For 15 years between 1975 and 1990, Lebanon, a small but extremely diverse country in the Eastern Mediterranean, collapsed into one of the most violent civil wars of the entire 20th-century. This complex conflict would see the direct foreign interventions of both Syria and Israel who each invaded Lebanon and occupied different parts of the country for decades, while the conflict also saw the original rise to power of Hezbollah—a militant organization backed by Iran that continues to remain the most powerful force in Lebanon to this day.