This sum draws on thirteen years of Lebanese life. Between 2006 and 2019, Emmanuel Hiriart lived in Beirut. The producer provides “information for radio stations”, reports and documentaries for Arte, France 24, TV5 Monde, the BBC, Al Jazeera… “I also worked for more than a year editing General Aoun’s TV, OTV.” The channel was born in 2007. Michel Aoun will only become the country’s president in 2016, but he already has the ambition. OTV is a tool of influence and an empty editorial shell. “I had to create documentaries. “It allowed me to travel the country.”
Narrative and science
Aoun allied himself with Hezbollah. The Frenchman has access to the Shiite organization. “Through reports, I saw the distortion between the organization’s discourse, what the European media were selling and above all the perception by Lebanese society.” He knows the villages of South Lebanon, “where Hezbollah is not perceived as the “supplement of Iran but as the liberator from Israeli occupation, including by Christians.” An uncomfortable consideration from a West where most countries classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. “We must get rid of our biases and look beyond,” thinks Emmanuel Hiriart.
“I am not making an ode to Hezbollah. I’m trying to bring a part of the story that never happens to us.”
So he exposes the “narrative” of Hezbollah through the voice of a senior military leader and one of its founders, met clandestinely in September 2025 in Beirut. “These are things you never hear. I am not making an ode to Hezbollah. I try to bring part of the story that does not reach us.” He brings together the science of eminent researchers, military, intelligence officers: the vice-president of the Institute for Research and Studies Mediterranean Middle East Agnès Levallois, the academic Aurélie Daher, the officer and historian Michel Goya, the writer Guillaume Ancel, the geographer Bernard Hourcade…
“Contre-société”
The podcast reflects the anchoring of Hezbollah in Lebanese society. “It’s a popular entity.” It thrives as a “nationalist as well as an Islamist” group. Emmanuel Hiriart analyzes the inflections of his doctrine. Knows that Hezbollah “transcends Shiism”, welcomes former communists, allies itself with other religious movements. It dissects the complexity of interlocking communities “living together” in Lebanon. And among them, this “Party of God” which carries out its social works, manages hospitals, schools. The author depicts a country without a state or so weak. “Hezbollah represents 35% of the population. It declares itself ready to lead, when the Lebanese state no longer knows how to take care of its citizens. It is already a counter-society.
“We cannot make a reasonable strategy without thinking of the enemy as a political entity, equal to us.”
Emmanuel Hiriart recalls the birth of Hezbollah, against the Israeli invasion of South Lebanon in 1978. A part of the population gives it the status of “resistance”. Iran is equipping its military branch, which represents the real Lebanese defense force alongside a regular army in rags. Did the United States execute its leader, Hassan Nasrallah? “Another, more radical, was named a quarter of an hour later.” And the paramilitary group knows how to wage asymmetric warfare in front of military powers disconcerted by guerrilla techniques: destroying a territory is not destroying the enemy.
Emmanuel Hiriart weighs “every word” of his podcast. It takes some tightrope walking talent and a certain sense of nuance to invite “not to caricature Hezbollah”. He strives to have “a realistic vision” of it. “It is obligatory since you cannot completely eradicate the enemy and the reasons for its existence. We cannot make a reasonable strategy without thinking of the enemy as a political entity, equal to us. Or the war will never end.”
