The Syrian crisis and Hezbollah

"What made Hezbollah strong and respected was that its constituency transcended sectarian, and even religious and ideological boundaries. Hezbollah found support among Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, nationalists, leftists and even in political movements in the West... As of May 25, 2013, Hezbollah has become a local actor only supported by the Shiite population, acting on behalf of Iran.

If one replaced all occurrences of “Baath dictatorship,” “al-Assad” or “the regime” in any text the Syrian rebels expressed themselves, with “Pahlavi dictatorship” or “Shah” and read this text in some demonstration in Iran in 1978, no one would be the wiser. Or, if one replaced “USA” with “Russia” in any statement released during the Iranian revolution and used this in the Syrian crisis context today, no one would know the difference. Similarly, if one replaced “Hezbollah” with “Syrian Opposition” and “Israel” with “Syria” in any statement issued by Israel in 2006, it could be easily believed that it was as a statement issued by Hasan Nasrallah, today."