Background

Hezbollah was established in 1982 as a diffuse grouping of Lebanese Shi’a who sought to violently resist the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that year. In what came to be known in Israel as the First Lebanon War, Israel had invaded to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization from southern Lebanon after repeated terror attacks in northern Israel.  Dissatisfied with the main Lebanese Shi’a militia Amal, which took a cautious approach to the Israeli invasion, Hezbollah incorporated experienced former Amal fighters, members of Palestinian militias, and several clerics. The group appealed to the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran for support, which came in the form of an initial deployment of 5,000 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fighters to advise and train Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon’s Beka’a valley, as well as an estimated $140 million in funding per year. In 1985, Hezbollah published a charter that called for jihad against Israel and grounded the group’s Islamic identity. The organization also explicitly accepted the principle of wilayat al-faqih (guardianship of the jurist), giving Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini ultimate decision-making power over the organization. 

In 1985, Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon and established a security zone along the border. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Hezbollah conducted guerilla warfare against the IDF and its local ally, the mostly Christian South Lebanon Army. It also carried out deadly terrorist attacks against American and Italian bases in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and kidnapped over 100 Western citizens. This terrorist activity was paired with rapid development of major social services for the Lebanese Shi’a community, which had long been less powerful than the Sunni, Maronite Christian, and Druze communities making up Lebanon’s complex sectarian landscape. Beyond payments to the families of injured or killed fighters, these welfare activities included paying for medical care for civilians injured during fighting with Israel, rebuilding destroyed homes, and establishing health, utility, and educational services in Shi’a communities. 

Extensive social service provision, combined with perceived military success against Israel, quickly made Hezbollah the dominant actor in Lebanese Shi’a politics despite major setbacks, including the 1992 assassination of the group’s original leader, Sheikh Abbas Musawi. The group joined formal Lebanese politics after the 1992 Taif Accord, which ended the civil war raging in the country since 1975, winning 8 of the 27 parliamentary seats allotted to the Shi’a community under the agreement. Hezbollah’s popularity rose further with Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 under fire, and the group quickly established itself along the Israel-Lebanon border. 

While some expected that Hezbollah’s anti-Israel activities would stop after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah kept up attacks and cited ongoing small border disputes, including the Har Dov/Shebaa Farms area, as justification. Israel and Hezbollah fought a short and intense war in 2006, after Hezbollah conducted a cross-border attack that killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others to Lebanon. While the IDF ended the war with the upper hand, Hezbollah’s guerilla warfare tactics found clear successes and it was able to force the evacuation of large parts of Israel’s north through massive rocket barrages. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 ended the war and reassigned an existing U.N. peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, to enforce the peace. The resolution mandated that Hezbollah stay north of the Litani River, armed Lebanese groups other than the military disarm, and Israel respect the sovereignty of Lebanese airspace. UNIFIL failed on all counts, and a fragile status quo developed between an increasingly entrenched Hezbollah and the IDF, punctuated by occasional Hezbollah attacks and retaliatory strikes by Israel, until October 2023. Hostilities escalated dramatically after Hezbollah joined in Hamas’ attack against Israel by launching thousands of rockets into the north of the country. 

Today, Hezbollah is a sprawling organization with a large military force, diverse financial streams, and extensive social, cultural, and media institutions. The group is deeply entwined with the Lebanese state, is the dominant Shi’a political movement, is more powerful than the military, and has a controlling stake in the country. The group operates on multiple continents, has fought at Iran’s request in Syria, and has trained Iran-affiliated militias in Yemen and Iraq. Despite the recent severe blows Hezbollah has taken in its war with Israel, it remains a potent and lethal force.

Military 

Hezbollah maintains a large standing military force and is frequently referred to as the most powerful non-state military in the world. While former leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed the group had 100,000 men under arms, the U.S. estimates the group had 40,000-50,000 dedicated fighters. This force, commanded by a five-member Jihad Council, is divided into geographic and thematic units. The Southern Command, composed of the Aziz, Nasser, and Badr units, is responsible for the border areas with Israel, while the elite Radwan force, estimated at 2,500 members, is Hezbollah’s special forces equivalent trained to infiltrate into Israel. Hezbollah has sizable rocket and drone units, as well as units tasked with facilitating arms transfers from  Iran (Unit 4400), internal security (Unit 900), external operations (Unit 910), training of allied militias (Unit 3800), operations inside Israel (Unit 138), and more. Hezbollah also operates large external and internal intelligence directorates. 

After a series of Israeli targeted killing operations eliminated almost all of Hezbollah’s military leadership, there are reports that the group has established a new, secretive, and less centralized military command, giving local commanders more autonomy over operations. 

Prior to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah along the Israel-Lebanon border, Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal was estimated at 120,000-200,000 (others estimate 150,000). Most of these are short-range unguided rockets or missiles, estimated to be able to reach Israel’s north, but not the majority of the population in the country’s center. However, Hezbollah possesses several thousand ballistic missiles, several hundred of which are precision-guided, as well as anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and other significant weaponry. Hezbollah also has a drone stockpile estimated in the low thousands, including Iranian-made surveillance and suicide drones, that pose a significant challenge for Israeli air defense systems. While the IDF has reportedly destroyed some 80% of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile array in the current war, and the group has launched tens of thousands of rockets and hundreds of drones over the past year, its stockpiles remain significant.

The group also possesses large quantities of anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), RPGs, small arms and grenades, and other weaponry, including several air defense batteries.

Hezbollah has built significant military infrastructure across Lebanon, including intelligence centers, weapons depots, safehouses, combat compounds, and underground tunnel networks and bunkers. These are concentrated most heavily in southern Lebanon, where IDF ground operations have uncovered several major tunnel networks and dozens of military compounds and seized or destroyed large quantities of weapons, ammunition, and explosives, as well as rockets and launchers.

Financial

Hezbollah’s budget is estimated at roughly $1 billion per year, with roughly $700 million coming directly from Iran. The remaining $300 million is derived from a wide array of illicit industries in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, including drug trafficking (particularly Captagon), money-laundering, guns, diamonds, and other commodities. These are augmented by deposits at Hezbollah’s primary banking institution, al-Qard al-Hassan, which operates outside of Lebanon’s banking system and is not subject to regulations.

Hezbollah also leverages its control of multiple government ministries and deep penetration of the Lebanese state to funnel cash and contracts to its own enterprises and to classify its institutions as tax- and customs-free “public benefit associations” eligible for government aid. Combining Iranian funding, revenues extracted from or enabled by the state, illicit activities, and donations from wealthy diaspora businessmen, the group’s true revenue may run higher than current estimates. 

Hezbollah continues to deepen its hold on the Lebanese economy as the country’s financial crisis, considered by the World Bank to be one of the world’s worst economic declines in 150 years, worsens. Hezbollah has purchased large swathes of real estate in Lebanon, operates private generator networks as an alternative to Lebanon’s nonfunctional electric grid, and has cornered the market on import of pharmaceuticals and retail products into Lebanon. The group is involved in managing the country’s airport, Beirut port, and several land crossings. 

Hezbollah’s money-transfer systems are extensive, relying on corrupt arrangements with Lebanese financial institutions, flying in suitcases of cash from Iran and U.S. dollars from Iraq, informal money-transfer networks (hawala), and cryptocurrency. Much of the group’s funds are held in cash and gold reserves at al-Qard al-Hassan branches around the country, and Israel claims that at least $500 million is held in a secret vault underneath al-Sahel Hospital in Beirut. These transfer and security measures have allowed Hezbollah to maintain a robust funding stream despite significant U.S. sanctions and Israeli disruption efforts.

These revenues pay salaries to Hezbollah’s large fighting force, who have been paid as highly as $1,300 per month and who the IDF now believes receive an average monthly salary of $500. Hezbollah also provides social welfare payments to families of slain operatives through the Martyrs Foundation, social services, and other activities. 

Political

Hezbollah is stronger than the Lebanese state in multiple dimensions. But due to Lebanon’s confessional system, in which parliamentary seats are allocated via a complex mix of sectarian and geographic quotas, the party itself is not dominant in the 128-seat Lebanese parliament. In the 2022 elections, Hezbollah and pro-Hezbollah independent candidates won 20% of the overall vote and received 20 seats, while the other Shi’a movement Amal and affiliated independents won 18, despite receiving only half Hezbollah’s vote share. 

The unique power-sharing arrangement at the top of Lebanese politics mandates a Christian president, a Sunni prime minister, and a Shi’a speaker of the parliament. Despite Hezbollah being the largest Shi’a party, the leader of Amal, Nabih Berri, has long held the speakership. Hezbollah, however, has repeatedly won control of key government portfolios like labor, industry, health, and public works, which it has used to channel funds and contracts to its own organizations.

Hezbollah maintains political alliances outside the Shi’a community in the formal framework of the March 8 alliance, a loose cross-sectarian grouping of pro-Syria parties formed in 2005 after Syria withdrew from its decades-long occupation of Lebanon and in opposition to the anti-Syrian March 14 alliance. The March 8 alliance includes Amal, the Christian Free Patriotic Movement, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and a number of small Armenian Orthodox, Druze, and Arab nationalist parties.

Social

Hezbollah operates a large network of health, education, social service, youth, and media organizations, many of which enjoy tax and customs exemption and government funding as “public benefit associations” and regularly receive preferential state contracts.

These organizations, which number in the dozens, are grouped into a few main units. The Islamic Health Organization operates a system of at least eight hospitals and dozens of clinics offering subsidized care to Lebanese Shi’a, as well as a large civil defense network. The Education Unit provides scholarships and vocational training to thousands of people, runs its own academic and technical schools, and oversees the al-Mahdi Scouts youth group. Over time, these services have expanded to include some non-Shi’a groups considered friendly with Hezbollah.

The Social Unit, the largest by monetary value, is made up of four primary institutions: Jihad al-Binaa (the Jihad Construction Foundation), a construction and infrastructure conglomerate, the Martyrs Foundation, the Foundation for the Wounded, and the Khomeini Support Committee. These organizations fund reconstruction of homes and buildings destroyed in fighting with Israel, welfare payments for injured or killed fighters and their families, medical treatment for civilians injured by Israeli actions, and more. 

Hezbollah is also heavily engaged in culture and media production. The group operates the al-Manar TV channel and website, the al-Nour radio station, and the al-Ahed newspaper, and is rumored to fund the al-Mayadeen news channel. Hezbollah also operates a Cultural Unit focused on producing religious content, along with several cultural and artistic associations and publishing houses. 

Some Hezbollah NGOs, such as the Green Without Borders environmental group, are considered to be covers for Hezbollah’s military activity. 

While the total cost of these organizational activities is not known, it is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Iran-Hezbollah Relations

Hezbollah is often referred to as the “crown jewel” of Iran’s proxies. It is the oldest, most developed, capable, ideologically aligned, and loyal component of Iran’s asymmetrical threat network. It has regularly been called upon to train other members of the network, including Iraqi militias and the Houthis. Both the Houthis and Hamas have gone rogue at times, and have ideological differences with Iran: Hamas is a Sunni organization and soured relations with Iran by taking a position against Iran-backed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, while the Houthis practice Zaydi (“Fiver”) Shi’ism rather than the Ja’afari (“Twelver”) strain predominant in Iran and are generally unresponsive to Iranian attempts to attenuate their activities. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has enshrined the principle of wilayat al-faqih and has demonstrated extreme loyalty to Iran, though it has a distinct Lebanese orientation and structures its policies around Lebanese goals. 

Notably, Hezbollah entered the Syrian civil war in 2013 at Iran’s behest to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime under the pretext that they were defending Shi’a holy sites, despite serious reservations among the group about engaging in a war outside Lebanon. Hezbollah deployed as many as 10,000 fighters to Syria for years and may have lost more than 2,000 fighting against rebel groups. Hezbollah inflicted severe damage on Syrian civilians, most notably in the siege of the town of Madaya from 2015 to 2017, which resulted in deaths from starvation taunted by Hezbollah supporters online.

Hezbollah’s loyalty and capabilities have been rewarded with ample Iranian funding and technological and military aid, including advanced technical know-how in rocket and missile production, precision-guided munitions, and large transfers of Iranian drones, air defense systems, and other weapons. Many analysts have argued that Hezbollah’s most important function in Iran’s eyes is as a second-strike capability if Israel ever targeted the Iranian nuclear program. 

However, recent events have tested Iran’s willingness and ability to defend Hezbollah. The Israeli ground and aerial campaign launched in September 2024 has eliminated almost all of Hezbollah’s senior military leadership, destroyed perhaps two-thirds of its rocket and missile arsenal, killed some 2,000 fighters, and injured thousands of others. Iran’s response, a major ballistic missile attack on Israel on October 1, was unprecedented, but an Israeli retaliatory attack that destroyed key Iranian air defense systems and critical missile production facilities made clear that Iranian action will not deter it from further degrading Hezbollah’s military capabilities.

Hezbollah Abroad

Hezbollah operates across multiple continents, often within Lebanese diaspora communities and largely for fundraising and trafficking purposes, but has carried out terror attacks worldwide. Oftentimes these activities are facilitated by Lebanese dual citizens with European passports or via sham charities. 

In South America, Hezbollah has long been active in the Tri-Border area at the intersection of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, where there is a large Lebanese and Shi’a population. From that base, the group has trafficked drugs, laundered money, and relied on major business families for donations and cover for illicit activities. It has also planned terror attacks, including a 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy and the 1994 AMIA Jewish community center bombing, the deadliest in Argentina’s history.

In West Africa, Hezbollah has leveraged the large Lebanese diaspora there to develop deep financial and operational networks, including a branch of the Ayman Joumaa money-laundering network. Hezbollah has also attempted or carried out terror attacks in India, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, and Spain, among others.

Europe is a major site for Hezbollah financing, both as an origin point and a transit country for goods or cash from Africa or South America. While the EU designated an artificially created “military wing” of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in 2013, the group has continued to expand there. Some national authorities, notably Germany, have cracked down on Hezbollah affiliates and supporters in their countries, such as the Islamic Center of Hamburg, in recent years.

Hezbollah’s Future

Hezbollah and Israel are currently engaged in open warfare, and Israel appears to decisively have the upper hand. It has eliminated the vast majority of Hezbollah’s leadership, killed and injured thousands of fighters, destroyed 80% of the group’s rocket and missile stores, targeted Hezbollah financial and arms transfer networks, and pushed the group back from the border. The IDF ground operation has uncovered huge quantities of abandoned weaponry and destroyed major tunnel complexes on the ground, while striking many launchers, dozens of intelligence sites, and arms depots around the country.

However, Hezbollah is a large and well-financed organization that is deeply integrated into the Lebanese state and society, and remains powerful enough to dispel any internal attempts to disarm or eliminate it. Any Israeli attempt to dismantle the organization would involve a long ground operation deep in Lebanon that would draw enormous international pressure and expose IDF troops to significant casualties, with no guarantee of success. Hezbollah will remain a key player in Lebanese society and is likely to remain a critical threat to Israel, even if it has been substantially weakened by Israeli operations.

For more on Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah, read our northern front explainer here.