When resistance was simple

A few months ago, in a conversation with a Hezbollah official I said I could imagine Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the party’s leader, reminiscing about the good old days in the 1990s. Back then Hezbollah was engaged in resistance on a daily basis against the Israeli occupation, achieving ever greater feats on the battlefield, earning a consensus among Lebanese for its martial activities, and protected by Syria’s dominance of Lebanon. Other than a small but potent parliamentary presence, Hezbollah did not have to bother with the tangled and treacherous complexities of Lebanese politics but could concentrate on what it does best: resisting Israel. But look at Hezbollah today, I continued. To defend its “resistance priority” it has had to build complicated alliances with potentially untrustworthy and difficult allies, and has become the dominant influence in an unpopular and near stagnant government; it faces growing Sunni resentment; it is in the crosshairs