Iran sees the four-day-old ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah as a chance to rebuild the Lebanon-based terror organization, according to sources close to the group quoted by the Washington Post on Saturday.
The sources said that the truce gives Iran a chance to take stock of what was previously its strongest proxy in the region, rebuild, and try to restore deterrence.
Hezbollah, which avowedly seeks Israel’s destruction, may have lost up to 4,000 people in the war, a source told Reuters last week, the vast majority of them during the last two months of intensified fighting.
The Israel Defense Forces has estimated that Israeli forces killed some 3,000 Hezbollah operatives and that it dealt massive blows to Hezbollah’s infrastructure and resources. Around 100 members of other terror groups have also been reported killed in Lebanon.
Hezbollah, unprovoked, began firing into Israel the day after the Palestinian terror group Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught in southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, forcing the displacement of some 60,000 residents of northern Israel.
The sources quoted by the Washington Post said that Hezbollah expected more support from Iran’s other proxies in the region during Israel’s military campaign against its sites across Lebanon in recent months.
People attend the funeral of people wrapped in Hezbollah and Lebanon flags on November 12, 2024, in Haouch al-Rafqa in Lebanon’s the Bekaa valley. (Nidal SOLH / AFP)
Iran’s terror proxies in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen fired missiles and drones at the country, but almost all were intercepted before they reached Israeli airspace. On Sunday, the IDF said it downed another ballistic missile from Yemen.
“Lebanon was at its most vulnerable during heavy bombings, yet support from other members of the resistance axis, including Yemen and Iraq, was minimal at best,” one of the sources close to Hezbollah was quoted as saying, referring to Iran’s regional proxies that its has aligned against Israel.
“Tehran was unwilling to escalate the situation,” the source said.
Israel dealt several devastating blows to Hezbollah during the war, including killing the group’s long-time leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in September, as well as many other top-ranking officials.
However, it was in October, after Israel retaliated to a direct Iranian missile barrage on the country with wide-ranging strikes on Iran’s air defenses and some military factories, that Tehran began to push Hezbollah to accept US-led ceasefire proposals.
“We now know that those attacks were quite severe,” a Western diplomat told the Post of the Israeli strikes, referring to an assessment by their own government. “They were feeling the heat.”
Iran, which also vows to destroy Israel, welcomed the ceasefire when it came into force on Wednesday, while also indicating that the development could influence its plans to avenge the October Israeli strike on the country. It has publicly presented the truce as a victory against Israel, though Jerusalem only ever made securing the border region from Hezbollah threats its war goal. That condition is written into the ceasefire that the terror group agreed to.
UNIFIL peacekeepers secure the area in Khardali, southern Lebanon, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Tehran has promised to help rebuild Hezbollah, which is a key part of of its deterrence strategy.
“Iran is prepared to allocate funds for reconstruction and to ensure Hezbollah’s survival, as well as to maintain support within the Shiite community” said the source close to Hezbollah.
Iran helped reestablish Hezbollah after a previous clash with Israel in 2006, but at the time the terror group suffered far fewer losses and it is unclear how much Iran can do now as its own economy has suffered due to years of US and international sanctions over its nuclear development program.
Iran fired its first-ever missile barrage at Israel in April in retaliation for an alleged Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic installation in Damascus that killed top Iranian generals. After Iran’s second attack, in October, Israel struck military facilities across Iran, reportedly damaging a component of Iran’s nuclear program and disabling its air defenses.
