July 10, 2025:
Three months ago Hezbollah ordered its commanders to leave Lebanon to escape capture or death by Lebanese or Israeli forces. Several hundred Hezbollah leaders headed for South American countries like Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Here Hezbollah has long had a presence running criminal enterprises.
For nearly fifty years Hezbollah has been active in the triple border area between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. There Hezbollah carries out drug production and smuggling as well as money laundering. This earned Hezbollah about a billion dollars a year. Venezuela and its dictator Hugo Chavez welcomed Hezbollah and were well paid to let the Lebanese terrorists use Venezuela as a transshipment point for drugs and other illegal items.
In the last few years, the United States, Israel and some South American governments have cooperated in suppressing Hezbollah activity. Hezbollah was responsible for several terror attacks against Israeli targets in these countries. This violence injured or killed locals and that increased local demands that Hezbollah and other criminal drug organizations be driven out. Iran was also identified as a local and international supporter of Hezbollah.
The Lebanese president declared that by the end of the year Hezbollah would no longer be a factor in local politics and all their weapons would be seized or destroyed. Israel was running a similar operation. While Israel and Lebanon are not on good terms, both agree that Hezbollah must go and have acted accordingly.
Until late 2024, an Iranian could drive unimpeded from Iran to Lebanon. This route marked the much desired Iranian Shia Crescent. By late 2024 that had all changed. The Assad government was replaced by a new one that does not assume Iran is a useful ally. The Iranian Shia militia Hezbollah was destroyed and its key leaders killed by the Israelis. In addition a series of Israeli airstrikes destroyed nearly all the Iranian supplied weapons in Syria as well as missile manufacturing operations in Iran, along with the plants that made the solid fuel rocket motors. The Iranian air defense network was also destroyed as well as some Iranian-supplied stockpiles of rockets and missiles in Yemen. These were used by the Iran-backed Houthi militia to attack shipping in the Red Sea headed for the Suez Canal. Americans and British airstrikes and warships also attacked the Houthi infrastructure. Israeli aircraft regularly attack Houthi resources. American B-2 bombers are also participating. Suez canal traffic has returned to normal with the decline of the Houthi threat.
There are still some Hezbollah remnants left. Drug operations in eastern Lebanon are still operational. Hezbollah has long been active in the hashish and cocaine trade. The billions of dollars earned by drug operations is managed by a small number of Hezbollah members in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. That money can be used to rebuild Hezbollah. America, European and most Persian Gulf nations want the Hezbollah treasury eliminated. That will be difficult to do, though Israel has done a fair job of destroying Hezbollah’s financial infrastructure in Lebanon. Hezbollah money managers in Qatar have been dispensing and concealing their billions through late 2024 as the main Hezbollah organization in Lebanon was being taken apart. The United States no longer tolerates Qatari relationships with Iran and Hezbollah. Qatar has been told to sever its Iranian and Hezbollah ties or face sanctions and isolation by the U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf. None of the other Arab Gulf States are willing to defend Qatar or Hezbollah.
Hezbollah can be reassembled by financing the fantasies of the many Lebanese Shia that desire revenge. This became more difficult after the lightning early December campaign by a reorganized Islamic terrorist organization HTS, which quickly took control of Syria and sent the ruling Assad family into a Russian exile. That means Hezbollah in Lebanon no longer has a land connection to Iran via Iraq and Syria. Iran was the primary supplier of weapons and IRGC/Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps technical advisors to Hezbollah. The IRGC is an elite security organization that guards the religious dictatorship in Iran while creating and supporting pro-Iran groups worldwide. Growing popular unrest in Iran makes it difficult for the IRGC to spare manpower to help rebuild Hezbollah.
It is possible for the new Hezbollah leadership and their Iranian overlords to find ways to get the men, weapons and training together to rebuild Hezbollah. If left alone, that could take years. Israel and the many other nations hostile to Hezbollah will interfere with the rebuilding. Hezbollah will reappear, but it will not be as powerful or as expansive as its predecessor. For Hezbollah believers, that’s better than nothing.
Last month several days of Israeli airstrikes on Iran crippled its military operations and weapons production facilities. These attacks left the oil fields and export terminals alone, but not Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. The Iranian economy is crippled and the population angry at their continued poverty. Iranians know that their government has spent nearly $30 billion to establish themselves in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. That is all gone, along with weapons plants and air defense systems. What remains are hunger, poverty and an angry population. IRGC commanders have been warning the government that they do not have enough troops to put down widespread uprisings and a growing number of IRGC men are reluctant to kill Iranians to protect an unpopular government.
Since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the monarch and installed the religious dictatorship, everything in Iran has gone downhill. The economy is sanctioned; Israeli airstrikes have destroyed most of the military resources and overseas destabilization operations are in ruins. Iran is rated as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. GDP is declining and a growing number of talented Iranians are leaving the country.
Thirteen years ago the Israeli military assumed that there would be another war with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamic terrorist organization that then controlled southern Lebanon and had veto power over the Lebanese government. The Israeli forces have studied their 2006 war with Hezbollah, took into account new ideas that the enemy might come up with, and developed new weapons and techniques for the next war. Israel is determined to win a military and media victory. That won't be easy.
In 2006, Hezbollah fired 4,000 rockets into Israel, who briefly invaded Hezbollah-held territories in Lebanon. This short war resulted in the deaths of 121 Israeli troops and 44 civilians. Hezbollah lost 600 fighters and 1,200 civilians who were in and around Hezbollah facilities, mostly in southern Lebanon. Israel has warned Lebanon that, if Hezbollah starts another war, Lebanon will suffer damage and Hezbollah will endure much more. Lebanon has threatened to fight back if attacked but in practice Hezbollah controlled southern Lebanon and the Lebanese government stays out of the way whenever there is another war.
Hezbollah appeared to use the same tactics as it always had. Hezbollah declared a victory even though they were driven north. The Israelis developed some new moves they didn’t talk about. That’s not to say Hezbollah hasn’t got some surprises planned. But the Israelis have more of an incentive to put more hurt on Hezbollah whenever there was another war.
Between 2010 and 2012 Israel released aerial photos of Hezbollah military preparations in southern Lebanon. The photos showed villages being fortified and weapons and rockets being stored near and in schools and hospitals. Hezbollah organized an armed militia there, of about 20,000 men. Nearly a third of them have been to Iran for military training. There is a lot of open terrain in southern Lebanon but the 40,000 rockets were mostly stored, and ready to be launched from these fortified villages.
The Hezbollah preparations were similar to those used by Hamas and encountered by Israeli troops during the brief war in Gaza in early 2009. Hezbollah provided Hamas with military advisers and Iranian weapons. Hezbollah was expected to make much use of bombs, booby traps and command detonated munitions. But Israel also demonstrated their ability to deal with that during the 2009 war in Gaza.
Some of the new Israeli tactics were subsequently revealed, including better ways to deal with civilians Hezbollah often used as human shields. Israel even organized teams of lawyers to quickly work out the legal and media Hezbollah ploys that might try and portray the Israelis in the worst light. Hezbollah cannot win militarily, so they seek some kind of media victory. That is easier if they can help get a lot of Lebanese civilians killed.
Most civilians fled southern Lebanon before the ground fighting got to them in 2006, but was not possible to the same extent in subsequent wars with Hezbollah. The Israelis were prepared to hit the missile storage sites quickly, with smart bombs and fast-moving infantry units travelling in armored vehicles. The Lebanese civilians knew what Hezbollah was up to and that caused tension among Lebanese civilians living on top of rocket storage bunkers. Hezbollah didn't give civilians much choice. If they wanted a new house, real cheap, they had to accept the fact that they were going to live above a rocket storage bunker and their home would be a target if there were another war. Hezbollah would rather be feared than disobeyed and really needed dead civilians to achieve their goals.
Hezbollah desultorily attacked Israel when it invaded Hamas-held Gaza in retaliation for Hamas invading Israel in October 2023, but kept its attacks going for too long. Israel then eliminated Hezbollah’s leadership, drove it from southern Lebanon and destroyed enough of its ground forces that Hezbollah’s loving neighbors, the Sunni Arabs and Christians of Lebanon, nominally have the capacity now to drive all Lebanese Shia Arabs someplace else. All they need is enough foreign money to mobilize their militias and pay for the costs of a brief war of ethnic cleansing, which is traditional in the Middle East.