On the sidelines of a special consultative meeting held at his residence last week, the leader of the Lebanese Forces (LF) party, Samir Geagea, posed the question, “Why did Hezbollah fighters manage to make a great difference in the balance of military power, when the party announced its involvement in the fighting in Syria, as evidenced by what happened in the battle of Qusair?”

He went on with his analysis saying that the Syrian regime’s army has more than 450,000 soldiers, 150,000 of whom — according to his information — have been fighting on fronts and facing rebels across most governorates. Geagea also said that the Syrian army has elite unites with high training, experience and good equipment in its ranks. Thus, Hezbollah’s intervention should not be effective to this extent in the course of military confrontations, especially since the party’s troops do not exceed 5,000 soldiers, according to his information.

Given the fact that he led the LF militia during the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s until the early 1990s, Geagea enjoys a lot of political savvy. The Christian leader did not rule out the idea that the participation of the Lebanese Shiite party in the Syrian battles was merely a cover to hide the military actions of the greater Iranian party, which bears the same name and espouses the same ideology in Iran. It should be noted that one cannot distinguish between the Lebanese and Iranian Hezbollah fighters — except when they speak — as the former speak Arabic and the latter, Farsi.

It is clear that the Christian leader was further emphasizing his conviction that Hezbollah is an Iranian party. He accused Hezbollah of prioritizing its broad regional alliances and goals over the best interests of Lebanon and its people. This accusation is at the same time hurled at Hezbollah’s main Lebanese ally, the Free Patriotic Movement, and its leader MP Michel Aoun, Geagea’s historic nemesis.