Not too long ago, Hezbollah was proclaimed all but defeated.
Israel’s devastating military and clandestine campaigns had left the group close to “demise,” opined regional experts. The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad removed a key regional ally who helped to funnel weapons and supplies to the group.
Israel killed its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in 2024. Lebanon and Israel engaged in direct US-brokered talks for the first time in decades. The Lebanese government was working to disarm the group entirely.
Now, following the US and Israel’s decision to attack Iran, the group appears more emboldened – and relevant – than ever.
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“What the Israelis have done is completely revitalize Hezbollah’s resistance rationale,” Nicholas Blanford, an analyst with the Atlantic Council based in Beirut, told CNN.
“Hezbollah is taking a lot of hits, they’re taking a lot of casualties on the front lines, but my understanding is that morale is high and they’re prepared for a long fight.”
Recent ceasefire agreements between Israel and the Lebanese government have done little to stem the fighting.
The latest, agreed to on Wednesday in Washington, would require Hezbollah to immediately stop firing, withdraw from the south, and eventually disarm. Both Israel and Hezbollah have breached previous agreements.
Israel had continuously attacked Lebanon since a November 2024 ceasefire, alleging that Hezbollah failed to withdraw from border areas. But Hezbollah refrained from attacking back. That changed on March 2, when the US and Israel began a war with Iran, and Hezbollah launched rockets into northern Israel.
“When the Israeli-American war again restarted the war against Iran, we felt this is a proper window to respond,” Ibrahim Al Moussawi, a Hezbollah member of Lebanon’s parliament, told CNN in Beirut.
Israel has taken that as carte blanche to massively step up its offensive – invading the south, displacing a million civilians and killing more than 3,000, according to the Lebanese government.
That has put Hezbollah back in the position in which it is most comfortable: Claiming the mantle of defending the Lebanese people.
“It’s not something that we like to do,” Moussawi claimed. “We are forced to do it. We are obliged to do because the government didn’t do its job.”
Israeli strikes have reduced the group’s ability to launch rockets, but it has adapted, using explosive drones piloted via fiber optic cables to bypass Israeli defenses in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s heartland, striking missile defense batteries and troops stationed in the country.
It has killed 15 Israeli soldiers since a tenuous ceasefire was agreed to in mid-April.
But its most potent advantage is undoubtedly its ability to engender fearsome loyalty from many young Lebanese Shia Muslims.
These fighters rarely speak with Western media. But in a remote field in the Beqaa Valley on the country’s eastern border, one 30-year-old just back from southern Lebanon agreed to speak with CNN.
The meeting was fraught with danger. Despite the leaders of Israel and Lebanon agreeing to a ceasefire, Israel has continued to occupy a swath of southern Lebanon and carries out strikes against what it says are Hezbollah targets across the country on a daily basis, including in the central Beqaa Valley. Late last month, its forces crossed the Litani river, pushing further into southern Lebanon in what Israeli officials say is an effort to ensure the security of northern Israel.
Hezbollah has said it is attacking Israeli forces in response to the Israel Defense Forces’ continued occupation.
“Civilians are being killed. They want to take our land,” the fighter said of the Israelis. “They have a plan to occupy our land to achieve their goal. God willing, we won’t let them do that.”
An arms smuggler in Beqaa, who requested anonymity because he feared for his life, told CNN that Assad’s fall in Syria had made his job much more difficult. But weapons are almost certainly still getting through. Syrian authorities regularly boast of seizing weapons headed for Lebanon.
The idea that he would ever lay down his arms, the Hezbollah fighter said, was fanciful. “Whenever a leader is killed, there is a new leader. And whenever we lose someone who is replaced by someone else, we become stronger and remain steadfast.”
To many Shia Lebanese, Hezbollah – literally “God’s Party” – is known simply as “the resistance.” To the American government and European Union, it is a designated terrorist organization.
But it is far more than just a militant organization. The group emerged, with Iranian patronage, from the 1982 Israeli occupation of Beirut. As it became entrenched in daily Lebanese life, it disavowed its original goal of creating an Islamic state and entered the fray of fractured Lebanese democracy, where the president is a Christian, the prime minister is a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament is a Shia Muslim.
Hezbollah now has 15 members in the country’s 128-seat parliament. Among them is the British-educated Moussawi.
“We stopped for 15 months,” he told CNN of Hezbollah’s war with Israel, referencing the November 2024 ceasefire that ended on March 2. “The Israelis continued to carry out aggression. So there was one point when we have to respond to all of these aggressions.”
Despite continued Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon in the 15 months after the 2024 ceasefire – Israel says answering alleged Hezbollah violations – the group’s decision to launch missiles at Israel on March 2 in response to the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader has proved highly controversial.
The government, which under the terms of the ceasefire with Israel was responsible for security in southern Lebanon, condemned Hezbollah’s attack.
“The Lebanese state declares its absolute rejection, leaving no room for any ambiguity or interpretation, of any military or security actions launched from the Lebanese territory,” Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said on March 2. He declared “the immediate prohibition of all Hezbollah’s security and military activities as being outside the law.”
In the weeks since, the government has voiced its determination to prevent Lebanon being dragged into a civil conflict.
“I’d prefer to avoid a confrontation with Hezbollah, but believe me, we won’t be intimidated,” Salam said during a trip to Paris in April. “Not by Hezbollah, and certainly not by those who are blowing the hot and cold air of civil war.”
In a rare interview on Friday, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that “the people of Lebanon are paying the price” for Iran’s interests in the region. “They deserve not seeing their homes destroyed every five to 10 years,” he said.
Lebanon’s fractured system of government makes those fears of civil war or sectarian strife more potent. The delicate balance was upended for 15 years, between 1975 and 1990, when a deadly civil war tore the country apart.
Exclusive: Lebanese president accuses Iran of using his country as a bargaining chip in peace talks with the US
Moussawi denied that the group was acting above the state but contended that the Lebanese Armed Forces’ weakness left Hezbollah with no choice but to respond.
“Had they been doing their job in the first place, we wouldn’t have gotten into it,” he said, rejecting any responsibility for inviting Israel’s wrath, and the devastation it has brought.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “They are not waiting for an excuse. The international community bears responsibility. America bears responsibility.”
It is difficult to know exactly where Hezbollah stands with Lebanon’s public. The group is unpopular among many in the country’s sizeable Christian minority. But displays of support remain prominent among the country’s Shia, who have suffered most from Israel’s bombardment of the south, and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
When Hezbollah attacked Israel in response to the Iran war, on March 2, the general reaction even among Shia was “Oh my God what have you done?” Blanford, the Beirut-based analyst, said.
“But within two or three weeks, they saw that Hezbollah was fighting back, that they were causing casualties within the Israeli ranks.” In short, the group was “back doing what it was born to do: Resisting Israeli occupation.”
But there are signs that some Shia Muslims are growing more comfortable speaking out in opposition to its actions. In a poll by the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar last year, 75% of respondents said they considered Israel to be an enemy, but an even greater number, 79%, said they viewed the role of Iran – which backs Hezbollah – negatively.
Among them is Mona Jahamy, a schoolteacher displaced to northern Lebanon from the southern city of Tyre. Her Facebook screeds against Hezbollah have resulted in threatening voice notes sent from the group’s supporters, she told CNN.
“In 2024, my house was almost devastated,” she said, speaking at a café in Beirut’s picturesque downtown. “It took me a year to reconstruct, to redo everything. I haven’t even taken a deep breath. Then another war.”
She has no illusions about who is dropping the bombs on her hometown. “Israel is a very hostile and aggressive country,” she said. But there, she has little influence, while closer to home some may heed her warnings.
“There is a ferocious lion,” she said. “I tell you, ‘Keep your hand away from the lion. He might bite you. He will bite you… You keep on teasing him. So, he bites you. And more than that, you release the lion against everyone around you. This is what Hezbollah has done.
“Let the lion stay in its place.”
Rayhana Zaiter and Rami Aycha contributed to this report.
