Hezbollah shows strain of Syria war

Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah said in a TV address that Syria's friends would not let it 'fall in the hands of America'. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Ian Black writes: The 30-year-old 'axis of resistance' based on Iran is still alive and supporting Bashar al-Assad

"Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah, sounds more troubled than defiant when he talks about the war in Syria these days. This week he publicly lambasted Saudi Arabia – backing the rebels who are fighting Bashar al-Assad - for blocking a political solution to the crisis at the proposed Geneva II peace conference.

But Hezbollah's decision to throw its full military weight behind the Syrian president has also been a highly significant factor in the conflict, peaking with decisive fighting at Qusair in the spring. Thousands of its men have been deployed in Damascus, Deraa, Homs and Aleppo. Casualty figures are estimated at around 200 killed. The organization is described as "fatigued and over-stretched." Earlier this month some 1200 Shia fighters are said to have been withdrawn. Blowback has come to Lebanon too, with car bombs in Beirut's Shia southern suburbs. Hezbollah needs to avoid clashes provoked by Lebanese Sunnis which would force it to pull back from Syria and fight at home.

Now there has been another setback, with Israeli planes reportedly targeting Russian-made missiles intended for Hezbollah in the Syrian port of Latakia – the sixth raid in the last few months. The lesson is that the war in Syria, now in its third bloody year, makes it much easier for the Israelis to strike at Hezbollah without provoking a response. Nasrallah and Assad already have quite enough on their plates.

Politically, Hezbollah probably had little choice but to rally to defend the much-vaunted "axis of resistance" it forms along with Iran and Syria. The cost, though, is proving painfully high for an organisation whose raison d'etre was always fighting Israel but which is now busy killing fellow Arabs in a neighbouring country – and in a viciously sectarian atmosphere to boot.

Nasrallah's language about a political solution in Syria echoes the current line from Damascus and Tehran. Hopes may be growing for some kind of rapprochement between Iran, the US and the west, focused on the ever-contentious nuclear issue - to the chagrin of the Saudis and their conservative Arab allies. But there is still no sign that Iran's support for Assad – probably far more significant than assistance to the rebels from the Gulf states - is fading. Recent remarkable film footage broadcast by the BBC showed Iranian Revolutionary Guards not only training Assad's men but fighting on the ground in Syria – in the face of repeated denials from Tehran.

Nor does Iran's intimate relationship with Hezbollah show any sign of changing. The group wasby a Lebanese writer as "Iran's most successful strategic investment outside its borders." It had "defended Iran's security in the Arab-Israeli conflict and secured its position on the shore of the Mediterranean and within the Levant." Israel says Iran has ensured Hezbollah has been re-supplied with missiles since the 2006 Lebanon war. Hezbollah's patrons are the Islamic Republic's hardline supreme leader and the Revolutionary Guards, not the emollient President Hassan Rouhani.

It is also a very long-standing relationship. In a new book on Hezbollah's "global footprint," the US terrorism expert and former Treasury official Matthew Levitt traces links dating back to the devastating bombing of the US marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983. According to court testimony, a few weeks earlier the US had intercepted a message from the Iranian intelligence ministry in Tehran. It instructed Iran's ambassador in Damascus, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, to contact Hussein al-Musawi, the leader of Islamic Amal (a precursor to Hezbollah) and to direct him to "take spectacular action" against the Americans. The warning did not prevent the attack, which killed 241 US and 58 French personnel.

Thirty years is an age in international politics and much has changed in the Middle East since then. But as Syria's crisis rages on with no end in sight, Damascus, Tehran and Hezbollah are still very much on the same page - and on the same side.