Hezbollah's Domestic Lebanese Critics Increasingly Speaking Out Against It

Hezbollah's problems keep mounting up, as a member of the Lebanese parliament from the Christian Lebanese Forces party made a speech on Sunday declaring that “Hezbollah has built tunnels and barriers under the watchful eyes of Lebanon’s official agencies. It is the state’s responsibility to tell Hezbollah—enough, your policies, your strategy, the axis of (resistance) across arenas, and alignment with Iran are bringing disaster upon Lebanon.”

This open defiance of Hezbollah shows, among other things, that it's many domestic opponents within Lebanon are less afraid to speak out against them than has been the case in the past.

Samir Geagea, the leader of the CLF party, has made several statements against Hezbollah in the recent past. Last week, a quote from him appeared in the news portal Al Arabiya, which is owned by the Saudi royal family, in which he said that "If the Lebanese army had been on the border, Israel would not have attacked Lebanon."

Prior to that, he told the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that “The state’s absence in favor of the Hezbollah mini-state, which was sucking the capabilities of the state, is no longer acceptable. We’ve seen where Hezbollah’s decisions on war and peace have taken us.”

He also blamed Iran and Hezbollah for many of the country's problems, saying that since Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in early September the “decision-making has fallen into the hands of Iran and what’s left of Hezbollah fighters, led by Iranian officers.”