Vladimir Putin, for example, has developed a reputation as a master strategist by successfully meddling in the U.S. elections. But it’s also quite reasonable to ask whether irrevocably poisoning relations with two generations of Americans in the process was actually quite dumb, strategically speaking.

Washington and its allies often view Iran, Hezbollah’s sponsors, in a similar way—which is to say we often give them more credit for being master strategists than they deserve. Tehran is so patient, America’s Gulf Arab partners lament. Well, yes, but its slow, steady strategy to arm, train, and equip sectarian Shia militias across the Middle East is a recipe for sowing instability in its own neighborhood. The Iranian regime, which can be tactically very clever, is creating states in which it will always have powerful proxies and partners, but will never have the kind of peace in which the vast (and growing) arsenals of the region are not pointed at Tehran.

So, despite the mystique that surrounds Hezbollah—especially since the 34-day war in the summer of 2006 in which it defeated Israel—don’t underestimate its capacity to do something equally dumb.

Hezbollah was the only major militia allowed to retain its weapons upon the conclusion of the Lebanese Civil War, so it should be no surprise that it has grown to dominate Lebanese politics in the years since. Repeatedly, Hezbollah has claimed it is importing advanced rockets and missiles into Lebanon—and is reportedly now constructing such weapons in Lebanon itself—to defend Lebanon from Israel.

Israel, after all, has carried out offensive actions in Lebanese territory since the late 1960s and launched full-fledged invasions in both 1978 and 1982. Following the 1982 invasion, Israeli soldiers did not fully withdraw until 2000. But withdraw they did, and Hezbollah’s genius has been to convince the Lebanese people of the necessity of its arms despite that withdrawal.

After its humiliating defeat of Israel in 2006, and despite the steadily improving capabilities of the Lebanese military, Hezbollah convinced many Lebanese that only it could truly defend Lebanon from Israel. Never mind the fact that it was a wrong-headed Hezbollah raid into Israeli territory that kicked off the fighting. Similarly, a broad cross-section of Lebanon’s population—including much of its Christian community—buys into Hezbollah’s argument that Hezbollah and its arms also protect Lebanon from the crazed Sunni extremists it has been fighting in Syria and who threaten Lebanon. And there’s some truth to this! Hezbollah is indeed fighting crazed Sunni extremists in Syria.

But Hezbollah has hardly been a dispassionate referee amid the sectarian civil strife that has infected the Middle East since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2008, Hezbollah, sensing its domestic power in Lebanon waning, turned its arms against other Lebanese in a spasm of street fighting that further inflamed the country’s frustrated Sunni communities. And in Syria’s civil war, Hezbollah has been a key actor in a regime-led strategy that first systematically eliminated any non-extremist elements in the Syrian opposition, leaving the people of Syria and the international community with an ugly binary choice between the regime on the one hand and groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State on the other.