Peloni: How far the mighty Hezbollah has strayed to be calling Saudi Arabia for a lifeline. Indeed, their desperation is perhaps as obvious today as their vulnerability was demonstrated a year ago when their pagers, cell phones and lamps all rang “Boom”. While Hezbollah remains an important threat which still requires its neutralization, it has failed to demonstrate the competency to merit the reputation which it previously held. The fact that they are today calling for support from a former mortal enemy, Saudi Arabia of all nations, demonstrates their own recognition that they lack the capabilities to easily survive what they are facing. To be clear, unlike Fitzgerald, while I still have no confidence in the American initiative to have the Hezbollah dependent LAF subdue their Hezbollah masters, Hezbollah will be made to part with their arms one way or another.
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Hezbollah has been battered by Israel militarily over the last year. Its top leaders — Hassan Nasrallah and his successor, Hashem Safiedinne — have both been assassinated by Israel. The IDF has managed through airstrikes to destroy between 80% and 90% of the 150,000 rockets and missiles that Hezbollah held in its arsenal. Mossad’s “exploding pagers” caper led to nearly 4,000 Hezbollah members being seriously wounded, in most cases so severely as not to be able to resume their roles as combatants. And in Lebanon itself, both President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam are determined to pressure Hezbollah to give up its weapons, so that the Lebanese National Army will be the only armed force in the country.
Now Hezbollah has made overtures to Saudi Arabia, hoping to bury the hatchet with the Sunni Arab state that Shi’a Iran has long regarded as an arch-enemy. Since the Sunnis and Shi’a have been at each other’s throats since the seventh century, any such rapprochement will be a tall order.
More on the leader of Hezbollah’s plea can be found here: “Hezbollah chief calls on Saudi Arabia to turn ‘new page, open dialogue with the group,” Reuters, September 19, 2025:
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem called on Saudi Arabia to turn “a new page” with the Iran-backed group and set aside past disputes to create a unified front against Israel, following years of hostility that strained Riyadh’s ties with Lebanon.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states designated Shi’ite Hezbollah a terrorist organization in 2016. In recent months, Riyadh has joined Washington and Hezbollah’s rivals within Lebanon in pressuring the Lebanese government to disarm the group, which was badly weakened by last year’s war with Israel.
The Saudis are not about to grant Naim Qassem’s request, made out of desperation, for the kingdom to join Hezbollah in a “united front” against Israel. The Saudis know that Israel has no designs on their country. But Shi’a Iran would like to become the leader of the Muslim world, and Hezbollah is Iran’s most important ally. In Yemen, it supports the Shi’a Houthis who have been fighting the Sunni national government; the Saudis in the past gave not only money and weapons to the Yemeni Sunnis, but sent their own troops and planes to fight the Houthis. In the civil war, the Saudis supported he Sunni rebels who were fighting Bashar Assad, a member of the Alawite sect that is considered to be a branch of Shi’a Islam. Shi’a Iran supported Assad to the hilt in his attempt to crush the Sunni rebels in Syria. The Sunni state of Saudi Arabia provided extensive support to the rebels in the Syrian civil war, supplying them with large quantities of weapons, funding, and training. Driven primarily by its rivalry with Iran and its desire to topple the Assad regime, Saudi Arabia was one of the largest foreign backers of the Syrian opposition. And while Iran supplied weapons and money, it was Hezbollah, not Iran, that supplied combatants to support Assad.
In Lebanon, the Saudis have been adamantly opposed to Hezbollah since its inception. It was a group of Hezbollah agents, led by Salim Ayyash, who were convicted of the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Hariri had close ties to the Saudi royal family, and the Saudi rulers were enraged at Hezbollah for killing him.
In a televised address on Friday, Qassem said that regional powers should see Israel, not Hezbollah, as the main threat to the Middle East and proposed “mending relations” with Riyadh.
“We assure you that the arms of the resistance (Hezbollah) are pointed at the Israeli enemy, not Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, or any other place or entity in the world,” Qassem said.
So Hezbollah’s assistance to Bashir Assad in the Syrian civil war had nothing to do with the terror group’s desire to crush his Sunni opponents, who were backed by Saudi Arabia, but was actually “pointed at the Israeli enemy”? And Hezbollah’s military dominance of Lebanon, and its attacks on Lebanese Sunnis, was really “pointed at the Israeli enemy”? Does this clown really expect the Saudis to believe what he says?
He said dialog would “freeze the disagreements of the past, at least in this exceptional phase, so that we can confront Israel and curb it,” and said that pressuring Hezbollah “is a net gain for Israel.”‘
Pressuring Hezbollah is also “a net gain” for the people of Lebanon, not just Sunnis and Christians, but also some anti-Hezbollah Shia, who have endured the terror group’s ruthless dominance for the last two decades.
Hezbollah’s then-secretary general Hassan Nasrallah [in 2021] called Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman a “terrorist” and repeatedly criticized Saudi Arabia’s role in Yemen.
But recent months have seen seismic political shifts in the region, with Israel pummeling Hezbollah last year and killing Nasrallah, and rebels toppling the group’s Syrian ally, Bashar al-Assad, in December.
Those “seismic shifts” have only made Hezbollah much weaker. Israel has destroyed almost all — 80-90% — of its arsenal of weapons. Its “exploding pagers” have caused 4,000 Hezbollah combatants to be severely wounded. And now, the Sunni victory in the Syrian civil war has cut off Iran’s former land route that allowed it to deliver weapons to Hezbollah.
Many Sunnis regard the Shia as “Rafidite dogs” Rafidite means “those who reject,” that is, the first three caliphs after Muhammad, whom the Shi’ites consider illegitimate. In Sunni eyes, this makes Shi’a practically Infidels, and in the opinion of some Sunni imams, the Shi’a are even “worse” than other Infidels. For nearly 1400 years, Sunnis have been persecuting Shi’a. The Shia Houthis in Yemen have seized territory from the Sunni national government; Iran backs the Houthis with weapons and money while Saudi Arabia has not just sent weapons to the Sunni majority in Yemen to fight the Houthis, but for a time also sent its own planes and troops as well.
Hezbollah is now on the ropes. The Lebanese government, strengthened by deliveries of American aid earlier this year, feels it is now strong enough to take on a greatly-weakened Hezbollah. It’s understandable that Naim Qassem, the current Hezbollah leader, would make a desperate appeal for Saudi Arabia to end its hostility and come to its aid. But he’s whistling in the dark. In Riyadh, they are delighted that their arch-enemy Hezbollah is about to meet its comeuppance at the hands of fellow Lebanese.
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