Nasrallah made four mistakes in his Ashura speech. He, once again, overstepped his boundaries in the context of the Lebanese system of sectarian compromise by taking an entire religious community to task when no one asked for his counsel. He addressed, therefore implicitly criticized, Christians in general, forgetting that his beef was allegedly only with a minority that once sided with Israel. He sounded threatening. And he blithely ignored the fact that when he told the Christians to be Lebanese above all, he had no credibility to do so inasmuch as he and his organization come across as being Iranian above all.

The Ashoura speech once again served to remind us that Nasrallah has no intention of “Lebanonizing” Hezbollah; rather he is seeking to mold Lebanon in Hezbollah ’s image. It won’t work, and the secretary general, for the umpteenth time, has overestimated his capacities. Someone should have reminded him that Ashura is, above all, a commemoration of self-sacrifice, in other words a day to embrace humility. The Daily Star