Based on fieldwork in Iran and Lebanon, this paper examines the export of Iran’s development organization, Construction Jihad (Jihād al-Bināʾ, hereafter JB), to Lebanon in cooperation with Hizbullah. The case of JB demonstrates that Hizbullah did not exclusively exist as a client or extension of Iran, but also sought autonomy from and clashed with it. Although JB received Iranian training and funding during its establishment in 1988, Hizbullah eventually gained control of its central council, fully localized its personnel, and diversified its finances toward foreign donations and indigenous contributions. In response, Iran established another development organization in Lebanon that paralleled and rivaled JB, and created tensions with Hizbullah. Apart from shedding light on Iran and Hizbullah’s cooperative, yet tense relationship, JB offers insight into the merits and shortcomings of Hizbullah’s holistic approach to development that encompassed its religious and material dimensions. JB’s mosques, seminaries, shrines, and congregation halls allowed Hizbullah to indoctrinate constituents and symbolically transform the physical landscape into an “Islamic sphere” and “resistance society” (Deeb 2006, Harb 2010). JB’s disproportionate focus on religion prevented it from fully addressing its beneficiaries’ socioeconomic needs and bred exclusivity despite Hizbullah’s efforts to project a nonsectarian image. JB materially improved living conditions by supplying water and electricity, establishing schools and hospitals, providing agricultural assistance and vocational training, and renovating and rebuilding infrastructure, housing, and businesses that had been damaged and destroyed by the civil war and Israeli attacks. In a clientelistic fashion, JB enabled Hizbullah to attract committed recruits, popular support, and electoral votes, and reinforced its status as the Shiʿi community’s largest employer and service provider. While granting this community political empowerment and economic security, Hizbullah subjected itself to bottom-up pressure in the form of rising expectations, demands, disappointment, and criticism. This outcome constituted the byproduct of a development model that was more top-down and distributive than participatory and sustainable as well as a constituency that valued performance and accountability alongside religiosity and resistance.