Hezbollah wages on-air war against U.S.

Wearing a bright blue veil carefully wrapped around her head, the TV host smirked as she listened to her guest's comments about the lack of U.S. strategies in the Middle East.

"The U.S. administration has no policies," U.S. analyst and military expert Mark Perry said recently on the only English-language talk show on Hezbollah's TV station, Al Manar. "It is not that it has bad intentions, but [that it] has no intentions."

The 33-year-old presenter, Zaynab Assafar, thumbed through her notes. In fluent and elegant English she quickly asked about the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, the future of peace talks and the prospects of a strike against Iran.

For the last year and a half, Assafar has been interviewing people such as Western intellectuals critical of Zionism, a former U.S. ambassador to the region and Irish peace activists. Her weekly program, "In Their Eyes," is part of Al Manar's attempt to broaden its global reach after Hezbollah's war with Israel in the summer of 2006.

"We started after the victory of 2006. We wanted a wider scope of people to discuss the regional implications and repercussions of this tremendous happening," Assafar said. "Our message has not changed. We are reacting to Israeli activities against us and exposing the consequences of the U.S. administration's full support to the Israeli entity."

Assafar's program is just one in a hodgepodge of talk shows, news bulletins and promotional clips that daily lambaste U.S. tactics in the region, including the military presence in Iraq and the nuclear standoff with Iran.

"Al Manar is very powerful in manipulating public opinion by using all the modern tools and techniques of propaganda," said Lawrence Pintak, director of the Center for Electronic Journalism at American University in Cairo. "As a mouthpiece for a political movement, it is one of the most effective TVs in the Middle East."

Al Manar, which calls itself the "Station of the Resistance," began broadcasting in 1989. The Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah regards it as part of the "psychological warfare" against Israel. But in addition to news and political programs, the channel broadcasts health and family programs, entertainment shows, educational programs for children and video clips glorifying the group's "martyrs."