Moreover, today's "Resistance" message and interest is demonstrably shifting away from Palestine. Nasrallah's rhetoric, once laden with anti-Israel and anti-West vitriol, has shifted since the group's involvement in Syria. Its message is less focused on Palestinian resistance, and has taken on a thicker sectarian gloss and Nasrallah's speeches generally focus on new targets in the region: Saudi Arabia and the seeming numberless "Takfiri terrorists" across the region who need to be eradicated at any price.
The still intensifying Shia-Sunni sectarianism in Syria and across the Middle East has also severely eroded Iranian support for Palestine, although some of its leadership still publically pay political lip service to the "Resistance" especially during events like the June 21 Al Quds Day, which was initiated by Ayatollah Khomeini following the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
There are similarities between what Hezbollah is experiencing from Lebanon's increasingly restive Shia population and the mounting pressures on Tehran from its own population. The likely aftermath of Israel's coming 6th war on Lebanon and the destruction of thousands of Shia family homes in Lebanon will intensive both.
As is increasingly widely known, women who are the majority of students in Iran's universities must abide by a strict dress code: a headscarf, long trousers and a coat that covers the hips. Those who flout the rules risk the wrath of the morality police. Women's rights are severely restricted in Iran, to the point where women are even forbidden from watching men's sports in stadiums. That ban includes Iran's national obsession -- volleyball. Human Rights Watch has documented many instances of serious discrimination with respect to marriage, divorce, and child custody. Because the government wants Iran's population to grow, it's moving to ban voluntary medical procedures for women who wish to avoid becoming pregnant. Many Iranian women are being jailed for publicly speaking out in favor of equal rights for women, while more are attending women only parks. Males over five years of age, even their own children, are forbidden by the government to enter. Women typically remove their headscarves and coats and dance and sing, sometimes donning shorts showing their legs and tight short sleeved tee-shirts. This rebellion is spreading fast and along with other human rights issues threatens the regime.
A fainter version of the women's rebellion in Iran is taking hold among some Shia women in Hezbollah areas of Lebanon where women enjoy more rights than they do in Iran. Whatever the military impact of Israel's coming 6th War on Hezbollah, it will face a women's liberation movement challenging the Party of God's authority.
The difficulties faced by Iran's regime to maintain the support of the Iranian people stem from its failure to provide economic opportunities and individual freedoms. Hezbollah faces a similar economics issue, but despite recent security crackdowns in Hezbollah areas of Lebanon its repression of freedoms is so far not among Shia residents' main complaints. Both Iran and Hezbollah are facing the growing secularization of their populations, both of which increasingly reject religious dogma based on Karbala and notions of 'Martyrdom" as a ticket to heaven guaranteed by Seyyeda Zeinab, the Prophet Mohammad's granddaughter. They want contact with Europe and the West generally as well as freedom of expression, the press and the curtailing of both the enforcement of Islamic law and government interference in civilian lives. In addition, both Iran and Hezbollah are experiencing a growing gap between regime institutions and the religious establishment on one side and the younger generation on the other. A majority of young people are moving away from Iran's 1979 Khomeini led revolution and Hezbollah's "Resistance" rhetoric and adopting a more modern life style that is accelerating the erosion of the dominance of Hezbollah and Iran's clerics.
Among issues currently being discussed among Lebanon's and Syria's Palestinians is the fact that Hezbollah has lost more "Resistance" fighters in Syria since 2011 than in all its battles with Israel combined since the early 1980's. Hezbollah has also killed more Palestinians in Syria since 2011 than Israel has since the 1948 Nakba and many Palestinian families in Syria have been victims of Hezbollah 'starve or surrender' sieges.
Why many in the Shia community are rejecting Hezbollah's "Resistance brand"
A greater price that Hezbollah will likely pay from Israel's coming 6th Israeli war on Lebanon than its loss of Palestinian confidence are the myriad existential threats emanating from within its own Shia community.
Among Hezbollah fighters and supporters, an oft expressed opinion is that: such individuals want jobs or loans to start businesses in Lebanon not to fight in Syria for Hezbollah which has been assigned by Iran's Ali Khameni to become Iran's regional military arm and template-trainer for more than a dozen Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), from half a dozen countries armed, indoctrinated and funded by Iran as part of its 'Land Bridge-Shia Crescent' in several countries and to function as Iran's "Foreign Legion."
In Lebanon's Shia neighborhoods specifically, in this observer's neighborhood of Dahiyeh, there is mushrooming objection to sending young men to die in Syria for nothing.
Shia neighborhoods in Lebanon are also increasingly objecting as their sons faded "Martyr posters" cover walls in Hezbollah areas with some demonstrations reported. Families are telling their menfolk not to go to Syria, insisting that it is a death sentence, but rather let Iran send its youth to die.
Given Hezbollah's escalating military involvement in Syria, Iraq and Yemen the families of deceased fighters and Hezbollah employees are being asked to accept delays and reductions in their benefits until the fighting ends.
Shia women in Hezbollah neighborhoods increasingly express feelings of being abused and exploited as their loved ones, sons and husbands die in Syria and they must fend for themselves financially, while sometimes being heavily pressured by Hezbollah officials to engage in fixed, often short term marriages known as "mut'a" (Hezbollah accepts Arabic dictionaries definition of mut'a as temporary enjoyment, pleasure, delight') which many Shia women consider forced 'prostitution,'
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