Third of Esquire profiles

Tom's 16th piece for Esquire is a brief bio of Hassan Nasrallah, Leader of Hezbollah. Here's the lead:

Most terrorist movements go one of two ways: They either fall apart after the top leaders are captured or killed, or they are successfully drawn into the political process and ultimately assimilated by the ruling political forces. Hezbollah's rise within Lebanon increasingly looks like the latter, except it is Lebanon's splintered political system that is being assimilated into Hezbollah's radical Islamic agenda rather than the other way around. Now in control of close to a dozen ministries and capable of forcing the installation of its preferred president (a feat Hezbollah pulled off this summer), this Shiite militia--backed extensively by Iran--has become Lebanon's de facto ruling party.