Iran’s efforts to rebuild Hezbollah and the shape they take

For more than five decades, Hezbollah was the most successful model of Iran’s vision of exporting its Shiite Muslim revolution to other countries in the region. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, responsible for Tehran’s regional paramilitary and terror activities, invested hundreds of millions of dollars to transform Hezbollah into the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor and enable it to become Lebanon’s political hegemon. 

Today, after Hezbollah has suffered a series of blows, this crown jewel of Iran's regional proxy network finds itself at a historical low point. Hassan Nasrallah, its charismatic leader for the past 30 years, was assassinated; its military leadership was decapitated; the vast majority of its advanced military arms were destroyed; and it is cut off from its critical supply routes from Syria due to the fall of the Assad regime. 

Consequently, Hezbollah desperately needs Iran’s assistance to restore its political and military power. Tehran is already actively involved in supplying the critical components needed for Hezbollah’s recovery: money, weapons, and political legitimacy. 

Through the combination of those three elements, Hezbollah has run an elaborate scheme in Lebanon, enabling it over the years to reach the status of “a state within a state.” As a result, Hezbollah enjoyed total freedom to advance Iran’s interest of having a loyal and heavily armed paramilitary force along Israel’s northern border, while openly violating Lebanon’s sovereignty and preventing any domestic attempts to restrain its activities. 

Hezbollah used money to bribe corrupt state officials, procure political allies, and supply the social needs of the Shiite population. The group used weapons to engage in calculated acts of political violence aimed to silence and intimidate domestic rivals. And the political legitimacy the organization enjoyed enabled it to fend off criticism of its actions, depicting such criticism as politically motivated attacks against the Shiite population as a whole. 

Currently, Iran apparently recognizes that money is what Hezbollah needs most. The group’s ability to recruit political allies, pay its accomplices, and maintain the support of Lebanese Shiites demands huge amounts of cash.   

Reports indicating Hezbollah is unable to compensate its Shiite followers for the damages and losses they have suffered due to the organization’s use of civilian cover for its terror activities reflect the depth of Hezbollah’s fiscal crisis. 

 New information, most probably leaked by Israeli or American intelligence agencies, sheds light on an active Iranian campaign to smuggle tens of millions of dollars in cash into Lebanon through Beirut International Airport. Tehran uses official diplomatic couriers arriving directly from Tehran or covert businessmen flying into Lebanon from Turkey.

Simultaneously, Iran is also helping Hezbollah politically in order to boost the legitimacy of the group’s new leadership, and specifically that of its uncharismatic secretary-general, Naim Qassem. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently named Qassem his official representative in Lebanon. That role, held previously by Nasrallah, reflects Hezbollah’s religious subordination to Khamenei and is vital to Qassem’s legitimacy in the eyes of Lebanese Shiites. 

Additionally, the Iranian ambassador in Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, is meeting with senior Lebanese officials—including the new president, Joseph Aoun—to promote Hezbollah’s position as a legitimate political player in the country and echo the organization’s narrative about the need to maintain an independent armed wing to secure Lebanon from future Israeli attacks. 

Most likely, Iran will only resume rebuilding Hezbollah militarily after ensuring that the group will not be challenged domestically and that it will be able to maintain its unregulated military infrastructures without interference from Lebanese state institutions. Making up for the loss of Hezbollah’s most experienced military leaders and its stockpile of advanced weapons will require deep and direct involvement by officers of the IRGC. 

After the 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s top military commander, it was a high-ranking IRGC officer who took his place in Hezbollah’s Jihad Council, the organization’s top military decision-making body. A similar pattern is expected to take place now, but on a larger scale, as most of the Jihad Council members are dead and Hezbollah desperately needs experienced commanders. 

After helping Hezbollah’s military command structure to recover, the IRGC will most probably initiate the more complicated process of rebuilding the group’s military capabilities. Tehran’s aim will be to reestablish Hezbollah’s role as an Iranian forward-stationed proxy equipped with various stand-off munitions (UAVs, precision-guided ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles) that can strike deep inside Israeli territory and deter the Jewish state from attacking Iran. 

The two means to achieve this goal could be rebuilding the weapons self-production infrastructure destroyed by Israel during the conflict and/or engaging in a large-scale arms smuggling campaign into Lebanon. The two options face great challenges, and Iran will likely try to go forward with both simultaneously, aspiring to maximize its chances of success. 

Hezbollah’s ability to re-establish its weapons self-production infrastructure in Lebanon will depend mainly on whether the Lebanese state authorities have the political will to prevent those activities. With the formation of a Lebanese new government that includes five ministers appointed only after Hezbollah’s consent, and the organization's ability to foment widespread domestic instability in case its core interests are challenged, it remains to be seen whether the government will meaningfully and durably confront Hezbollah or choose to prioritize domestic stability and turn a blind eye to such attempts. 

Iran’s future efforts to resupply Hezbollah by smuggling arms into Lebanon will bypass the challenges of the new geostrategic reality in the region. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria and its replacement with a Sunni-led regime openly hostile to Iran’s vision of Shiite influence in the Middle East will prevent Iran from using Syrian soil as a transit arena the way it did in past decades. 

Loosing this critical land connection to Lebanon will most likely force the IRGC to focus their supply efforts on sea and air routes. Iran has a long history of smuggling arms under the cover of civilian merchant ships. In recent years, the U.S. Navy has been engaged in continuous efforts to interdict such shipments from Iran to the Houthis in Yemen. Before that, it was the Israeli Navy that exposed such efforts in the northern part of the Red Sea (as evident in the interdictions of the Karine A in 2002 and the Klos C in 2014). 

In recent years the IRGC used the Syrian ports of Tartus and Latakia as the main gateways to transport arms to Hezbollah, but it is unlikely that the new regime in Damascus will let such transports continue. Iran and Hezbollah will therefore try to smuggle such covert shipments through Lebanon’s seaports in Beirut and/or Tripoli, while Hezbollah is expected to use its influence on the local port authorities to enable the unchecked entry of such shipments. 

As Iran’s and Hezbollah’s motivations to rebuild the group’s social, political and military capabilities in Lebanon are high, it will be the task of the international community and the Lebanese state to prevent it. Any Iranian attempt to breach Lebanon’s sovereignty through the illegal smuggling of arms and funds and any endeavor by Hezbollah to establish military sites outside the reach of the Lebanese military and law enforcement agencies must be answered with a swift and severe response signaling that the practices of past decades will not be tolerated again. 

 Dror Doron is a senior advisor at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), focusing on Hezbollah and Lebanon. He spent nearly two decades as a senior analyst in the Office of Israel's Prime Minister. Dror is on X @DrorDoron.