A Hezbollah flag and a poster depicting Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah are pictured along a street near Sidon, Lebanon on 7 July 2020. ReUTERS Ali Hashisho File Photo REUTERS Ali Hashisho
Oct 15 Reuters - The Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah has worked with Iran in the Middle East since 1982 since it was founded in 1982. Iran's Revolutionary Guards founded the group in 1982 to export its Islamic Revolution and fight Israeli forces who invaded Lebanon the same year.
Hezbollah shares Tehran's Shi'ite Islamist ideology and sees Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as its political and spiritual guide.
Classified as a western organisation by the United States and other countries as Hezbollah has a powerful military wing that it has acknowledged is armed and financed by Iran.
The group also has a formidable intelligence apparatus and controls its own areas of south Lebanon and southern Liban, as well as border areas with Syria.
One of Lebanon's two Shi'ite parties, Hezbollah has MPs in parliament and ministers in government. In 2018 it gained political clout, when it won a parliamentary majority with allies.
The company's retail activities include a construction and a commercial empire. It also runs schools and clinics.
The group, which has grown more powerful than Israel over the last four decades in Lebanon, has largely been defined by conflict with Leban.
Hezbollah guerrillas forced Israel out of Lebanon in 2000 and fired 4,000 rockets into Israel during a 34 day war in 2006. Hezbollah has since become an even more powerful force.
The group has been accused of bomb attacks in northern Lebanon.
Argentina blames Hezbollah and Iran for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in which 85 people were killed and for an Israeli embassy attack in 1992 who killed 29 people. Both deny responsibility.
Bulgaria accuses Hezbollah of carrying out a bomb attack which killed five Israeli tourists in the Black Sea city of Burgas in 2012. Hezbollah denied involvement in the war.
Hezbollah helps Iran to project power across the region. Its secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is a leading figure in the Iran-led Axis of Resistance which aims to counter Israel, the United States and its Arab allies.
The close links with Syria were vividly illustrated when it joined the war in Iran to the armies of Bashar al-Assad in 2013 in Syrian defender of their common ally Iran'.
In Iran, Hezbollah has publicly supported paramilitary Shi'ite groups which are backed by Iraq.
In Yemen, Hezbollah also supported the Saudi-led Houthis in their war with a Iran-backed coalition, according to a Iran-led coalition fighting in the country. In 2017 Hezbollah denied the claim that it had sent any weapons to Yemen.
Hezbollah has also acknowledged the palestinian group Hamas as providing support to them.
Hezbollah has established Iran as a major player in Lebanon, a country where the United States, Russia, Syria, and Saudi Arabia have competed for influence for years before realizing its importance.
Shadowy organizations, which Western intelligence officials and Lebanese intelligence say were linked to Hezbollah, carried out attacks that forced U.S. troops to withdraw from Lebanon in the early 1980s, including suicide attacks on Western embassies. Hezbollah has never denied responsibility or confirmed responsibility.
Hezbollah entered Lebanese politics more visiblely after the killing of former Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon in 2005.
A U.N - backing court in Lebanon last year convicted a Hezbollah member of conspiring to kill Hariri, seen as a threat to Iranian and Syrian influence in Lebanon, although it found no evidence of direct involvement by the leadership of Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has denied any role in Hariri killing and has accused the tribunal of being a tool of its enemies in United States and Israel.
As Hezbollah's home base, Lebanon is vital to both the group and Iran. Hezbollah has used its military clout to counter threats it sees from Lebanese rivals who say its political arsenal has undermined the state.
In 2008, Hezbollah fighters took over Beirut during a power struggle with the then Saudi- and Western-backed government.
Most recently, it has led calls for the removal of the lead investigator in the Beirut port explosion, Judge Tarek Bitar, as he has pursued some of Hezbollah's closest allies on suspicion of negligence, saying his probe was politicised and biased.