Chapter five focuses on the leadership of armed nonstate actors in the MENA, with an emphasis on the foreign policy conceptualizations of leaders. The chapter starts by accounting for the genesis of ANSAs in the region, and their emergence and increasing significance for MENA politics is stressed. The authors also give the psycho-biographies of the top executive leaders of ANSAs: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of ISIS, Abdullah Öcalan of PKK, Salih Muslim of PYD, and Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah. Lastly, the chapter discusses the operational code results of the studied ANSA leaders and elaborates on their implications for MENA and world politics. The discussion focuses on what kind of leadership ANSAs produce and what it means for states that are trying to contain or negotiate with them. The chapter also addresses the question of what these results mean in terms of FPA’s actor-specific approach as opposed to IR theories’ actor-general explanations of world politics

In the Second Lebanon War the effectiveness of Israeli air operations at the operational level was minimal, with success limited to a subset of targets for which there was good intelligence and proved to be easy to find from the air, such as Hezbollah’s medium-range rocket launchers. However, Hezbollah’s rocket campaign against Israel, the IAF’s partial response to this challenge, and Israel’s unwillingness to end this military struggle without defeating Hezbollah developed into an attrition air campaign. In the short term it appears both Israel and Hezbollah achieved some of their political goals in the war – a mixed outcome in a war of limited political aims. Yet the cumulative damage to Hezbollah from Israeli air strikes ultimately generated significant, long-lasting effects. Although in this asymmetric conflict air power proved ineffective in stopping the war, it was effective in the long run by imposing costs that deterred further conflict.

The growing use of drones is discussed in detail in this chapter. The chapter shows that their intensive use by both state and non-state actors is largely due to the fact that they provide a significant enhancement in aerial awareness at a relatively low cost and low risk. In the Middle East and North Africa, armed drones have been deployed in the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, and other theaters. The roots of Iran’s drone program go back to the 1980–8 war with Iraq. Since the early 1980s, Iran has developed strong and diversified drone capabilities. Its arsenal today includes a broad and sophisticated range of non-weaponized surveillance and armed drones.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Iran was a victim of a foreign power (Soviet Union) using ethnic groups (Kurds and Azeris) as proxies in efforts to destabilize the country. Ironically, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Shah used the same tactic against Iran’s regional adversaries by cultivating ties with the Kurds in Iraq and the Shia communities of Lebanon. After the 1979 revolution, supporting proxies has become a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic’s security doctrine and its regional policy. Indeed, the republic’s network of proxies is an essential part of Tehran’s asymmetric warfare strategy and has been extensively used for both offensive and defensive purposes.

After 444 days in captivity, the Iranians finally release the hostages in Iran on the same day Ronald Reagan is inaugurated president – a final insult to the hated Jimmy Carter. Despite this initial positive step, the 1980s turn out to be a low-point in the relationship. Hoping to capitalize on the chaos of the revolution and regain oil-rich provinces ceded to the Shah a decade earlier, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invades Iran and sparks an eight-year war of attrition at tremendous cost to both sides. Incensed at the lackluster response from the West over the invasion and the use of chemical weapons, Iran further isolated itself from the US and sought alternative means of promoting its interests, chief among them the spread of revolution through the region. Iranian support for Shia militant groups, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon, in turn outraged Reagan and his team, as Americans became key targets for kidnapping and terrorist attacks. Despite the mutual enmity, the two countries maintained some forms of communication, however ineffective. The greatest consequence of this, however, was the Iran-Contra Affair, which nearly brought down the Reagan White House.

This chapter questions the urban/rural distinction, given that in times of conflict and demographic volatility, borders between urban and rural are diminished and events in the countryside shape those of the city and vice versa. Accordingly, it considers the impact of Turkish security forces’ counterinsurgency strategy of mass forced displacement not only on rural areas but also how it reconfigured Kurdish urban centres. It outlines the implementation of the forced evacuation of potentially millions of rural Kurds in order to deprive the PKK of its local support networks. The chapter shows the emotional trauma and the violence of the experiences, which led to the relocation of PKK support from the countryside to the cities. It also addresses the disaggregated strategies of state repression, particularly the so-called deep state that operated outside of any form of democratic accountability. The chapter also covers the state’s relationship with an Islamist movement, Hezbollah, used to target Kurdish intellectuals and politicians and to analyses how the PKK mobilised in Kurdish cities, focusing in particular on Serhildans (Uprisings), Newroz celebrations and guerrilla funerals.

This chapter demonstrates that jihadist rebels with more transformative goals imitate the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) governance using the case of Hezbollah in Lebanon. When Hezbollah first formed, it defined its goals as revolutionary and imitated the CCP’s governance, building many of the same institutions as the CCP, despite Hezbollah leaders’ familiarity with more ideologically proximate models for political organization. Hezbollah, however, changed the content of the CCP’s governance institutions to match its jihadist ideology. Even today, Hezbollah leaders and members compare the organization to the CCP or leftist rebel groups that imitated the CCP and note that governance is a strategy for revolutionary change with its origins in the Chinese Civil War. The chapter further underscores that it is more transformative goals, and not ideologies, that determine governance strategies.

Chapter 15 examines the rise of Ehud Olmert as prime minister and primary decision-maker after Ariel Sharon fell into coma. The chapter focuses on the defining event of Ehud Olmert’s first months in office, namely, the Israel-Hezbollah 2006 Lebanon War. The chapter contributes to the literature by providing a detailed examination of the decision-making process that led to the war and its conduct. The chapter demonstrates that Israel embarked on a botched war of choice and provides a comprehensive analysis of why the IDF performed poorly in the conflict against Hezbollah. Finally, it offers the first account of how the outcome of the 2006 Lebanon War significantly weakened the domestic support in Israel for its unilateralist foreign policy posture and for the leading Israeli troika during the war: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defence Minister Amir Peretz, and IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.

Chapter 4 examines Saudi and Syrian threat perceptions during the 2006 Lebanon War. The Saudi Kingdom, portraying itself as the primary supporter of the Arab cause against Israel, blamed and condemned Hezbollah for instigating the conflict. The chapter examines the question of why a non-state actor with limited capabilities, located far from the Saudi borders came to be perceived as a threat. Syria, a regime oppressing Islamist movements at the domestic level, supported Hezbollah, within the security calculus which perceived Israel as the ultimate threat. Whereas Hezbollah constituted a source of identity instability for the Saudi Kingdom and, hence, endangered its ontological security, Israel’s military supremacy constituted the primary source of danger to the physical security of the Syrian regime. In this situation, the alliance with Hezbollah became crucial for the Syrian regime, whose leaders capitalised on Hezbollah’s popularity by including some Islamic elements in the regime identity narratives. The chapter argues that this variation is related to the fluidity of identity of Saudi and Syrian regimes and their policy options in facing material sources of threats.