Hizbullah is an Iran-backed Shia militia that has dominated Lebanon for four decades. It is Iran's most powerful foreign proxy, given the task of deterring Israel and projecting power beyond the theocracy's borders. Weapons are central to the group's identity. Reduced to a normal political party, it would lose its claim to exceptionalism. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, long embedded in the group's military structures, now exercises direct authority; whatever autonomy the group once enjoyed died with its long-standing leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
In September 2024 rescue workers pulled the body of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's long-standing leader, from beneath 90 feet of rubble in Beirut's southern suburbs. It remains unclear whether he was killed by the blunt force of Israeli air strikes or, as some Lebanese and Iranian officials insist, suffocated in his underground bunker.
Naim Qassem, Hizbullah's leader since Nasrallah's death, commands far less authority than his predecessor. Nasrallah's speeches once stopped even Christians in northern Lebanon in their tracks; when Qassem holds forth, Beirut's barber shops do not bother to turn on their televisions. The group's relationship with Iran has grown stronger since Nasrallah was killed. Israel has warned Lebanon indirectly that if Hizbullah joins any fighting against Iran, it will target civilian infrastructure, including Beirut airport, which it did not do during the 2024 war.
Israel's attacks may have reduced Hizbullah's arsenal by as much as two-thirds, but it still boasts a solid stock of long-range missiles and tens of thousands of fighters—enough to menace Israel and anyone that tries seriously to disarm it.
Hizbullah has lost control of Beirut airport, once vital for moving people, weapons and money between Lebanon and Iran. The fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria further disrupted routes that had allowed the group to replenish its arsenal. Israeli air strikes on Hizbullah targets continue even after the November 2024 ceasefire. In November 2025 Haytham Tabtabai, the commander responsible for rearmament, was killed in Beirut. The group's remaining leaders are ageing, infirm and hiding; senior figures avoid meetings, fearful that any gathering will draw Israeli fire.
Hizbullah's sources of cash have reduced sharply. The abduction of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela disrupted a lucrative stream of revenue from organised crime and narcotics. Under Maduro, Caracas became a hub for illicit Iranian oil exports, a transit point for Colombian cocaine and a haven for money-laundering. After his removal, America cracked down and this line of funding dried up.
Iran is still paying Hizbullah fighters' salaries, but it is no longer willing—or able—to underwrite reconstruction or subsidise welfare. The priority for the Iranian regime is maintaining Hizbullah's ability to menace Israel, not restoring southern Lebanon. In the south, where the group once prided itself on rebuilding faster than the state, little has been repaired since the 2024 war. Villages lie in ruins. A Christian woman from a border town was given a cheque by Hizbullah, only for it to bounce when she tried to cash it at al-Qard al-Hassan, the financial institution at the centre of the group's banking network.
Hizbullah has long claimed to be both a political party and an armed "resistance" unchecked by the state. It has MPs in Beirut and fighters in the south. For years the ambiguity worked in its favour, but Lebanon's leaders are increasingly willing to stand up to it. Lebanon is, by its own constitutional logic, a "consensual democracy" in which every major sect and political bloc must agree to decisions of great magnitude—yet Hizbullah did not secure anyone's consent before dragging the country into war.
Hizbullah has a history of political assassinations. Hardliners have publicly likened Joseph Aoun to Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president assassinated four years after his visit to Jerusalem in 1977. As army chief, Aoun avoided confronting the militia; as president, he has described weapons outside state control as "a burden" and vowed to disarm the group. The taboo around discussing Hizbullah's disarmament has evaporated; television panel shows now debate it openly.
Hizbullah's conditions for disarming—the "liberation of Lebanon", the release of its prisoners, the completion of reconstruction and the agreement of a national defence strategy—are such that in practice disarmament seems unlikely. If Iran's proxies are part of any deal with America, Hizbullah's principal patron could bargain away its ability to rearm. Open conflict with the Lebanese armed forces would hasten its decline. Decisions about weapons, strategy and escalation now come from Tehran.
Hizbullah is returning to the methods through which it first built power: decentralised cells, tunnels, smuggling routes and guerrilla warfare. Intelligence officials say it is studying Hamas's experience in Gaza closely. The group has largely ceded territory south of the Litani river, allowing the Lebanese army to deploy thousands of troops along the border with Israel. Elsewhere it is consolidating. Since late 2025 it has been recovering weapons abandoned in Syria. Old smuggling paths once used by shepherds and jihadists are again busy. A network of tunnels in the Bekaa valley has taken on new importance.
If Iran's leaders judge their regime to be facing an existential threat, Hizbullah's domestic political concerns will count for little. The group's military wing is controlled by the IRGC, and its political leaders espouse the ideology of the Islamic Republic. Hizbullah has so far failed to rebuild any of the areas in southern Lebanon damaged in the past two years. Re-entering the fray on Iran's behalf would be deeply unpopular in Lebanon.
On March 2nd 2026 Nawaf Salam, Lebanon's prime minister, declared "all Hizbullah's security and military activities" to be illegal. The government has proposed ejecting the Iranian ambassador (many Iranian "diplomats" in Lebanon are in fact IRGC members) and closing Al-Qard Al-Hassan, Hizbullah's financial network. Enforcement remains weak: armed Hizbullah supporters have been arrested and freed on bail of just $21.
Since the November 2024 ceasefire, hundreds of Iranian operatives have taken direct control of Hizbullah's ground operations, restocking weapons caches and decentralising command structures. Hizbullah will not disarm as long as the regime in Iran survives.
Iran and Hizbullah learned over decades how a weaker actor could create what Iranian authorities call "deterrence equations": tacit red lines enforced by tit-for-tat attacks. Hizbullah would respond to Israeli attacks (and vice versa) in kind, with the same number of rockets and casualties—often even at the same time of day. The long-running conflict in Lebanon and northern Israel was "Iran's strategic laboratory", according to Daniel Sobelman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Reciprocal ceasefire violations enabled Hizbullah to restrain Israel, a much stronger adversary, without triggering full-scale war. During the third Gulf war, Iran applied this approach to its conflict with America, promising to match attacks on civilian infrastructure with retaliation on energy infrastructure and desalination plants in the Gulf, which helped blunt America's ability to escalate.
During the third Gulf war, Israel warned that Hizbullah was a "reluctant proxy" that might nonetheless strike at Israel on Iran's behalf.
Hizbullah resumed lobbing missiles and drones at Israel almost a month after the third Gulf war began, fighting on behalf of Iran and for its own shrinking constituency. In response, the IDF launched air strikes on targets all over Lebanon and sent troops into the south, though it stopped short of a full-scale invasion. The combined air and ground attacks killed more than 1,000 people and displaced around 1m Lebanese civilians. The more civilians are killed and the more serious the threat of occupation appears, the more likely it becomes that Lebanese—especially Shias—will rally to Hizbullah's cause, making it harder for the government to follow through on its promises to disarm the group.
When America, Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire around April 8th 2026, Netanyahu stressed that Lebanon was not included. On the afternoon after the ceasefire was announced, the Israeli air force attacked around 100 targets in Lebanon; more than 1,000 people were killed and injured, overwhelming hospitals and causing a shortage of blood. Iran warned it would resume attacks on Israel if it continued to strike Hizbullah. Iran (and Pakistan) insisted Lebanon was included in the ceasefire; Israel disagreed.
All the simple programs have been written.