[News] Hezbollah’s difficult war: How southern Lebanon rewrote the rules of battle

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Hezbollah’s difficult war: How southern Lebanon rewrote the rules of battle

The traditional and even contemporary definitions of warfare struggle to
explain what has happened and is still happening in southern Lebanon

The Cradle's Military Correspondent
<https://thecradle.co/authors/the-cradles-military-correspondent>

MAY 9, 2026 -
https://thecradle.co/articles/hezbollahs-difficult-war-how-southern-lebanon-rewrote-the-rules-of-battle
Photo Credit: The Cradle

Hezbollah is not merely resisting. In the strictly military sense, it is
reshaping the grammar of war itself, fighting through flexible rules of
engagement that shift with time, terrain, and circumstance.

There is no fixed defense in the familiar sense, nor even a clearly
flexible one. There are no raids or fire-support patterns as defined in
military manuals. Everything in the south today feels different from what
came before, and that shift has taken place not over decades, but in barely
more than a year.

On the Israeli side, the result has been unmistakable shock, accompanied by
accusations, questions, and even ridicule traded between settlers, the
army, the security establishment, and the political leadership. Only the “
ceasefire
<https://thecradle.co/articles/lebanon-under-pressure-truce-politics-and-the-limits-of-normalization>”
eased that shock, giving the occupation army the operational breathing room
it needed.

But how does Hezbollah fight now, and why does it say so little?
Militarily, the party confines itself to brief statements, stripped of the
inflated claims that often accompany Arab war communiques. They serve their
narrow purpose — reporting the operation — while the psychological war is
left to other releases and platforms operating in parallel.

*Whoever learns faster wins*

Hezbollah military commanders acknowledge that the party has learned much
from its enemy. In their telling, the well-known Islamic maxim
<https://www.islamweb.net/ar/library/content/2/2611/%25D8%25A8%25D8%25A7%25D8%25A8-%25D9%2585%25D8%25A7-%25D8%25AC%25D8%25A7%25D8%25A1-%25D9%2581%25D9%258A-%25D9%2581%25D8%25B6%25D9%2584-%25D8%25A7%25D9%2584%25D9%2581%25D9%2582%25D9%2587-%25D8%25B9%25D9%2584%25D9%2589-%25D8%25A7%25D9%2584%25D8%25B9%25D8%25A8%25D8%25A7%25D8%25AF%25D8%25A9?>
that “wisdom is the believer’s lost property” helped justify studying
Israeli methods, adapting them, and in some areas moving ahead of them.

The 2024 battle forced Lebanon’s resistance fighters to confront what more
than sixteen years without a full-scale clash with the occupation had
changed. The long absence of direct combat, compounded by the fallout from
Israel’s security war, had produced a battlefield very different from the
one Hezbollah last fought on.

There had been considerable optimism that Hezbollah’s experience in Syria,
Iraq, and Yemen, followed by its close study of the Russian-Ukrainian war,
had equipped the party with a hybrid combat doctrine blending conventional
military methods with guerrilla warfare.

That optimism did not survive the war that followed. Israel caught
Hezbollah off guard, confronting it with a mix of military and intelligence
strategies that left it paralyzed
<https://thecradle.co/articles/after-nasrallah-command-and-control-in-rapid-recovery>,
though not defeated.

*‘Five rings’*

In Operation Arrows of the North
<https://www.newarab.com/news/what-israels-arrows-north-operation-lebanon>,
between 23 and 27 September 2024, Israel applied the “five rings
<https://www.raf.mod.uk/what-we-do/centre-for-air-and-space-power-studies/aspr/apr-vol14-iss1-3-pdf/>”
principle developed by US military theorist John A. Warden III, a security
source explains to *The Cradle*. This became the clearest conceptual
framework for planning and execution, because the operation was never
limited to tactical strikes. Its aim was to create systemic effects on the
enemy’s ability to fight and recover.

The practical lesson is that dispersed tactical victories can be turned
into strategic effect when strikes are managed as part of a synchronized
and integrated plan targeting the enemy’s power structure as one
interconnected package: command, intelligence networks, logistical
structures, civilian support bases, and field forces, rather than random or
isolated targets.

This is where Warden’s theory becomes useful. Warden is regarded as one of
the most prominent military thinkers of the twentieth century. A US Air
Force officer who retired with the rank of colonel, he gained prominence
after publishing The Air Campaign in 1988, turning his thesis at the
National Defense University into an integrated operational theory.
*The English cover of The Air Campaign, of which several editions have been
published.*

For Warden, war is not merely a confrontation between opposing armies. It
is a process aimed at dismantling the enemy system from the inside out.

He therefore divided the enemy’s overall structure into five rings:
political and military leadership at the center, serving as the directing
mind and decision-maker; vital systems, including command, control,
communications, and the management of energy and information;
infrastructure, such as transport networks, energy systems, and logistical
facilities; the population, which provides the material and moral base for
sustaining war; and field forces, the outermost ring, most visible in
combat.

The essence of the theory is that synchronized, concentrated strikes
against several rings simultaneously can cause systemic paralysis greater
than that of conventional bombing against isolated targets. The idea is not
limited to air power, as was initially assumed.

It is a framework for setting operational priorities and sequencing strikes
to produce functional collapse within the enemy system, breaking its
internal balance faster than a gradual drain on its resources.

*Israel’s five-ring strike on Hezbollah*

When the “five rings” are used against adversaries that lack maneuver
flexibility or alternative command networks, their effect multiplies. A
comprehensive strike can impose human and institutional costs that reshape
the political and operational arena at the same time.

Israel proceeded from this premise through an integrated execution
structure built on intelligence gathering
<https://thecradle.co/articles/the-eyes-and-ears-that-decapitated-hezbollah>,
precise timing, and coordination between different instruments.

First, real-time intelligence — a mix of satellite imagery, aerial and
field reconnaissance, signals intelligence, and human sources — gave strike
planners a dynamic picture of target maps and supply chains.

Second, these inputs were used to build synchronized strike packages,
including air, missile, and precision-guided attacks, designed to hit command
and communications
<https://thecradle.co/articles/israels-silent-war-on-lebanon-how-digital-espionage-rewrites-the-rules-of-assassination>
nodes, ammunition depots, and supply routes within a short window that
limited the enemy’s ability to reorganize.

Third, Israel moved to consolidate the results through continued
intelligence activity and persistent surveillance, hitting resupply
networks, preventing the restoration of operational capacity during the
recovery window, and maintaining a political and operational price for any
redeployment.

At the same time, the field impact of the Israeli attack cannot be
separated from its political and social dimensions. Disabling the enemy’s
capabilities may produce internal political shifts
<https://thecradle.co/articles/israels-military-strategy-in-lebanon-escalation-propaganda-sedition>:
popular pressure, fractures inside alliances, or changes in local balances
of power.

These may then generate regional dynamics that affect the attacker’s own
ability to sustain operations. This was the additional outcome Israel was
betting on. It got nothing from it.
*The executive structure of the Israeli attack on Hezbollah, 2023–2026.*

In this context, Oded Eilam wrote
<https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/defense/article/20348411> in *Israel
Hayom* on 17 April 2026 that Israel must abandon what he called the
defensive posture of “degradation” and move instead to a strategy of
“dismantling and reassembly.” The steps required after Israel’s failures in
Lebanon, he argued, involve combining military, economic, and political
action into “a decisive fist,” with all efforts focused on achieving a
decisive outcome.

Eilam then maps the arenas he believes Israel should target. Beirut’s
southern suburb, he writes, is not merely a “Shia stronghold,” but a
“multi-layered center” of leadership, propaganda, community institutions,
and, at times, financing infrastructure — the place where Hezbollah
functions most clearly as an “organization within society,” not just an
armed force.

The Bekaa, in his reading, is less a political symbol than a depth zone of
social presence, logistics, financing, and smuggling routes, while
Baalbek-Hermel forms Hezbollah’s “strategic rear,” with training centers,
weapons storage, the Damascus–Baalbek supply axis, missile-production
workshops, and rocket depots.

He pairs this with calls to strike Hezbollah’s welfare networks, intensify
US-led political warfare, outlaw the party, dismiss its ministers, close
the Iranian embassy, apply Gulf economic pressure on Beirut, and encourage
internal Lebanese alternatives to Hezbollah’s monopoly.

*Lebanon’s new shock*

Any serious assessment of the offensive campaign must include social and
political indicators, not only firepower or logistics. These indicators
determine whether the window created by a strike can be turned into lasting
change in the enemy’s position, or whether it will remain a temporary
opening that is quickly exhausted.

This is where Israel fell into the trap of numbers and exaggeration,
becoming a victim of its own psychological war
<https://thecradle.co/articles/jedi-mind-tricks-the-enemys-cognitive-war-on-lebanon>
against the resistance.

All of this was supposed to make the next battle easy, or at least short
and contained. Instead, for nearly a month and a half, Israel found itself
replaying the same scenario its army had faced in 2024, losing soldiers,
equipment, and vehicles to enforce a reality the occupation believed it had
already settled.

All of the above was supposed to lead to an easy victory in the next
battle, or at least to an easy and rapid battle, not to a repeat, over
nearly a month and a half, of the same scenario the Israeli army faced in
2024, which drained
<https://thecradle.co/articles/weaker-than-a-spiders-web-hezbollahs-fiber-thread-traps-the-merkava>
soldiers, equipment, and vehicles in order to consolidate a reality that
the occupation thought was already behind it.

What stands out is that Israel tried to repeat the same method of action in
2026, “but it made several mistakes,” a military source in the resistance
tells *The Cradle*. The first was its firm conclusion that Arrows of the
North, followed by thousands of strikes over 15 months, had produced a
weakened Hezbollah that could barely stand in any later confrontation.

The second mistake, according to the source, was treating Hezbollah’s
visible body as the main and only body. “Israel proceeded on the basis that
it now knew everything — how could it not, when it had killed the party’s
historic secretary-general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and continued its
intelligence encirclement?” he says.

“Qualitative superiority took over Israeli minds at every level, from
decision-makers to the lowest military rank on the ground.”

On this specific point, the party worked intelligently to “let the Israeli
live his theory to the end,” the source says, while building small parallel
bodies operating in separate rings:

*“The person who transports the missile or drone from the Bekaa or Beirut
to the south is no longer the same person who delivers it to the relevant
facility. All chains were separated from one another — manufacturing,
assembly, delivery, fortification, and so on.”*

The same source explains:

*“The party’s military commanders, including some who were martyred in
assassinations during the months of ceasefire before the current
confrontation, worked in absolute secrecy, to the point that the political
level itself no longer had clear answers to many detailed questions as it
once did. We can say that we returned to the 1980s and 1990s, when the
secret of our success was that we worked amid a hostile environment on
every side: a large part of the Lebanese state, the Syrian authorities,
international forces, the Israeli occupation, and endless western and
American intelligence agencies.”*

*Israeli admissions pile up*

In an article titled <https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/h1cmeizh11x> “To
be two steps ahead of the enemy,” published by *Yedioth Ahronoth* on 7
April 2026, Shahar Segal writes that the difference between September
2024’s Operation Arrows of the North and the current reality is “not always
understood.”

In September, he argues, the Israeli army initiated the operation,
Hezbollah was surprised, and the party had not prepared for the possibility
of a deep strike against its chain of command.

“Therefore,” he writes, “it failed to fulfill its purpose.” This time,
Segal says, “the picture is reversed”: Hezbollah had prepared precisely for
that scenario, chose the initiative at the decisive moment, and has
therefore managed to function effectively even against the Israeli army’s
war machine.

Segal then returns to Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall
<https://thecradle.co/articles/zionism-without-borders-annexation-and-normalization-as-tools-of-arab-subjugation>”
doctrine. The idea, he writes, was “simple, almost cruel in its
simplicity”: not to convince the enemy, but to break his hope by building
an unshakeable reality of force, an “iron wall” against which resistance
would repeatedly break. Only when the other side internalizes that there is
no path to victory, he argues, will it stop dreaming of decision and move
toward negotiations. “This does not happen in one day,” Segal adds. “Last
time, it took about 25 years.”

He adds, “The difference between victory in battle and historical victory.”
Threats do not disappear, they change — and the most important change must
be Israel’s own initiative, depth, and forward thinking. This is so that
Tel Aviv is not merely reacting, but shaping events “two steps ahead of the
enemy.”

The results appeared in Israeli security officials’ admission, reported on
4 April 2026, that the current Lebanon campaign could end without Hezbollah
being disarmed.

“We can end the current campaign without Hezbollah being disarmed,” Israeli
military officials told
<https://www.mako.co.il/news-military/2026_q2/Article-9e012c4ded85d91027.htm>
*Mako*, adding that dismantling the organization is “a strategic objective
that will be achieved over time, and not only through military means,”
requiring economic pressure, Hezbollah’s severance from Iran, internal
Lebanese pressure, and political arrangements.

One senior officer put it more bluntly
<https://www.kipa.co.il/%25D7%2597%25D7%2593%25D7%25A9%25D7%2595%25D7%25AA/1222166-0/?>:
disarming Hezbollah would require Israel “to occupy all of Lebanon and go
village by village,” adding that “disarming Hezbollah is not the objective
of the war.”

For this reason, the army stressed “humility” in setting objectives. The
new strategy focuses instead on creating something resembling a security
belt through the wide-scale destruction of infrastructure in the first line
of border villages, similar to the “yellow line” model applied in the Gaza
Strip. The aim is to prevent residents from returning to these areas in any
settlement, especially in locations used by Hezbollah to launch rockets and
carry out attacks.

Against the backdrop of this retreat, Shira Barbivay-Shaham wrote
<https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hjnlbmb2wl> in *Yedioth Ahronoth* that
the cases of Iran in Operation Rising Lion
<https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/operation-rising-lion-first-72-hours>,
Hezbollah in the current round, and Hamas before 7 October point to “a
continuing failure and difficulty” in the Israeli intelligence community’s
ability to assess enemy readiness after a round of fighting.

This failure, she argued, applies both to intentions — the extent to which
the enemy has been deterred from entering another round and how deterrence
shapes its leadership’s decision-making — and to capabilities, including
the speed with which it can restore missile production, weapons, and
military force.

*Before the 2026 war*

Before examining the current battle and answering the urgent questions
raised by this ongoing war, it is necessary to review the situation that
preceded it.

This account draws on special field meetings with Hezbollah fighters and
some of their commanders who survived the previous war.

On the resistance side, the first point is that fighters and capabilities
remained under fire without direct responses to the occupation. “Part of
the non-response was intended to avoid revealing the new method of action
and to preserve ambiguity,” according to field officials.

“But this meant enduring sacrifices, especially in the exposed and already
known apparatus, in order to preserve the new recruits and what was below
the radar.”

The second point is the loss of important commanders and cadres who are
difficult to replace quickly; interruptions in the specialized training
chain, which had taken place in Syria, through Syria, in Iran, and inside
Lebanon itself; and logistical difficulties in manufacturing, in addition
to security, technical, and financial difficulties.

The third is the erosion of morale, while the leadership asked everyone to
remain patient despite near-daily assassinations, the continued displacement
<https://thecradle.co/articles-id/37472> of border villages, the absence of
any horizon for reconstruction, and talk of major political solutions
imposed at the expense of southerners.

The fourth is a strained social reality caused by the difficulty of
displacement options if war resumed, heavy political and media pressure,
and repeated talk of a “major defeat,” as the state accelerated steps to
end the armed presence by declaring the phase south of the Litani complete
and opening the phase north of the river.

On the Israeli side, a key factor was the breathing room the occupation
army had between the Gaza truce in October 2025 and the outbreak of war on
Iran in March 2026 — almost four uninterrupted months. This period allowed
it initially to restore force readiness, rotate and rest reservists, resume
scheduled training, reevaluate all fronts, and finalize a series of
military and security appointments and adjustments.

The second is the implementation of scheduled and emergency maneuvers and
exercises <https://www.inn.co.il/news/686201>, local and external, across
multiple scenarios. Among the most prominent were landing exercises in the
West Bank <https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1hqvgfxzl>, whose geography in
some respects resembles the southern, Bekaa, and Syrian environments,
suggesting that the army was preparing for any major offensive or defensive
action.

The third was a renewed sense of confidence inside Israel’s
military-security complex. Despite the length of the war and its mounting
social and economic costs, the army, security establishment, and connected
defense industries were still riding a wave of victory euphoria, convinced
that any front could be brought to heel.

The fourth was the visible push by the Ministry of Defense and Israeli arms
manufacturers to replenish depleted munitions and expand local production,
alongside the rollout of the Iron Beam laser system
<https://mod.gov.il/en/press-releases/press-room/iron-beam-laser-system-development-complete-first-capability-delivery-to-idf-scheduled-for-december-30-2025?>,
presented as the start of a new “laser age” for protecting Israel’s skies,
and intense intelligence activity across all fronts.
*A conceptual sequence of the reality before the 2026 war: the right column
for the resistance, the left for the occupation*

*Hezbollah under constraint*

Hezbollah and its men were therefore forced to operate under a severe
imbalance: lost deterrence, deep wounds, an open security war, and a
diminished arsenal of strengths.

They also faced a harsh field and security reality. Surveillance was
constant — from the air, space, sea, and agents on the ground. Israel had
restored the border-monitoring systems Hezbollah had worked hard to destroy
during the support front, while American, British
<https://thecradle.co/articles/britains-lebanon-surveillance-network-a-digital-map-for-war>,
French, and Arab intelligence activity in Lebanon intensified from the air
and on the ground.

There were also building demolitions, sudden incursions, kidnappings, and
captures. The South’s lower population density deprived the resistance of a
human cover that had long aided its work. Large quantities of weapons were
confiscated or destroyed, either through direct Israeli action or by
international forces and the Lebanese army at American request. On top of
this came political, security, and logistical restrictions imposed by the
army and the state.

All of this came amid a difficult reality of armament and funding.
Traditional funding and armament lines — Iran to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon
<https://thecradle.co/articles/hezbollah-without-damascus-adapting-in-the-wake-of-a-severed-supply-line>
— had been almost completely severed. Reliance on self-manufacturing was
difficult, and major efforts were required to restore what had been damaged
in previous confrontations, including the support-front war and
Hezbollah’s 2024
Battle
<https://www.aljazeera.net/encyclopedia/2024/11/27/%25D8%25AA%25D9%2581%25D8%25A7%25D8%25B5%25D9%258A%25D9%2584-%25D8%25A7%25D8%25AA%25D9%2581%25D8%25A7%25D9%2582-%25D9%2588%25D9%2582%25D9%2581-%25D8%25A5%25D8%25B7%25D9%2584%25D8%25A7%25D9%2582-%25D8%25A7%25D9%2584%25D9%2586%25D8%25A7%25D8%25B1-%25D8%25A8%25D9%258A%25D9%2586?>
of the ‘Possessors of Great Strength' — the name it gave to the ground
battle in southern Lebanon.

There was also a full reassessment of the supply chain for military,
security, logistical, and communications acquisitions, with the work
governed by the principle of doubting everything until proven otherwise.


Costs had risen across the board: smuggling, direct military manufacturing,
dual-use manufacturing, and other capabilities. This came amid severe
financial pressure caused by the sudden and enormous number of martyrs,
wounded, prisoners, and their families.

On this last point, military and civilian officials note an important
detail: for the first time, Hezbollah faced a major obligation in the file
of martyrs and wounded. In the war to liberate the south from 1982 to 2000,
the party offered around 1,284 martyrs and thousands of wounded over 18
years.

In the 2006 war, around 1,200 people were martyred, of whom no more than
300 were resistance fighters, while the rest were civilians — around 900 —
alongside hundreds of wounded among the resistance over roughly one month.

For comparison, the Israeli side exaggerated at the time by speaking of
600–800 Hezbollah fighters martyred, while estimates by the state and the
UN stood at 500.

In the Syrian war between 2011 and 2024, fewer than 2,000 Lebanese and
Syrians belonging to the organizational body were martyred, with thousands
wounded, over roughly 13 years. In the ‘Possessors of Great Strength,’ at
least 2,500 resistance fighters were martyred within 66 days, out of 4,047
Lebanese victims.

Thousands were wounded, including about 4,000 within days, between 17 and
23 September 2024, among them 300 critical cases and around 40 martyrs.
They had been preceded by around 400 during the months of the “support
front,” between October 2023 and August 2024.

In the ongoing war, there are no precise figures, but Lebanese estimates
speak of fewer than 1,000 resistance fighters martyred out of 2,545 martyrs
in Lebanon up to 21 April 2026, according to the Lebanese Ministry of
Health, with more than 7,700 wounded. These were preceded by hundreds of
martyrs during 15 months of the “ceasefire agreement.”

Alongside the heavy burden placed by the 2023 and 2024 confrontations on
Hezbollah’s financial budget and its medical and hospitalization capacity,
these numbers exceeded internal absorption capacity in a very short period.
In proportional terms, the previous war became the most dangerous and
punishing war Hezbollah has faced since its founding.

Beyond the assassination of commanders and the security strikes, the party
gave in two months what it had not given in decades, all within a narrow
geographical and temporal space.

“But by doing so, it prevented a breaking event: the reoccupation of the
south after the major strikes and shocks. Today, it is entering the current
war from the point at which it ended the previous one,” says an informed
source.

This is happening while Hezbollah has deliberately worked in a way that
noticeably reduces human losses in its ranks. While the “Possessors of
Great Strength” battles resulted in more than 200 martyrs per day in their
first weeks, the current confrontation has produced a different pattern.

It is true that Tel Aviv’s claims — the elimination of 1,700 members, at a
rate of 37 per day — are exaggerated in this war. But even in the worst
estimates, this number remains less than half the rates Israel claimed in
the previous war: more than 4,000 members in 66 days, at a rate of 60 per
day.
*A conceptual sequence of the reality before the 2026 war: the right column
for the resistance, the left for the occupation*

*Nasrallah’s survival plan*

In this clip, the martyred commander Haitham Ali al-Tabtabai
<https://thecradle.co/articles/hezbollah-confirms-assassination-of-chief-of-staff-by-israel>
— assassinated on 23 April 2025 — speaks about redefining deterrence. Until
his martyrdom, he was the first military commander responsible for
restoration, drawing lessons, and preparing for the next war, with a
prominent role also played by “Sayyed Sadeq,” the martyr Youssef Ismail
Hashem
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-says-strike-beirut-killed-hezbollah-southern-front-commander-2026-04-01/>,
assassinated in early April 2026.

Behind this discussion, a former official recalls to *The Cradle* the 70–30
split that governed Hezbollah’s armament logic. The party sought to fill
its depots with many times more than it needed, on the basis that the
probability of the Israelis reaching a large part of them, through
intelligence or military action, remained high.

On this basis, work proceeded according to recommendations from the party’s
late secretary-general, Nasrallah: if the occupation reached 70 percent of
the capabilities, the remaining 30 percent had to be sufficient to confront
Israel for a long period.

After Israel — specifically its former minister of security, Yoav Gallant,
in his professional capacity as the official responsible for precise
assessment — announced the destruction of up to 80 percent of Hezbollah’s
capabilities, and then lived for around half a year in the euphoria of this
“achievement,” the “devastating news” reached the relevant Israeli circles
in mid-2025.

At the time, Israeli escalation reached its peak in July 2025, alongside
warnings by US envoy Tom Barrack of a war that would “leave nothing
behind.” The deadline was then extended until 1 January 2026 because the
first mission in Iran — the 12-day war
<https://thecradle.co/articles/iran-and-israel-at-war> — had not been
completed, and Israel needed more preparation, especially since the Gaza
war was still raging; its main momentum stopped on 10 October 2025.

Behind the Israeli frenzy, was the discovery that the ratio had been
reversed: Hezbollah’s remaining capabilities were not below 30 percent, but
above 70 percent. The party itself reached that assessment only after
months of exhaustive work inspecting depots and facilities, identifying
what had survived, what had been disabled or partly damaged, and subjecting
everything to a full security review.

The figure circulated inside Hezbollah as a broad political assessment,
giving senior officials and decision-makers a general sense of the party’s
remaining capabilities without exposing the details. It later reached the
Israelis. “The process took months because it was complex and difficult,
not a simple inventory of warehouses full of goods,” a security source
says. “It is natural for the Israeli to know the number — but not the
details behind it.”

Israeli assessments nevertheless pointed to the same conclusion: Hezbollah
was rebuilding. Reports cited renewed efforts
<https://israel-alma.org/hezbollahs-weapons-recovery-efforts-in-syria-january-2026/?u>
to move weapons through Syria, maritime channels, third-country routes, and
dual-use supply lines, while Israeli media claims suggested the party had
already restored significant parts of its military capabilities.

In other words, the previous war, for all its severity, had failed to
deliver the required outcome. For Israel, that meant another round was
necessary.

The Israeli leadership did not tell its public this plainly. Doing so would
have exposed a major failure just as Israel had entered its first direct,
large-scale confrontation with Iran and drawn the US in alongside it. It
also undercuts Israel’s posture of surprise at the Hezbollah now facing it.
Officers and soldiers on the ground may indeed be surprised, but only
because what their leadership told them does not match what they see in
battle.

On the financial front, concerned figures say that before Operation Al-Aqsa
Flood and after the Syrian war, Hezbollah’s leaders had reviewed the
financial situation with the Iranians. The conclusion was that the “large
expansion” in funding caused by the battles in Syria now required a
pre-emptive plan to absorb later shocks.

As a result, reduction and austerity measures were decided on the
assumption that a major event could occur soon, perhaps even affecting Iran
itself. It was therefore better to begin reducing the budget early,
voluntarily, and in peacetime, before the deficit itself became a major
shock to the party, its cadres, and its supporters, according to the
sources.

These sources recall a speech in which Nasrallah threatened to starve the
Israelis if they decided to wage a war of starvation against the party.
These sources also point to an incident they say was never reported
publicly: an Israeli strike on crates unloaded from an Iranian plane in
Damascus.

According to their account, Israel believed the crates contained weapons;
they were carrying cash. For this reason, they say, “the Sayyed established
a special deterrence equation at the time, and the incident was not
repeated.”

Without that plan and the deterrence equation behind it, Hezbollah’s
position today would be far more difficult, especially given the scale of
care required for the wounded, the martyrs, and their families. Added to
this is the prisoners’ file, which Hezbollah thought it had closed in 2006
but which has now reopened on a far larger scale, placing the resistance
once again before the test of liberating land and captives.

*From beneath the ashes*

After the last war, Hezbollah entered a major internal review under the
weight of difficult questions. The decision was to start again from zero.
Everything was placed back on the table, including strategy itself and the
meaning of defense. From that review came the plan for “how we will fight”
in the next battle, after it became clear that the question was not whether
another confrontation would come, but when.

“There must be fast learning and high flexibility. A mixture of everything
must be blended,” military sources say. That was the first field lesson.

As for the second lesson, it was “building parallel bodies. In every
mission there is more than one body: if one is eliminated, the second
continues, then the third, the fourth, and so on. What matters is that the
work does not stop for a single moment.”

Time was short, and the lessons were hard-earned: the lived experience of
2024 and 2025; the Gaza front, where Israel rapidly adapted its tactics and
began fighting with methods closer to guerrilla warfare; and the surprises
it prepared for battle, including quadcopter drones that exhausted
resistance fighters.

Added to this were Israel’s operations in southern Syria
<https://thecradle.co/articles/southern-syria-where-israel-redraws-the-levant-through-water-and-gas>,
the challenges created by the Israeli presence there, and the wider war on
Iran.

All of this opened weighty files for Hezbollah’s military command,
alongside the Iranian officers responsible for assessment, training,
funding, and cooperation.

Amid the pace of events, the continuing Israeli killings in Lebanon, and
the local and regional pressures already described — including matters that
can only be hinted at, or left entirely unsaid — Hezbollah had to draw the
broad lines of the next battle.

In the end, through this mentality, the familiar resolve of Hezbollah’s
fighters, and the impulse for revenge embedded in the Shia political
experience
<https://thecradle.co/articles/under-fire-not-divided-why-irans-ethnic-front-has-not-cracked>,
the party was able to rise again in this war and surprise friend before
enemy.

Like the phoenix, it emerged from beneath the ashes. But what were the
details of that war, and how was it prepared?
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