Arab media outlets are waging a war of words against Hezbollah. The Iran-backed terror group has committed the group to battling on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime until it defeats the largely Sunni rebels who have been seeking the regime’s overthrow. The group was instrumental in the Syrian army’s successful campaign to wrest control of the critically strategic city of Qusayr from opposition forces.

Those activities have not gone unnoticed:

“It’s a cancer that’s eating away at an already fragile region and exploits the religious civil war in heinous ways in order to help the criminal regime,” charged an editorial in Asharq Al-Awsat, an independent London based publication, typical of the tone adopted toward the Shiite terrorist group after it played a pivotal role in crushing the anti-Assad opposition in Qusair.

Al-Hayat, a dominant pan-Arab daily, echoed the sentiment and all but openly blamed Hezbollah for risking a regional Sunni-Shiite war:

Abdullah Iskandar, writing for Al-Hayat, focuses on Hezbollah’s relations with the Arab Gulf states. He claims that Hezbollah has miscalculated concerning the strong relationship binding the Gulf States to the United States. “By ignoring its current image in Arab public opinion generally and in the Gulf specifically, Hezbollah will have pushed the deteriorating Sunni-Shiite relations to the point of no return. The tendency of both sides to demonize the other on religious grounds needs no more that the current sectarian animosity to cause the great explosion,” writes Iskandar.

Observers now worry that Hezbollah’s fighting in Syria will rebound into Lebanon and drag the country into the Syrian conflict.

Clashes erupted late last week in the Lebanese city of Tripoli between Salafists and pro-Hezbollah fighters, killing one and wounding several others.

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