Could the collapse of Hezbollah touch off a domino effect in the Middle East? Iran’s primary proxy and the world’s most powerful non-state organization didn’t just keep Lebanon under Tehran’s thumb, after all. Hassan Nasrallah played a key role in propping up Iranian puppet Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
And now Syrians are beginning to cheer their “disarray,” as the New York Times puts it:
Even as most of the Middle East is overtaken by outrage at weeks of destructive Israeli strikes against Hezbollah and its leaders, some communities are celebrating the disarray of the powerful militia that persecuted them.
Nowhere is that sentiment as strong as in parts of Syria, where Hezbollah has played a key role in helping President Bashar al-Assad wage a brutal crackdown on opponents of his family’s decades-long rule, and where news of Israeli strikes on Hezbollah neighborhoods prompted singing…