A new report by Arab news outlet Al-Khanadeq has confirmed what many have suspected: the October 17th movement was an attempt to destabilize the Lebanese government. The protest group suddenly appeared on the scene in 2019, when they took to the streets demanding the government disarm Hezbollah, one of Israel's most powerful foes in the... Read More

The permanent man of the hour, Mr. Hassan Nasrallah, opened his speech by saying that he has a throat infection that had come upon him this past Wednesday, and that he was not suffering from Covid, as some concerned supporters had inquired after seeing him cough much during his last Wednesday's speech. And this was... Read More

In a stunning interview to the Beirut-based al Mayadeen network, Hezbollah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah has outlined how Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani – assassinated by an American drone strike at Baghdad airport a litle over a year ago – was instrumental in convincing Russia to help Syria militarily in its war against Salafi-jihadis. Here is the... Read More

Every Israeli prime minister – not least Benjamin Netanyahu – understands that a military entanglement with Hezbollah, Lebanon’s armed Shia movement on Israel’s northern border, is a dangerous wager, especially during an election campaign. It was Shimon Peres who lost to Netanyahu in 1996, weeks after the former prime minister had incensed Israel’s Palestinian minority... Read More

There are rare moments in history, when even the most determined enemies can suddenly recognize the futility of battle. Sometimes, just for a moment or two. Sometimes, for longer. Such moments of sanity may save thousands, even millions human lives. And, such moments are not expressions of weakness or cowardice; on the contrary; they are... Read More

That's how the story "Israel bombs Syria as envoy presses peace talks bid" was displayed courtesy of my Yahoo! home page. Huh?  What's with the quotation marks?  In the body of the article, you get: Pretty direct.  I don't think Yahoo! needs to hide behind the air quotes.  I guess the simple phrase "Israel bombs... Read More

The "Friends of Syria" are appalled. Their much vaunted "rebel held" stronghold of Qusayr is gone. This BBC headline sums it all up: "Syria conflict: US condemns siege of Qusayr." For White House spokesman Jay Carney, "pro-government forces", to win, needed help from by their "partners in tyranny" - Hezbollah and Iran. Right: so the... Read More

It's no secret that a great deal of the alleged success of the George W Bush administration's "surge" - or at least the way it's being spun in the US - is related to a diminished flow of Iranian-made weapons towards militias in Iraq. The weapons anyway were being sold by Iranian and or Gulf... Read More

BEIRUT - "You are in heaven and those who killed you will go to hell," reads a poster in a middle-class, predominantly Sunni neighborhood in north Beirut. Those depicted in heaven include Saddam Hussein, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri (killed in a car bombing in 2005), and Sheik Ahmed Yassin... Read More

A special group at the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, very similar to the group that tracked the activity of al-Qaeda through the 1990s, has been working on the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah over the past three years.In the wake of the failed Israeli incursion into Lebanon last summer, the White House asked these Hezbollah analysts... Read More

Hussain Rahhal, Hezbollah's press liaison, has issued a written statement: This is in reference to an interview purporting to be of Hezbollah's leader,Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah, by a Turkish collective in Beirut. It was published in Evrensel, a socialist Turkish daily, on August 12 and 13, causing some stir in the Turkish press. It was translated... Read More

On August 17 we published a very interesting interview with Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. A CounterPunch reader had found it on the Marxmail list, moderated by Louis Proyect, and passed it along to us. The interview was translated from Turkish, in which language it had appeared in the Turkish socialist daily, Evrensel,... Read More

CIUDAD DEL ESTE, at the triple border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay - This is the way savage globalization ends - at least 20,000 shops, stalls, tin shacks and mini-malls crammed into 15 blocks selling everything under the (tropical) sun. There's Little Asia - thousands of Taiwanese, mainland Chinese and Koreans. But above all there... Read More