Lebanon’s descent into chaos, lurching from crisis to crisis, has been well documented. In the last year alone, a catastrophic explosion ripped through Beirut, three people were designated interim prime minister, and the country has teetered on the verge of economic collapse. A large, if not the main, reason for the incessant turmoil has been Iran’s efforts to undermine Lebanese sovereignty through its terrorist proxy Hezbollah, Lebanon’s strongest military and arguably most potent political force.
This much is undeniable. So one would think that the media would mention Hezbollah and Iran in reports about Lebanon falling to pieces. Right?
Wrong.
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Hezbollah: Fuelling Lebanon’s Collapse
Even before the Beirut blast, Lebanon’s currency had devalued so much that “the dollar value of the national minimum wage [fell] from around $450 per month to $80,” wrote Ali Hashem in Foreign Policy Magazine in July 2020. With banks empty of dollars, and the capital experiencing routine power outages, countless businesses shut down. This process has since accelerated, with food items costing five times more in 2021 than they did just two years ago, according to ReliefWeb, an information service run by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Since its inception, Hezbollah (“The Party of God”) has acted as Iran’s hand in Lebanon, embedding itself into all elements of society so effectively that it is often described as a “state-within-a-state.” It has grown into an organization represented in the Lebanese parliament (and whose allies hold coveted ministerial positions) that also has a radio and a satellite TV station, provides social services and is capable of the large-scale deployment of fighters beyond Lebanon’s borders, most notably in Syria. It is widely seen as corrupt, lining its own pockets at the expense of the Lebanese people, is involved the local drugs trade, and has fueled the country’s economic collapse. Hezbollah was also behind the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri, thereby establishing itself, beyond dispute, as a destabilizing influence.
On 4 August 2020, a massive explosion ripped through the Beirut port, causing at least 218 deaths, 7,500 injuries, and $15 billion in property damage. It left an estimated 300,000 people homeless and was so immense that it was felt in neighboring Israel and even Cyprus.
It soon emerged that the explosion was caused by a fire that ignited a large quantity of ammonium nitrate that had been improperly stored at the port. Hezbollah reportedly had significant influence in the running of the facility and multiple think tanks and analysts swiftly linked the terror organization to the tragedy. The International Institute for Counter-Terrorism’s Dr. Ely Karmon noted that Hezbollah was initially shocked into silence and did not officially respond until some 72 hours after the incident.
Karmon also revealed that “the person who actually manages the port of Beirut, is Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah security chief and Nasrallah’s brother-in-law, married to [Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan] Nasrallah’s sister.”
Hezbollah, which according to the US State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, Nathan Sales, has maintained weapons caches in Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, with “significant ammonium nitrate caches” discovered or destroyed in France, Greece, and Italy. Israeli media reports from 2019 claimed that the Mossad had alerted intelligence agencies across Europe to Hezbollah’s ammonium nitrate caches, which were purportedly intended for use in attacks in Cyprus, London and elsewhere.
Despite there being no smoking gun clearly implicating Hezbollah in the blast, stone-throwing demonstrators that took to the streets of Beirut in the days thereafter erected symbolic nooses in Martyrs’ Square from which they hanged cardboard cutouts of Lebanese President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, and Nasrallah. Video footage showed a number of protesters furiously chanting, “Hezbollah is a terror organization.”
In the aftermath of the blast, AFP quoted Fares-al-Halabi, an activist in the anti-government protest movement that broke out in 2019, who said that “in the hours that followed the explosion, many blamed Hezbollah.”
Given the prominence of Hezbollah in the story, the anger of Lebanese citizens directed at the terror organization, and the long-term ramifications of a massive blast that killed hundreds, wounded thousands, and left literally hundreds of thousands of Lebanese homeless, it is instructive to consider how Western media outlets have framed their coverage of the disintegration of Lebanon over the last year.
How Did Media Forget About Hezbollah?
A big data analysis by HonestReporting found that since August 4, 2020, there were 670 reports in The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, LA Times, MSNBC, NBC News, ABC News, Associated Press, Reuters, BBC and The Huffington Post that used either the terms “crisis” or “collapse” in reports about “Lebanon.” However, just 166 of these articles made any reference to Hezbollah.
In other words, in the past year just over 75% of all articles related to Lebanon’s descent towards becoming failed state published by these outlets neglected to mention the terror group, much less inform readers that Hezbollah is held accountable by many in Lebanon for the country’s descent into chaos, and believed to be bear responsibility for the horrendous blast last year, the profound effects of which are still being felt.
Indeed, when simply searching these media outlets for articles on “Lebanon” alone, only 317 out of a total of 1,570 referred to the terrorist group.
That’s just 20%.
The net effect is that Hezbollah has been largely excised from the media narrative and, in turn, essentially absolved of blame in the public conversation about the deterioration of Lebanon.
And if Hezbollah, which is physically located in the country, infrequently merits a mention, then it’s hardly a surprise that Iran even more rarely is referred to in media reports about Lebanon’s malaise.
Iran’s destabilizing influence in the region is hardly a secret, so it’s a mystery why journalists are reticent to draw attention to this well-documented fact. From funding the Houthi rebels in Yemen who have fired rockets into Saudi Arabia; to propping up the murderous Assad regime in Syria; to backing Shi’ite militias such as Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq in Iraq, which have increasingly become integrated into Iraq’s military and political institutions; to attacking Israeli ships and launching cyberattacks on Israel’s water supply — Iran’s malign activities throughout the Middle East have sowed mass destruction.
But perhaps nowhere is Iranian influence more pronounced than in Lebanon, with Hezbollah dictating policy by systematically taking advantage of weaknesses in the Lebanese state system, and gaining leverage over the military and other public institutions.
Nevertheless, HonestReporting’s research shows that “Iran” was mentioned by the above-mentioned media outlets in just 179 articles out of the total of 1,570 about “Lebanon.”
That’s just 11%.
Many of the ones that did mention the Islamic Republic, such as this Washington Post piece by Ishaan Tharoor published on August 3, 2021, do nothing to explain the depth of the danger posed by Iran’s increasing entrenchment in the country.
Three days after the blast last year, Lebanon’s former justice minister Ashrar Rifi publicly called for additional protection for the person in charge of probing the disaster for fear of being targeted by Hezbollah. In an interview with the Al-Arabiya network, Rifi, who had also previously headed the Internal Security Forces, also openly described Hezbollah as a “terror group” that routinely “murders” its rivals.
What is clear to high-ranking officials in Lebanon should be made clear to people around the world.
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