The capture of Aleppo by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia and Hezbollah, has given a boost to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Shiite movement's deepening involvement in the Syrian war since 2013 had led to a narrowed margin of maneuver at home, as political and social pressures increased on it. The battle for and victory in Aleppo Dec. 22 has reinforced Hezbollah’s “winning” narrative vis-a-vis its political opponents and among its popular base and will potentially help justify future battles the organization might wage in Syria.

“Hezbollah’s capture of Aleppo shows that its fight alongside the regime of Assad was the right thing to do,” Abdallah Younes, a Shiite resident of the Bekaa Valley, told Al-Monitor. Hezbollah’s decision to send thousands of fighters to support Assad resulted in heavy fallout in the Bekaa and elsewhere in Lebanon, for which the Lebanese criticized the organization. The fertile Bekaa, on the border with Syria in eastern Lebanon, has been on the front line of the Syrian war since 2013. Syrian rebels have repeatedly shelled the region, which has also been the target of several terror attacks. In 2014, Jabhat al-Nusra carried out suicide attacks in the area. Hezbollah and the Lebanese army have also clashed with Islamic State (IS) fighters in the mountainous Qalamoun area, east of the Bekaa. IS was behind several attacks in the Bekaa, including one on the Christian village of Qaa in June 2016.

The intense fighting in the Syrian war has pitted a mostly Sunni insurgency against pro-Assad regime forces bolstered by Hezbollah and other Shiite forces in the form or troops from Iran and Popular Mobilization Units fighters from Iraq. Syrian government forces and their allies have also received Russian air coverage since Sept. 30, 2015. The conflict is today increasingly seen as a sectarian proxy war between two axes: one pro-Shiite (consisting of Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and Russia) and the other Sunni dominated (including Gulf countries and Turkey). Nonetheless, Ankara changed its position after reaching a deal in September with Russia that allowed it to launch attacks on its Syrian Kurdish nemeses under the banner of Operation Euphrates Shield.

Meanwhile on the Lebanese political scene, Hezbollah has been backed by the Christian Free Patriotic Movement, led by Michel Aoun, and the Shiite Amal movement and pitted against a coalition of the Sunni Future Movement, headed by Saad Hariri, Christian Lebanese Forces and the Druze Progressive Party. A clear power shift on the battlefield in favor of the Iranian, Shiite axis in Syria in the weeks prior to the fall of Aleppo translated in Lebanon into the Oct. 31 election of Hezbollah’s preferred presidential candidate, Aoun, and the formation of a government headed by Hariri as prime minister.