Matthew Levitt is a counter-terrorism expert, and he is also an investigative journalist of the highest caliber. His in-depth study of Hezbollah’s origins, structure, criminal and terrorist activities, Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, first published in 2013, was widely acclaimed as a deeply researched and meticulously detailed examination of one of the most dangerous militant organizations on the planet.
To the reprinted edition published in 2015, Levitt added a 14-page afterword to bring his research into Hezbollah’s activities up to date. He had a series of new major episodes to describe, including Hezbollah’s involvement in supporting President Bashar Assad in the civil war then raging in Syria; its backing of the Houthis in Yemen; revelations from the trial in Cyprus of a notorious Hezbollah undercover agent; newly emerging reports of a lost opportunity in 2008 to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC Quds Force, who was in fact killed in 2020; and the mysterious death of Argentina’s special prosecutor, then investigating the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
A revised edition of a seminal text on Hezbollah
Much water has flowed under the bridge since 2015, and now, in 2024, with outright war between Hezbollah and Israel a real possibility, a revised edition of Levitt’s seminal work is to be welcomed. In this edition of Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, he provides a new 10-page epilogue in which he deals at length with major changes in Hezbollah’s status and role over the past few years, and its real – even if generally unknown – involvement in preparing the ground for the bloodthirsty Hamas attack on Israel of Oct. 7, 2023.
“Looking back,” he writes, ”the road to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks appears to have started in earnest after the May 2021 rocket war between Hamas and Israel. At the time, the editor of a Lebanese newspaper affiliated with Hezbollah reported that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran coordinated the fighting from a ‘joint war room’ in Beirut.”
In the wake of that war, Levitt reports, Hezbollah and the Quds Force met with Hamas officials to put into effect a long-held notional Hamas plot to storm across the Gaza border and attack Israeli communities. Levitt quotes Western and Middle Eastern intelligence officials claiming that tactical planning for the Hamas massacre began at least a year before the attack, “with key support from Iranian allies” – that is, Hezbollah.
Levitt has identified a major shift in Hezbollah’s behavior over the past few years. He has the evidence to show that Hezbollah has assumed a new role in recent times as the de facto managing partner for Iran’s network of proxies.
He maintains that Hezbollah has emerged as a powerful regional actor, still seeking to destroy Israel and undermine Western influence in the region, but now partnering with Iran’s IRGC Quds Force to reshape the region in Iran’s favor.
