Though it has since been downplayed, the establishment of an Islamic republic in Lebanon was a central component of Hezbollah’s original political platform, released in 1985.1 The fight against “Western Imperialism” and the continued conflict with Israel also feature prominently in that document. Hezbollah is ideologically committed to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolutionary doctrine of Velayat-e faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist), creating tension between its commitment to the decrees of Iranian clerics, its commitment to the Lebanese state, and its commitment to the sectarian Shi’a community in Lebanon and its fellow Shi’ites abroad. As a result, its objectives include the sometimes competing goals of establishing an Islamic republic in Lebanon; promoting the standing of Shi’a communities worldwide; undermining Arab states with Shi’a minorities in an effort to export the Iranian Shi’a revolution; eliminating the State of Israel; challenging “Western imperialism;” and serving as the long arm of Iran in coordination with the Qods Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The consequences of these competing ideological drivers was clear after Hezbollah dragged both Israel and Lebanon into a war neither wanted by crossing the UN-demarcated Israel-Lebanon border and killing three Israeli soldiers while kidnapping two more in July 2006.