While Hezbollah continues to be represented in the Lebanese government, Israel’s devastating “Operation Northern Arrows” campaign has significantly weakened the terrorist group not only militarily, but politically and financially as well, according to Israeli experts.
Israel eliminated as many as 4,000 Hezbollah operatives over the 11-month operation, including senior leaders such as Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, before a ceasefire went into effect on Nov. 27, 2024. The terrorist also lost the majority of its strategic weapons, according to Israeli military assessments.
While weakened significantly, the Lebanese government still allowed Hezbollah into its ranks despite pressure from the Trump administration to leave them on the outside. Hezbollah and its Shi’ite allies from the Amal Movement still retain five senior ministerial positions in the 24-minister government formed by Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Feb. 9, 2025.
“Even as [U.S deputy presidential special envoy to the Middle East] Morgan Ortagus warned against a Hezbollah presence in government, the Lebanese are world champions at bypassing international demands, and in a sophisticated way, got them in,” said Lt. Col. (res.) Sarit Zehavi, founder and president of the Alma Research and Education Center.
Despite this, however, Zehavi noted that critically, Hezbollah no longer has veto power over the Lebanese political system as they did in previous governments.
This, plus the fact that Hezbollah is much weaker than it used to be militarily, with most of its leadership gone, represents a “golden opportunity” to really bring change to Lebanon, she told JNS.
Dr. Jaques Neriah, senior fellow Middle East affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, concurred, telling JNS that Hezbollah’s political influence has weakened.
After being defeated by Israel, Hezbollah finds itself in a very difficult position not only politically, but financially as well, added Neriah, who was raised in Lebanon and served for 24 years in Israel’s intelligence community.
Hezbollah’s independent extraterritorial banking system, known as “Qard al-Hassan” (Arabic for “good loan”), has collapsed, he said.
“This bank had two million clients, its own ATM machines and thirty offices,” he explained. Most of these offices were destroyed by Israel, ” Which put Hezbollah in dire straits because they cannot return customers’ gold and jewelry,” he continued.
(The bank used a pawn system whereby Lebanese would store their gold and jewelry as collateral and receive interest-free loans.)
This, said Neriah, caused Hezbollah to attempt to fly cash into Lebanon from Iran. “However, Israel warned the United States that it would bomb the tarmac of the Beirut airport, so this practice stopped. Therefore, Hezbollah is in deep financial crisis,” he added.
Adding to Hezbollah’s woes is the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, Neriah told JNS.
“They no longer have a territorial link between Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. This also hinders their logistics with regard to obtaining weapons, which were stored in Syrian tunnels. This was an important strategic asset,” he said.
At present, the terrorist group is split into two factions, according to Neriah. One branch acknowledges the group’s defeat by Israel and is willing to turn their weapons over and integrate into Lebanon as a political party per United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, he said.
The other group believes Hezbollah’s sole legitimacy lies in fighting Israel, and that if they stop doing so, they have no right to exist as a movement, he added.
According to Neriah it is this latter group that is behind the recent launching of rockets into Israel from Lebanon, despite the terrorist organization’s denials of responsibility.
Their goal is twofold, he said: To show that Hezbollah is still present, and to push Israel to act [militarily] in order to convince the Lebanese public that the government has no power, and can’t push Israel out of Lebanon.
“According to their logic, if the government can’t do so, there is no reason to abide by the ceasefire, and the ‘resistance’ can resume,” said Neriah.
As to why the Lebanese army is failing to rein in Hezbollah and seize its weapons per the ceasefire arrangement, Neriah attributed it to the fact that some 60% of Lebanese soldiers are Shi’ite Muslims, with most having roots in Southern Lebanon. Thus in many cases, he said, confronting Hezbollah means soldiers taking up arms against their own families.
This being the case, and with Neriah assessing that the terrorist group will not disarm voluntarily, Israel will be required to maintain a military presence in Southern Lebanon “for a long time,” he said.
Dr. Edy Cohen, a research fellow at the Israel Center for Grand Strategy and an expert on the Arab world, told JNS that pre-war Hezbollah under Nasrallah and the Hezbollah of today are effectively different organizations.
“Hezbollah has never been this weak. This is the first time they are struggling,” said Cohen, who like Neriah grew up in Lebanon.
According to Cohen, that Hezbollah still has ministers in the government along with Amal is irrelevant due to the current circumstances the terrorist group finds itself in.
With the death of Nasrallah, Hezbollah was forced to accept the election of Joseph Aoun as president in January, and the formation of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s government, even as both officials publicly called for Hezbollah to be disarmed, he noted.
Hezbollah, he said, has essentially been reduced to a social welfare organization using whatever funding it has left to assist their supporters impacted by the war.
Nevertheless, like Neriah Cohen believes that the Lebanese army will never fight Hezbollah. He shared that when he lived in Beirut, a neighboring family had a child in the Lebanese army while two others were members of Hezbollah.
“Most of the Lebanese soldiers are Shi’ite. They are poor and uneducated so they go to the army as well as to Hezbollah,” he said. In a very real way, Hezbollah and the Lebanese Armed Forces are related, he added.
Despite this, however, Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon has been dramatically reduced, he continued.
“Lebanon’s citizens are now openly speaking against the organization and against Nasrallah and against Naim Qassem,” Nasrallah’s replacement, he told JNS. “The Lebanese wouldn’t dare do so when Nasrallah was alive. Nobody is afraid of Hezbollah anymore.”