On March 11, 2016 the Arab League, for the first time in its history, publicly declared another Arab group, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, a terrorist organization.

Nearly all members of the pan-Arab body supported the decision, except for Lebanon and Iraq, which expressed “reservations,” the 22-member bloc said in a statement read out at a news conference by Bahraini diplomat Wahid Mubarak Sayar.

“The resolution of the Arab League’s council [of foreign ministers] includes the designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist group,” the statement said.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards helped created the Shiite Hezbollah (Party of God) in the 1980s during Lebanon’’s civil war that lasted 15 years from 1975 to 1990 and resulted in over 100.000 deaths.

Largely funded by Iran, it is the only heavily armed party not to have put down its weapons after the end of Lebanon’s civil war in1990.

The first ever Arab League condemnation of terrorism by another Arab group, might signal the start of a new spirit of self-examination and self-evaluation that could help lead all the leaders of the near east to a greater amount of honesty and responsibility.