Hezbollah has spent the past three months getting ready for a possible return to fighting with Israel, funded in part by a fresh injection of money from Iran, according to Lebanese security personnel briefed on the group's activities. The accounts were reported by Reuters.
Two Lebanese security sources told the agency that the group has used the calm that has held since June to rearm. Its priorities, they said, are obtaining explosives and building drones that can be flown into the security zone that Israeli troops now hold in southern Lebanon.
One of those sources and another person close to Hezbollah said Iran had sent the group tens of millions of dollars to strengthen its military capabilities. That sum comes on top of roughly $200 million that Reuters reported earlier this month the group had previously received from Tehran.
Hezbollah was founded in 1982 by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Since 2024 it has been hit hard in two wars with Israel, losing thousands of fighters and many senior figures, while much of its weaponry was destroyed. Political pressure for its disarmament has also grown in Beirut.
The group is also working to restore command-and-control structures that failed during major battles, according to one source and three other security officials familiar with its operations. They pointed to losses in the town of Bint Jbeil and on the strategic Ali al-Taher ridge. Operating in small units and rationing anti-tank rockets, they said, left some units isolated and struggling against Israel's remotely operated systems, including armed drones and remote-controlled vehicles. Hezbollah's media office rejected the claim that its command-and-control systems had broken down. Israel's military said it uses such systems to monitor southern Lebanon and limit risk to its troops.
The sources said Hezbollah has not yet fully prepared its stockpiles or its fighting force. This month the group acknowledged that explosives seized by Lebanese authorities were its own and meant for use against Israel. A Hezbollah official and a Lebanese security source said they were intended specifically for its explosive drones.
The buildup comes amid wider regional tension that began with the US-Israeli war with Iran in February. Hezbollah attacked Israel in support of Iran on March 2, prompting an Israeli response that led to the evacuation of many people, mostly from Hezbollah's Shi'ite Muslim base, from southern Lebanon.
Fighting largely subsided over the summer after an interim Iran-US deal brought a Lebanon ceasefire and Washington-mediated talks between Lebanon and Israel. Full-scale hostilities have not resumed even though that deal has since collapsed, though Israel continues to strike Hezbollah fighters in the south. Hezbollah is on alert for a possible US-Iran escalation that could reopen the Lebanon front.
Israel's military declined to comment, and Iran's mission to the United Nations in Geneva did not immediately respond to Reuters. A US State Department spokesman said Washington would keep squeezing Hezbollah's finances through sanctions and other measures, while a Treasury spokesperson said Iran was running out of money and ways to move it. Hezbollah has not said explicitly whether it would join a new round of fighting, but its media office said it is wary of giving Israeli leaders any justification to escalate.