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Observers suggest that Israel’s full-scale war against Hezbollah, aimed at neutralizing its leadership and destruction of its missile arsenal, could dismantle the terror group. While Israel’s efforts indeed pose significant setbacks for Hezbollah and represent a critical step in the global fight against terrorism, a crucial factor is often overlooked: Iran’s pivotal role in ensuring Hezbollah’s survival. No matter how severely Israel targets Hezbollah or how much the group is weakened, the Islamic regime in Tehran will relentlessly work to resurrect it. Thus, the key to eradicating Hezbollah may ultimately lie in changing the regime in Tehran.
Supporting Hezbollah (and other terrorist groups in the region such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad) has always been part of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s historical quest to dominate the Middle East and destroy Israel.
When the Islamic regime was founded in 1979, it espoused “the most radical anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist” position in the Muslim Middle East. In a theological innovation, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the new regime, asserted that liberating Jerusalem from the “Little Satan” and its return to Muslim hands was a precondition for completing the Islamist revolution and the return of Mahdi, the Shiite 12th Imam. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor, emphasized that achieving this objective requires unwavering support for “Resistance Forces” against the “Zionist Enemy” considering it a fundamental Quranic duty.
The Islamic Republic’s ideological commitment soon transformed into actionable policy. It began calling for the physical annihilation of the state of Israel. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) established the Quds Force (QF) unit to oversee this objective. This specialized unit created proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and later in Yemen and the Gaza Strip to advance the regime goals. The IRGC-QF has built a network of nineteen terrorist organizations on Israel’s borders as part of its “Unity of Fronts” strategy, designed to launch broad-scale attacks on Israel. This highly effective approach has enabled the Islamic Republic to wage a permanent conflict against Israel from multiple fronts and has allowed the regime to gain significant influence throughout the Middle East.
The Islamic Republic provided the proxy network with funding, training, and sophisticated weapons, including precision-guided missiles, rockets, and drones, to target Israeli civilian populations and sensitive sites. This includes precision-guided missiles, rockets, and drones aimed at Israeli civilian populations and sensitive sites. As of September 2024, Hezbollah’s arsenal was estimated to include 200,000 rockets and missiles, such as Fajr-5, Raad-2/Raad-3, Khaibar-1, Zelzal-1, Zelzal-2, Scud-B/C/D, and Fateh-110. Many of these are precision-guided missiles capable of striking deep within Israeli territory.
The IRGC-QF has also supplied drones to Hezbollah and provided training on operating UAVs with ranges between 150 km and 1,700 km, capable of carrying payloads of up to 150 kg. Among these drones are the Mirsad-1 and Mirsad-2, Ababil-2, Ma’arab (suicide drones), Shahed-101 (range of 800 km), Ayoub (equivalent to the Iranian Shahed-129, range of 1,700 km), and Hudhud. Additionally, Iran has provided Hezbollah with drone components and trained its members to operate drones remotely. By mid-2024, Hezbollah had an estimated 2,500 UAVs, according to the Alma Research and Education Center. With this support, Hezbollah launched over 300 drones between October 2023 and July 2024. On June 13, 2024, alone, Hezbollah deployed 30 suicide drones and fired 150 rockets at 15 Israeli positions.
Iran not only supplies Hezbollah with advanced rockets and armed drones but also assists the terror group in establishing its own drone and missile production facilities. This support has enabled the creation of a sophisticated arsenal capable of striking Israeli cities.
There are also reports that Hezbollah has been supplied with electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons by the IRGC. An Iranian source disclosed to Kuwait’s Al-Jarida newspaper that the IRGC delivered a shipment of “qualitative weapons” to Hezbollah. Israeli intelligence suggested that the term “qualitative weapons” might refer to chemical weapons. Although Israeli military intelligence has not confirmed the transfer of such weapons to Hezbollah, it is plausible to consider that the regime might supply these weapons to its terror proxies in the future. The IDF discovered a USB flash drive on the body of a Hamas terrorist involved in the October 7, 2023, massacre, which contained instructions for assembling a device to disperse gas, historically used for mass murder in Nazi gas chambers.
Neither Iranian regime officials nor Hezbollah leaders have been shy about publicly acknowledging the regime’s extensive support for Hezbollah. Ayatollah Khamenei has consistently affirmed Iran’s financial and military support for Hezbollah. In a 2012 statement, he declared, “any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime, we will endorse, and we will help. We have no fear expressing this.” In a 2016 speech, Hezbollah’s eliminated Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah publicly acknowledged Iran’s comprehensive support for the organization, saying “The budget of Hezbollah, its salaries, its expenses, its food, its drink, its weapons, and its missiles come from the Islamic Republic of Iran. As long as Iran has money, we have money… Just as we receive the rockets that we use to threaten Israel, we are receiving our money.”
Iran’s unwavering ideological commitment to Israel’s destruction, coupled with its steadfast support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other terror groups, ensures that no matter how weakened the “Resistance Front” becomes through Israeli decapitation campaigns and bombing raids, the regime will always attempt to rebuild it. For instance, in the 2006 war when Israel launched a massive bombing raid followed by a ground incursion in response to Hezbollah abducting three Israeli soldiers, Hezbollah suffered huge losses in military equipment, and the destruction of its command-and-control system. But it did not take a long time for Iran to rebuild the arsenal into an even stronger, despite Israel’s relentless efforts to prevent such reinforcement.
As the saying goes, to eradicate the tree, you must strike at the root, not the branches. In the same vein, to eliminate Hezbollah, the focus must be on dismantling the regime that created, funds, and arms it.
Farhad Rezaei is a senior fellow at the Philos Project.