Don't Underestimate Nasrallah

If people were under the impression that Nasrallah and Hezbollah were in a disorganized panic over the upcoming indictments for the assassination of Rafik Hariri--they were badly mistaken.

Qifa Nabki liveblogged a key speech Nasrallah gave yesterday writes that Nasrallah has successfully taken control of the narrative:

Here we have Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of a conservative religious-political party and a militia stronger than the Lebanese army that is about to be accused by the United Nations of masterminding the assassination of a Sunni prime minister, and he sounds like the most reasonable, rational, straightforward politician in Lebanon. Note that I am not agreeing with the content of what he said (which was, let’s face it, just another shade of demagoguery like everyone else’s talking points), but simply pointing out the obvious: Hizbullah would be in a vastly different position in Lebanon today were it not for the leadership of Hasan Nasrallah. No one else would be capable of reconciling the manifold contradictions in Hizbullah’s projected identity and framing their program in as capacious and catholic a manner as Nasrallah. To understate his role is to misunderstand the rise of Hizbullah completely, in my opinion.

Read the whole thing.

The indictment has been badly mishandled almost from the beginning, and Hezbollah seems well-prepared to exploit those mistakes.

Technorati Tag: Nasrallah and Hezbollah and Hariri.