What Hezbollah Is

What it is

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shiite party that also runs a social service network and an army. ¹ It came out of Lebanon's civil war, which ran from 1975 to 1990, when Shiite Lebanese who took Iran's 1979 revolution as their model picked up weapons against the Israeli presence in the south. ¹ Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps supplied the money and the training for the new militia. ¹ In 1985 the group put its ideology on paper, vowing to push Western powers out of Lebanon and pledging allegiance to Iran's supreme leader. ¹ Its first candidates ran for parliament in 1992, and eight of them won. ^{1 2}

Hezbollah carried out the 1983 suicide bombing of the barracks housing American and French troops in Beirut, which killed more than three hundred people. ¹ It was blamed for the 1994 car bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed eighty-five. ¹ The Clinton administration designated it a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. ¹ The European Union designated its military wing, and only its military wing, in 2013. ¹ That same year Hezbollah publicly confirmed it had entered the Syrian civil war on Bashar al-Assad's side, sending roughly 7,000 fighters, most of whom it pulled back by 2019. ¹

The money comes from Tehran and Hezbollah has never been shy about it. The State Department says Iran sends the group hundreds of millions of dollars a year. ¹ The Treasury put the figure above $700 million annually as of 2018. ² Hezbollah's own secretary general said the group's "weapons and rockets" come from the Islamic Republic. ²

That money made Hezbollah the most heavily armed non-state actor in the world. ^{1 2} As of 2020, by a Center for Strategic and International Studies count, Hezbollah held at least 130,000 rockets and missiles. ² By June 2024 outside experts were putting the number at 150,000 to 200,000. ¹ Hassan Nasrallah claimed 100,000 fighters in 2021, a figure analysts disputed. ¹

After Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, Hezbollah began firing rockets, mortars, and drones across the Lebanese border. ¹ On September 17, 2024, pagers carried by Hezbollah personnel detonated across Lebanon. ³ Lebanon's health ministry counted at least twelve dead, among them two children and two health workers, and at least 2,800 wounded. ³ Some devices went off in grocery stores and other public places. ³ American officials and former Israeli officials told reporters Israel was responsible; the Israeli military did not comment. ³ Human Rights Watch said customary humanitarian law bars booby traps precisely because civilians pick up ordinary objects, and called for an impartial investigation. ³ Later that month an Israeli airstrike killed Nasrallah, who had run Hezbollah for more than thirty years. ¹ Israeli bombardment in October 2024 killed more than 2,500 people in Lebanon and displaced over a million. ¹ Naim Qassem, Nasrallah's longtime deputy, took the job in October 2024, and a US-brokered ceasefire followed in November. ¹

Why it still matters

Hezbollah sits inside the Lebanese state. In the May 2022 election the Hezbollah-led bloc took 61 of parliament's 128 seats, ten fewer than in 2018 and short of the majority it had held, while Hezbollah and its ally Amal kept all 27 seats reserved for the Shiite sect. ⁴ When Nawaf Salam formed a 24-minister government on February 8, 2025, the finance ministry went to Yassin Jaber, backed by Amal and Hezbollah. ⁵ On September 5, 2025, when the cabinet took up disarmament, five Shia ministers walked out of the meeting. ⁶

The cabinet had approved the principle of disarming militias in August 2025. ⁶ Army chief Rodolphe Haykal presented a plan that September, and the cabinet welcomed it without passing it or setting a date, while the army warned its own capabilities were limited and execution would depend on what it had in the way of materiel and personnel. ⁶ On January 8, 2026, the Lebanese army announced it had achieved the objectives of phase one, clearing non-state weapons from the strip between the Israeli border and the Litani River, with unexploded ordnance and tunnels still to go. ⁷ Israel called the effort encouraging and far from sufficient, and said Hezbollah was rearming faster than it was being disarmed. ⁷ Israel had withdrawn from all but five border positions, and the IDF reported more than 1,200 operations in southern Lebanon since the truce, killing over 390 Hezbollah operatives. ⁷

Israel still holds five positions inside Lebanon and is still striking Lebanese territory, well over a year into a ceasefire. ⁷ Hezbollah says disarming while that continues means handing in the only weapons that have ever made Israel stop, in exchange for a bargain the other side has not kept. ⁶ Qassem has gone further, raising the prospect of civil war if the government forces the issue. ⁶

Our view: an army that answers to Tehran and a government that answers to Lebanese voters cannot both be the last word on whether the country goes to war. President Joseph Aoun has said decisions of war and peace belong to the state alone. ⁷ Hezbollah decided otherwise in October 2023, when it opened fire across the border on its own authority. ¹

In February 2026 the United States and Israel began a military campaign against Iran, and after Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed, Hezbollah launched strikes at Israel in retaliation and the ceasefire collapsed. ¹ Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ten-day truce on April 16, 2026. ¹

The words you'll hear

The 1985 manifesto. Hezbollah's founding ideological document, which pledged to expel Western powers from Lebanon and swore allegiance to Iran's supreme leader. ¹

The IRGC. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which funded and trained Hezbollah at its founding. ¹

Secretary-general. Hezbollah's top office. Hassan Nasrallah held it for more than thirty years until Israel killed him in September 2024; Naim Qassem has held it since October 2024. ¹

Foreign terrorist organization. The US State Department designation applied to Hezbollah in 1997. The EU listed only the military wing, in 2013. ¹

The Shiite duo. Hezbollah and Amal, the two parties that between them hold all 27 Shiite seats in Lebanon's parliament and place ministers in its cabinets. ^{4 5}

Phase one. The first stage of the Lebanese army's disarmament plan, covering the land between the Israeli border and the Litani River, declared complete on January 8, 2026. ⁷