Why is Hezbollah fighting in Syria? Why did such a popular resistance group decide to risk its reputation around the Arab world and open a new front in order to back Syria's President Bashar al-Assad? Assad, who himself does not know if he can keep his chair for another year or not. What made Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who is famous for his stances that repeatedly warned of the Fitna — the Arabic word for sectarian confrontation — meddle in the Syrian mud?

Hezbollah has its own answers for all these questions, but prefers not to discuss them in the media. According to circles close to the organization, Hezbollah's involvement in Syria wasn't a choice, but rather an obligation. Those sources say that in the very beginning of the Syrian uprising, the group's charismatic leader Hassan Nasrallah "tried to initiate a solution." He, and other factions such as Hamas, opened a hotline with the Syrian leadership to make sure "Syria as a nation, people, and a political choice could survive the crisis." This was the first level of involvement that saw Nasrallah "mediating with Assad to release political prisoners, announce reforms, and change the mentality of the Mukhabarat, or intelligence members." One of our sources even revealed that in August 2011, Iranian foreign ministry official Hussein Sheikh al-Islam visited Damascus and handed the president a list of "125 remarks on the way the Syrian regime was dealing with the crisis, [which] were all negative remarks."

At that time it was already obvious that armed militiamen were crossing the borders from Lebanon into Syria, a fact proved by eyewitness accounts and journalists covering the border separating both countries. "Hezbollah wanted this crisis to end; to him Syria as a whole means the backyard of the resistance," said our source. He added, "Hezbollah knew the regime was outdated, and that people needed a change, especially after the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, though they thought the change should be made within the regime, not by overthrowing it."

"Bashar al-Assad's regime helped the resistance when everyone was plotting conspiracies against it. In the 2006 war he opened his borders for weapons, and they even gave Hezbollah some strategic missiles." This is the rhetoric Hezbollah used and continues to use to defend its stance and position on the side of Assad regime. "Hezbollah believes that the whole war on Bashar al-Assad is because of his backing of the resistance—Hezbollah and Hamas in specific," said our source, who accuses Hamas of betraying those who fed and hosted them. "They didn't even think of taking a position in the middle; they went to the extreme, leaving Damascus to Qatar, and sending their members to Syria to fight the Assad regime with the weapons he, Iran, and Hezbollah smuggled to Gaza." Hamas continues to deny these claims, saying that they have no members fighting in Syria, though it was revealed in December 2012 that a senior Hamas trainer Mohammed Konayta was killed in Idlib while taking part in an attack on a military base.

According to the source, Hezbollah decided to intervene militarily in the wake of three incidents. "The first was a full scale attack by Syrian rebels on Shiite villages on the borders with Lebanon, forcing people there to flee to Lebanon. The second was the attack on Sayyida Zaynab neighborhood in Damascus that embraces the tomb of Prophet Mohammed's granddaughter Zaynab, and the third an attack by Syrian rebels on a Hezbollah armed convoy that was on its way to Lebanon."