear at this point that the newly appointed president, Bashar al-Assad - who had not been adequately prepared to be his father's successor - would be a far more staunch ally to Hezbollah than Hafez had been. Earlier in the year, the US Congress had passed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act (SALSA) which aimed to economically isolate the Assad regime. The bill, among other things, was a response to Syria's support for terrorism, which at that point primarily meant Hezbollah. Nasrallah's support for the Assad regime was unequivocal. "*In difficult days such as these, no Arab can disregard the words of a young Arab leader, especially in this particularly dangerous and significant time, of the stature of President Bashar al-Assad. This young leader has his finger on the pulse of the Arab street and reflects its conscience, spirit and feelings of anger and dejection. Nobody can simply or easily disregard him or his words, especially since he is president of a country being threatened by the United states, which tells him that his country's turn will come in the second or third round. His is also a country at which the US Congress is brandishing the Syria Accountability Act, and threatening to implement it at any moment, and a country living in proximity to the Israeli entity, which may attack at any time." On the *intifada*, Nasrallah remains confident that the resistance has *"for the first time in 50 years - succeeded in shaking the Zionist entity to the core, and threatening its very existence and survival."* At the end of his statement, he relishes in the backlash endured by President Bush from religious leaders after his claim to be *"leading a global crusade against terrorism".* In what looks like a half-serious expression of confidence, Nasrallah hints at the prospect of a Muslim-Christian alliance against the American-Zionist axis. *"The Jews have long hoped for a war that pits a Jewish-Christian alliance against the Muslim nation. In this context I would like to say: Let us look to form a Muslim-Christian alliance to confront all those who attack Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad. Why don't we form a political alliance of this kind? Those positive positions, we see today, whether in the East or the West, are positions taken by Christian countries, churches and prominent individuals and elites, and this only encourages the formation of such an alliance. Why do we not seek a meaningful, public, and official Muslim-Christian alliance such as this, in the face of an American-Zionist scheme, which only seeks to spread ruin, destruction, war, humiliation, and corruption throughout the world?"* Note: This sentiment may also be reflective of Lebanon's political leadership at the time, where the Maronite President, General Emile Lahoud had consistently defended Hezbollah's actions, whereas the Sunni Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri was an open critic of Hezbollah. #### Interview with 60 minutes, April 20, 2003 This would be one of very few interviews Nasrallah conducted with the American press. The *60 minutes* appearance was reduced to a handful of soundbites from the Hezbollah leader, which were juxtaposed with suggestions such as the one that the group was going to attack the US just as al-Qaeda had done. Nasrallah would go on to do a handful of interviews with the Washington Post and the New Yorker but he ultimately distanced himself from US media, especially after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. Responding to Secretary of State Colin Powell's claim that Hezbollah is "*the A-team of terrorism*", implying that al-Qaeda are the B-team, Nasrallah is dismissive of the authenticity of the American politician's claims: *"Secretary Powell can say what he wants. I believe the Americans are just saying what the Israelis want them to say. I consider this to be an Israeli accusation coming out of an American mouth, and nothing more."* Despite the warnings about a Hezbollah attack on US soil, Nasrallah's condemnation of 9/11 is unequivocal: *"We reject those methods and believe they contradict Islam and the teachings of the Quran, which do not permit this barbarity."* The tone of the segment from the American side is somewhat complacent in the early days of the Iraq war. In hindsight, Nasrallah's warning about what will follow the fall of Saddam seems much more prophetic. *"I believe the continuation of American policy will make enemies of all Arabs and Muslims, meaning hundreds of millions of Arabs and 1.4 billion Muslims around the world. Lots of groups will surface, not necessarily al-Qaeda, and they'll be impossible to bring to justice."* #### Prisoner exchange, Jan 29th, 2004 On January 24th, 2004, Hezbollah and the Israeli cabinet - through a German mediator - announced that an agreement had been reached for a mutual prisoner exchange. The deal involved the release of the retired Israeli Colonel Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three IDF soldiers in exchange for some 400 Palestinians, 35 Lebanese and other Arabs, including 11 Hezbollah members, the bodies of 59 Hezb fighters and information on 24 others. In this subsequent speech, Nasrallah draws attention to three Lebanese men who were absent from the exchange: 1. **Samir Qintar** - A Lebanese Druze who headed a Palestinian Liberation Front unit which infiltrated the northern Israeli town of Nahariya in 1979, killing a police officer and an Israeli father along with his two daughters, aged four and two. In his 2005 election campaign, Nasrallah promised the Qintar family that he would work tirelessly to bring their son home. 2. **Nissim Nasser** - A Lebanese-born Israeli citizen, convicted of spying for Hezbollah in 2002 and sentenced to 6 years imprisonment in a plea bargain. Nasser moved to Israel and acquired citizenship in 1982 by way of his mother being Jewish (though she had converted to Islam after marriage). In 2008, he was deported to Lebanon in exchange for the bodies of two IDF soldiers who died in the 2006 war. 3. **Yahya Skaf** - One of 11 militants who took part in the 1978 Costal Road Massacre in which 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, were murdered in a bus hijacking north of Tel Aviv. 9 of the attackers were killed by security forces, but only 8 were identified. Sakaf's body was never accounted for and his fate remains in dispute, with Israelis claiming his body was buried in an unknown place due to bad record keeping. Hezbollah and Sakaf's family, however, argue that he is still alive in currently being held in an Israeli prison. Though the release of these three prisoners - and, to a lesser degree, the Shebaa Farms - would be Hezbollah's primary justification for continuing operations against Israel, Nasrallah leaves open the suggestion that his strategy of abducting Israeli soldiers in cross-border operations was not limited to the release of Lebanese captives. *"I would also like to tell the Arab world, its people, and governments, that we shall not abandon or forget the issue of Arab, Lebanese, Palestinian or any other prisoners in Israeli jails; we have not forgotten them in the past, we do not forget them now, and will not do so in the future. We do not ask for a reward from the Arab world, and our resistance has never asked anyone for such a reward; we are performing our duty, and no one owes us anything.* As if to confirm the complaints of Israeli right-wingers, Nasrallah openly describes the cost of the exchange as *"exorbitant"* and clearly sees the deal as a vindication of Hezbollah's kidnapping operations. *"... it goes without saying that all this would not have been possible had it not been for the resistance and for the mujahidin's success in taking prisoner Israeli soldiers- both alive and dead - and using them in subsequent negotiations. These days, there are people who say that such exchanges are proof that peaceful methods can succeed and be productive. I say to these people, however, that the method that brought in three soldiers (an armed operation) and a reserve officer (a security operation) is the one successful and productive option. Peaceful methods that rely on weakness, submission, and kissing the threshold of the American embassy at Awkar, will not bring results."* All that to say, Nasrallah expresses a level of admiration for the lengths Israelis will go to in order to care for their dead. *"Therefore, regardless of the reasons why the Zionists care about their prisoners, their dead, and the bodies of their dead, this is a matter worthy of our respect. We are Israel's worst enemy, but I stand here today in respect of this enemy because of the way he cares about his prisoners and the bodies of his dead soldiers, and because he works for them day and night and declares, unabashed, his readiness to pay what is sometimes an exorbitant price to recover them."* #### "They are a group that lives in the Middle Ages", March 2nd, 2004 On March 2nd, 2004, a series of coordinated blasts from planted explosives and suicide bombers went off in the middle of Ashura celebrations in Baghdad and Karbala, killing 181 Shiites. This was one of the deadliest attacks to follow the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Though the perpetrators remain unknown, the attacks are generally seen as the early stages of a rising Sunni-Shiite conflict that would escalate into a full civil war only a couple of years later. Nonetheless, Nasrallah put his conspiratorial instincts on full display by first alleging that the main beneficiaries of such violence would be Israel and the US. *"... it is true that Iraq's borders are open, and that anyone can enter the country and do whatever he wants. I can tell you, however, that the most powerful among them, those that succeed in smuggling cadres, generals, and money, and in establishing networks into Iraq, are the Israelis and the Israeli Mossad. Israel is thus the ultimate and primary beneficiary. Sedition among the Muslims poses a strategic danger to the Palestinian intifada, to the resistance in Lebanon, and for all areas of strength and rejection throughout this nation. Sedition among Muslims means the loss of everything"* That said, he does express a willingness to concede that if the attackers were suicide bombers, it would *"distinguish them from the others"* and rule out them being American, Israeli or even Ba'athist. On the assumption that it was a sectarian attack, Nasrallah - who had no illusions about Sunni extremists who believed in the principle of *takfir* - was unsparing. With hindsight, the sense of foreboding in his words is painfully clear. *"If, on the other hand, a fanatic and extremist group that lives in the Middle Ages and has no brain, no heart, no religion, no morality, and yet claims to be Muslim, is responsible for these incidents, then this would be the gravest danger of all, and a calamity with which the whole nation has to come to grips."* #### "You will today decide the fate of your nation and country", March 8th, 2005 On September 2nd, 2004, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1559, one day after the Lebanese cabinet approved of a three-year mandate extension for pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud. The resolution reflected the international community's growing dissatisfaction with Syrian control over Lebanon and called for a *"withdrawal of all non-Lebanese forces*" (i.e. Syrian) from the country as well as the *"disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias."* To add to the external pressure - particularly of America and France - Hezbollah and the rest of the pro-Syrian camp also faced the prospect of a growing electoral alliance between Hariri's Sunni bloc and other Christian and Druze groups. The following month, Prime Minister Hariri resigned in protest against Lahoud's mandate extension and was promptly replaced by the pro-Syrian leader, Omar Karami, whose premiership would only last a matter of months. On February 14th, 2005, Hariri was assassinated in a car bombing which has since been understood to have been carried out by Hezbollah. An eruption of anti-Syrian protests followed and Karami resigned two weeks later (he would be reappointed by Lahoud on March 10th, but only for a matter of weeks). It had become clear at this point that the state's security services would not use force to crack down on the protestors but the concept of a Syrian withdrawal was not yet set in stone, nor were the parliamentary elections which were set to take place in May. Nasrallah's speech in Beirut on March 8th shows an attempt to strike balance between Hezbollah's strategic interests and the unavoidable political realities on the ground. Notably, he doesn't draw a red line against Syria's withdrawal, but he is clear that this would not be a prerequisite for Hezbollah's disarmament. *"We who are gathered here have come to tell the world that we reject Resolution 1559. If anyone in the opposition agrees t hat the Syrian presence in, or withdrawal from, Lebanon should be based solely on the Taif Accords, then we have no problem agreeing with them. But those who insist on the implementation of Resolution 1559, we say that we sense in your insistence on this Resolution an intention to overturn the Taif Accords and their provisions. This is tantamount to a coup against national consensus in Lebanon, against the blood and testament of the martyred Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and a coupe against the foundations on which Lebanon was rebuilt after the destructive civil war."* That said, he is not shy to argue that Lebanon, after being destroyed by Israel and the civil war, *"was unified, protected, and secured by Syria and the blood of its officers and soldiers. Sharon destroyed Beirut, and Hafez al-Assad protected it... We wish to say to Syria exactly what its own president, Bashar al-Assad has said: your presence in Lebanon is not material or military; you are present in our hearts and souls, and in our past, present and future. No one can expel Syria from Lebanon, or from the Lebanese people's minds, hearts and future.* On March 14th, barely a week after Nasrallah's speech, over 1 million protestors gathered in Beirut, demanding Syria's immediate withdrawal. This would be a landmark event in a series of demonstrations that became known as the *Cedar Revolution*, which ended on April 27th, 2005, with the full withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon. #### A Message to France, April 13th, 2005 In a rare move, Nasrallah's open letter to France was a direct address to a Western audience, carefully moderated with the intention of discouraging Lebanon's old colonial overseer to reconsider the "American section" of Resolution 1559, which called for Hezbollah's disarmament. By this point, Syria had announced that its army would fully withdraw in accordance with the Security Council Resolution by the end of the month, and the upcoming elections in May-June were expected to be a victory for the anti-Syrian March 14th coalition. Nasrallah - who notably did not make a similar address to America - attempts to salvage the situation by arguing for Hezbollah's right to retain their weapons in defiance of the resolution France had helped draft. He insists to the reader that the resistance is Lebanon's only means of deterring Israeli aggression and thus frames Hezbollah's actions over the preceding 5 years - including the cross-border infiltrations - as *"purely defensive"*. "*Ever since the year 2000, when most of the Lebanese occupied territories were liberated, Lebanon's airspace has been the object of very serious violations that are impossible to stop... many Israeli officials still issue threats against Lebanon's security, territorial waters, and infrastructure, which the Lebanese people spent a great deal of money rebuilding. Meanwhile, the resistance has assumed a purely defensive stance across the international border, and has operated within the confines of the Lebanese government's defensive strategy, and in cooperation with the Lebanese army, to repel any potential Israeli attack... The weapons of the resistance are vital for the strategic defence of Lebanon and therefore are not something that it can easily give up, regardless of the pressures and threats brought to bear on it."* #### Speech in Bint Jbeil, May 25th, 2005 A few days before Lebanon was set to held its first parliamentary elections after Syria's withdrawal, Nasrallah addressed a crowd in the southern town of Bint Jbeil, where he had given his victory speech 5 years earlier. With victory expected to go to the coalition of Rafic Hariri's son, Saad Hariri, Hezbollah's biggest concern became the retention of their weapons, which had been severely threatened by a combination of internal pressure and UNSC Resolution 1559. Though Hariri opposed the Resolution's disarmament clause, Nasrallah couldn't help but view the upcoming government, which was notably anti-Syrian and pro-Western with suspicion. In the end, Hezbollah managed to protect their interests by sending 14 MPs to the Lebanese parliament and by joining the cabinet for the first time in their history, albeit under the premiership of staunch Hariri ally, Fouad Siniora. As a testament to Hezbollah's precarious position before the elections, Nasrallah's words go well beyond inflammatory and to the point where he openly threatens anyone who would attempt to disarm the movement. *"... if anyone - listen to me - if anyone tries to disarm the resistance, we will fight him the way the martyrs fought in Karbala, because we know that any action of this kind would be an Israeli action, an Israeli decision, and a move to further Israel's interests. We will consider any hand that tries to seize our weapons as an Israeli hand, and will cut it off."* This speech also became the confirmation of a widely circulated claim that Hezbollah had amassed over 12,000 rockets which had been successfully concealed from Israeli intelligence. Nasrallah would remind listeners that he had no interest in provoking a regional war, despite ongoing cross-border infiltrations. This miscalculation on Hezbollah's part would come to fruition just over a year later. *"We have said on more than one occasion that we do not want to drag the region into a war, and that it is not our policy to provoke a regional confrontation. We want to protect our country, not destroy it; and we want to keep our weapons specifically for that reason... We are the most eager to have peace, stability, and national unity in Lebanon; we do not wish to attack anyone, and never have, and will also not allow anyone else to attack Lebanon."* #### Al Quds Day, Oct 28th, 2005 Al Quds Day is an annual commemorative event held on the last Friday of Ramadan as a reminder to the Islamic world about the importance of liberating Jerusalem. It was originally held in 1979 in Iran, shortly after the revolution and is seen as an opposition to Israel's annual Jerusalem day, which has been celebrated since 1968. In 2005, Nasrallah used his Quds Day speech to address a number of political challenges that had been mounting against Hezbollah and its allies. The first was the release of UN Special Investigator, Detlev Mehlis' report on the assassination of Hariri, which strongly implicated Lebanese and Syrian intelligence. The second was a report from UN official, Terj Roed-Larsen - an instrumental figure in the Oslo Accords - which complained of serious failures in the implementation of Resolution 1559, mainly regarding the disarmament of Hezbollah. Nasrallah, who certainly knew most of his supporters would be unfamiliar with the details of international law and UN investigations, utilises his populist rhetoric to frame these reports in terms of an oppressive, Western-led international order squashing the poor and oppressed people of Lebanon. Despite his tendency to appeal to international law, Nasrallah shows a clear willingness here to openly disregard the Security Council on Hezbollah's armed presence and especially on their use of those arms to claim the Shebaa Farms. In doing so, he appears to betray his own opportunism by claiming that the farms were never originally an issue for Hezbollah and only became absorbed into the movement's advocacy after Israel had withdrawn past the UN-recognised Blue Line. He attributes Lebanon's claim over the farms to Hariri and other figures in the Lebanese government, though he conveniently omits the stance of these politicians towards Hezbollah's disarmament. *"Larsen says that, to begin with, the resistance has no rights to Shebaa farms. He never recognised the legitimacy of the resistance, anyway. I declare from this platform that I never said that the Shebaa Farms were Lebanese; Hezbollah did not say that they were Lebanese either. It was the government of the late martyr Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and those that preceded it and followed it, the current government, and the National Assembly, who said so. On the eve of Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, we in the resistance announced that we are committed to the liberation of any territory that the Lebanese state considers Lebanese, with our blood, our guns and our lives. We never waited for Mr. Larsen or any other, to bestow legitimacy on us."* In contrast to a popularly held opinion that Syria had offered the Shebaa Farms to Lebanon (it is true that Syria's Foreign Minister had claimed the farms were Lebanese, [Assad disagreed](https://newlinesmag.com/first-person/assad-the-shebaa-farms-are-syrian-whatever-hezbollah-claims/) and the [UN still places the land in Syria](https://www.reuters.com/article/world/un-cites-confusion-over-maps-of-shebaa-farms-idUSN30254429/). Nasrallah reminds us that this isn't the case by alluding to Lebanon and Syria's unresolved borders. *"Larsen also raises the issue of the demarcation of the Lebanese-Syrian borders; this is what he wants, and he insists on this demand in spite of the current tension between Lebanon and Syria."* On the assassination of Hariri, Nasrallah sows scepticism over the UN's findings by attributing them to the influence of United States. He argues that *"as far as America is concerned, they have already been convicted, and must be punished without argument, despite the fact that the report says that the investigation is not yet over and requires months, maybe even years, to be completed."* *"To avoid politicising the issue, we called for the formation of a Lebanese-Saudi joint investigation committee and, after that, for an Arab investigation committee within the framework of the Arab League. Instead, an international investigation committee was proposed. We expressed reservations, and said candidly that we feared politicisation, squandering of the truth, and opening of the door for the United States and others to conclude deals or impose conditions that serve their own purpose, at the expense of the martyred Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's blood."* Though he makes the case for Hezbollah to retain their arms on the grounds of defending Lebanon, Nasrallah shows a clear contradiction as he ends his speech on a note about Jerusalem where the meaning of 'resistance' suddenly becomes far more aggressive than defensive. *"Finally, we underline our belief that Jerusalem will return, free, proud, chaste, and purged from Zionist impurities. Our nation has offered hundreds of thousands of martyrs for Jerusalem and great men have died on the road leading to it... On Jerusalem Day, we renew our pledge to Jerusalem, to its people, and to the cause and Imam of Jerusalem; their city will forever remain in our souls, and will continue to be our cause, our battle, and our ultimate objective."* #### Beirut rally, April 2006 In this speech - delivered 11 weeks before Hezbollah's 34 day war with Israel - Nasrallah opens by reiterating his promise to continue abduction operations in order to bargain for the release of Samir Qintar and other prisoners. With President Emile Lahoud's Syran-extended mandate set to expire in 2007, the issue of "National Dialogue" was generally seen as the most pressing. At that point, a round table of Lebanese leaders, including Nasrallah and Nabih Berri, was holding sessions aimed to arrive at a national consensus regarding Palestinian armed groups, the nation's defence (i.e. the status of Hezbollah's weapons) and territorial sovereignty disputes with Syria. On Syria, Nasrallah argues that it is Lebanon's right to *"demand that Syria establish diplomatic relations with \[Lebanon]"*, and that it provides *"written documents proving the Lebanese identity of the Shebaa Farms, and that it agree to the redrawing of our common borders."* On the question of who would succeed Lahoud, Hezbollah had found a new ally in the Maronite General, Michel Aoun, who was seen as a likely candidate for the presidency. However, the pro-Western coalition, consisting of Hariri, Walid Jumblatt and the right-wing Lebanese Forces had made it clear that they would use their majority to stop Aoun from taking the position. Though he reiterated his willingness to engage in dialogue and *"discuss the resistance's weapons with a patriotic mindset and spirit"*, Nasrallah would still stress his complete lack of faith in Lebanon's security without an armed Hezbollah in the south, arguing that *"Lebanon is under threat regardless of whether the Shebaa Farms is an issue or not."* *"How do we defend our country? Will going back to the Armistice Agreement of 1949 protect Lebanon and its people? Are international guarantees, given by Bush, Blair or anyone else, sufficient to protect Lebanon? Let us debate whether Lebanon's security can be guaranteed by military alliances and mutual defence pacts, just like the one Israel has with the United States, which undertook publicly to defend Israel... What and who will protect Lebanon? Its own military power? It would be great if this was possible, but what and who is this military power? Is it the army? How so? Is it the army and the resistance together? How so? If we agree that it is the army and the resistance, we should bear in mind that there are people who are afraid of the resistance. How do we eliminate their fears? The resistance is one-coloured. How do we make it multicoloured? If we approach the negotiations with this spirit, we will arrive at a solution, because we will all be working towards the same objective, which is how to best protect our country and people."* #### Interview with New TV, Aug 27th, 2006 This was Nasrallah's first interview after the 2nd Lebanon war which ended with a ceasefire on August 14th. The IDF was still in the process of withdrawing from the south and Lebanese and Israeli evacuees were gradually returning to their homes. Nasrallah had accepted the deployment of UNIFIL forces and the Lebanese Army in the south but insisted that Hezbollah would remain and not disarm: *"The task of the multinational force under Chapter Seven - a force we rejected and considered to be an occupation force - was not protecting Lebanon against any Israeli aggression, but striking at, disarming, and terminating the resistance."* The 2nd Lebanon war ended with both sides attempting to salvage some form of victory despite immense losses on the Lebanese side and unambiguously failed objectives on the Israeli side. Nasrallah capitalises on the latter by pointing to Israel's key war aim to push Hezbollah out of the south. *"In this war, I discovered that the Israeli is a big liar in all that he says, talks about, and claims, and tells a lot of lies. This is proved by the fact that Peretz, Olmert, Livni and all Israeli officials throughout the past period said and continue to say, 'We will not allow Hezbollah to return to south Lebanon.' Has Hezbollah left south Lebanon in order to say you will not allow it to return? Hezbollah is present north and south of the river. True, you carried out landing operations and reached hilltops here and there, but Hezbollah was still in the border villages. We have not left south Lebanon or the areas south of the Litani River to wait for permission from anybody to return to the areas south of the river."* When discussing the role of the Lebanese Army, Nasrallah's words look like I testimony to Hezbollah's extremely precarious position today as opposed to 2006. With Israeli officials almost [praising](https://www.timesofisrael.com/welcome-to-the-era-of-the-buffer-zone/) the Lebanese army's performance in the south and with Lebanon's President, Joseph Aoun, securing the [release](https://www.timesofisrael.com/senior-israeli-official-says-new-talks-with-lebanon-aimed-at-normalizing-ties/) of 5 Lebanese prisoners from Israeli jails without firing a single shot, it's easy to see how the situation in 2006 looks like a Hezbollah victory in comparison. *"It is not the task of the Lebanese army to disarm the resistance or spy on its weapons or plans. Is it the task of the army to spy on us, raid us, and confiscate things? Never. The issue has been decisively settled, and it is over."* On the Shebaa Farms, Nasrallah succinctly admits that his opinion about international law contrasts with that of the UN and that he believes it to be Hezbollah's right to fight for the territory, even without an official handover from Syria. *"In accordance with international law, and regardless of UN opinion about the Shebaa Farms... it is the responsibility, duty, and right of the resistance to fight and liberate any land the Lebanese state or government considers to be occupied Lebanese land... If you want to get rid of the Shebaa Farms issue in order to get rid of us and our weapons, you can follow another path other than asking the United Nations to recognise the farms as Lebanese, and other than continuing to hold the Syrians responsible for not giving us documents or signatures. The Lebanese government can meet and say that the Shebaa Farms are not Lebanese."* Nasrallah's description of the kidnapping operation that sparked the war provides a clear insight into his military doctrine. First, he clearly acknowledges the difference between Israeli civilians and soldiers. Second, he demonstrates that Hezbollah's kidnapping operations are not spontaneous, or even decided upon lightly, but rather involve months of planning and deliberation by several (he says 15) top officials. *"We were preparing for a clean capture operation. The operation was not decided on the spur of the moment. We prepared for five or six months, and we were waiting for a group. We had set up our ambush, and were waiting. Civilian vehicles used to pass by our ambush, but we left them unharmed because we did not want civilians - although civilians might be military men dressed like civilians. We were waiting for a military vehicle. Two such vehicles came and a clash erupted. We wanted to carry out a clean operation, but the fired dictated otherwise, as a number of enemy soldiers were killed or wounded. We took two prisoners. The Israelis in that area carried out a quick operation in the field. They sent a tank to chase our men. The tank rolled through a field and hit a big mine. It was not actually a mine - they call it nasfiyah, in which there were hundreds of kilograms of explosives. It was there, but had nothing to do with the war or operation. The tank was destroyed, and four soldiers were killed. The situation became difficult and intolerable for them, as they had eight killed, three or four wounded, and two prisoners."* When asked - and after a handful of probing questions from the interviewer - about whether Hezbollah had made a mistake, Nasrallah provides an answer that would become the headline of the interview: *"You ask me now: If there was even a 1 percent chance that the July 11 capturing operation would have led to a war like the one that happened, would you have done it? I would say no, absolutely not, for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military, and political reasons. I would not agree to it, and neither would Hezbollah, the prisoners in Israeli prisons, nor the families of the prisoners. This is absolute. What happened is not an issue of a reaction to a capturing operation."* In his defence of Hezbollah retaining their weapons, Nasrallah poses a rhetorical question to the interviewer that would come back on him only two years later. *"... this party, from the very first day, clearly declared that its weapons were pointed at this enemy \[Israel]. My weapons are to defend the country, and all Lebanese... Have we ever threatened the Lebanese? Have we ever used these weapons to wage a battle inside Lebanon? Have we ever used our weapons as a source of strength in municipal or parliamentary elections, or to impose certain shares or conditions? Never..."