Three sources familiar with Hezbollah’s operations told Reuters that its flexible chain of command, along with its extensive tunnel network and huge arsenal of missiles and weapons it has built up over the past year, allow it to withstand unprecedented and devastating Israeli strikes.
In recent days, Israel has launched strong attacks on Hezbollah, including targeting senior military leaders and blowing up the party’s wireless communication devices.
On Friday, Israel killed Ibrahim Akil, a leader who founded and led the party’s elite Radwan force. The Health Ministry says more than 560 people, including 50 children, have been killed in Israeli strikes since Monday, the deadliest day in Lebanon in decades.
The Israeli army’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, said on Sunday that Akil’s death had shaken Hezbollah’s ranks. Israel says its strikes have also destroyed thousands of rockets and missiles in the group’s possession.
Leadership compensation
But two sources familiar with Hezbollah’s operations said the party moved quickly to appoint a successor to Akil and other senior figures killed in Friday’s airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah stressed in a speech on August 1 that the party quickly appoints a successor whenever one of its leaders is killed.
A fourth source, a Hezbollah leader, said the attack on the communications equipment had left 1,500 fighters unfit for combat due to their injuries, with many losing their eyesight or having their hands amputated.
While this is a major blow, it represents only a fraction of Hezbollah’s strength, which a US congressional report last Friday estimated to number between 40,000 and 50,000 fighters. Nasrallah has previously said the group has 100,000 fighters.
The three sources said that since October, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in support of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza, it has redeployed its fighters to confrontation areas in the south, including by recalling some of them from Syria.
The sources added that the party also worked to transfer missiles to Lebanon at a rapid pace, in anticipation of a long-term conflict, and pointed out at the same time that the party seeks to avoid a comprehensive war.
Iran is the main supporter and supplier of weapons to Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is the most powerful faction in the Tehran-led “axis of resistance” that includes irregular forces allied with it across the Middle East, and many of the party’s weapons are Iranian, Russian or Chinese models.
The sources, all of whom asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, did not provide details about the weapons or who they were being purchased from, and Hezbollah’s media office did not respond to requests for comment.
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, said that despite the disruption to Hezbollah’s operations due to the attacks of the past days, the party’s cohesive organizational structure helps it to be able to withstand the maximum degree.
“This is the most powerful enemy Israel has ever faced on the battlefield, not because of numbers and technology but because of resilience,” he added.
Powerful missiles
The fighting has escalated this week, and on Tuesday Israel announced the assassination of another Hezbollah leader, Ibrahim Qubaisi. For its part, the party has sought to demonstrate its ability to continue operations, firing hundreds of rockets toward Israel in attacks on targets farther away than ever before.
The party said on Wednesday that it had targeted an Israeli intelligence base near Tel Aviv, more than 100 kilometers from the border, and sirens sounded in Tel Aviv when air defense systems intercepted one surface-to-surface missile.
The party has not yet said whether it fired any of its more powerful precision-guided missiles, such as the Iranian-made Fateh-110 ballistic missile, which has a range of 250 to 300 kilometers.
According to a research paper published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington in 2018, the Fateh-110 missile possessed by Hezbollah is equipped with a warhead weighing 450 to 500 kilograms.
One of the sources, a senior security official, said Hezbollah’s rocket attacks were possible because the chain of command continued to function despite some brief confusion after the group’s pagers and walkie-talkies were blown up.
The three sources said Hezbollah’s ability to communicate is supported by the party’s own landline telephone network, which they described as crucial to its communications and which they said continues to operate, as well as other devices.
Many Hezbollah fighters carried older models of pagers, for example, which were not affected by last week’s attack.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the information, although most of the injuries from pager explosions occurred in Beirut, far from the front.
Hezbollah has intensified its use of pagers after its fighters were banned in February from using cellphones on the battlefield following the killing of two leaders.
The senior security official noted that if the chain of command breaks down, there are fighters on the front lines who are trained to operate in small, independent groups made up of small villages near the border and capable of fighting Israeli forces for long periods.
This is precisely what happened in 2006, during the previous war between Hezbollah and Israel, when Hezbollah fighters held out for weeks, some in front-line villages that Israel had invaded.
Israel says it has stepped up its attacks to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities and secure the return of tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to their homes near the Lebanese border, which they fled when Hezbollah began firing rockets on October 8.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has said it prefers a negotiated agreement for Hezbollah to withdraw from the border area, but is prepared to continue the bombing campaign if the group refuses and is not ruling out military options.
Hezbollah’s resilience means the fighting has raised fears of a protracted war that could involve the United States, a close ally of Israel, and also Iran, especially if Israel launches a ground offensive in southern Lebanon and gets sucked in.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned on Monday of the “irreversible” consequences of a full-scale war in the Middle East.
A US State Department official said Washington does not agree with Israel’s escalation strategy and seeks to calm tensions.
underground arsenal
The two sources who spoke to Reuters said that rockets were fired on Sunday from areas in southern Lebanon, despite these specific areas having been targeted by Israel shortly before, indicating in their view that some of Hezbollah’s weapons are carefully hidden.
Hezbollah is believed to have an underground arsenal and last month released photos that appeared to show fighters driving trucks loaded with launchers through tunnels. The sources did not specify whether the rockets fired on Sunday were launched from underground.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said the barrage of rockets fired at Lebanon last Monday destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah missiles and ammunition.
The Israeli military said what was struck on Monday included long-range cruise missiles, missiles with warheads capable of carrying up to 100 kilograms of explosives, short-range rockets and booby-trapped drones.
Reuters could not independently verify what the Israeli military said.
Boaz Shapira, a researcher at the Alma Center, an Israeli research body specializing in Hezbollah affairs, said that Israel has not yet targeted strategic sites such as long-range missile sites and drones.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere near the end of that,” he continued.
The US Congress report said Hezbollah’s arsenal is believed to include about 150,000 missiles, while Craig said the most powerful and longest-range ballistic missiles are stored underground.
Hezbollah has spent years digging a network of tunnels that Israeli estimates stretch for hundreds of kilometers; the group has not issued a statement on the scope of the impact of the Israeli strikes since Monday.
The Israeli military said Monday’s air strikes targeted rocket launch sites hidden under homes in southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah has insisted it does not place military infrastructure near civilians.
Huge tunnels
Earlier, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said that the party’s arsenal of weapons and tunnels had expanded since the 2006 war, especially precision-guided systems, and party officials confirmed that a small part of the arsenal had been used in combat over the past year.
Israeli officials say Hezbollah’s military infrastructure is deeply embedded in villages and communities in southern Lebanon, with ammunition and rocket launchers stored in homes across the region. Israel has been bombing some of these villages for months in a bid to weaken the group’s capabilities.
But confirmed details about the tunnel network remain scarce.
A 2021 report by the Israeli Alma Center, which specializes in Hezbollah affairs, claimed that Iran and North Korea helped build the tunnel network in the wake of the 2006 war.
Israel has already struggled to eliminate Hamas leaders and its self-reliant fighting units in tunnels it has dug throughout the Gaza Strip.
“This is one of the biggest challenges we face in Gaza, and it is certainly something we could face in Lebanon,” said Carmit Valensi, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
Craig said that unlike Gaza, where most tunnels are dug by hand in sandy soil, the tunnels in Lebanon were dug deep into the mountain rocks.
He added, “Reaching it is much more difficult than Gaza, and even destroying it is more difficult.”