As Hezbollah Steps Up Attacks, Who Really Calls The Shots?

When rocket fire from Lebanon hit the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, it damaged a bus and left a man in his 50s with a serious shrapnel wound to his face, according to emergency services.

Just 2 kilometers from the border, Kiryat Shmona is in the direct firing line of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group based in Lebanon that's deemed a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States.

The March 23 strike was not the first on the town by Hezbollah since it attacked Israel three weeks ago after Israel launched air strikes on Iran on February 28.

Despite an intense Israeli military campaign in response, Hezbollah appears to be not only resilient but is even stepping up its campaign.

"Since Hezbollah joined the fighting on March 2…there has been a continuous increase in the scope of attacks, with a shift to higher and more consistent levels of activity in recent days," Israeli think tank Alma said in its daily war report on March 23.

What's Behind Hezbollah's Resilience?

Hezbollah entered the current war severely weakened by its 2023-24 fighting with Israel.

But analysts have said Iran was able to partially rebuild it, while organizational changes creating greater autonomy for individual units have helped the group better absorb repeated losses of leaders.

"Hezbollah's leadership had spent months quietly rearming -- drawing on a monthly budget estimated at around $50 million, replenishing rockets and drones through Iranian funding and local production," wrote Guy Itzhaki, a former anti-terrorism chief for Israeli military intelligence, in a paper on March 15.

However, he added that the current conflict was "pushing the organization closer to a battered insurgency than to an unbeaten 'resistance army,' even if its core force remains substantial."

Heiko Wimmen, a Beirut-based analyst who heads the International Crisis Group's Iraq/Syria/Lebanon project, told RFE/RL the reorganization of Hezbollah was "to some extent what they try to communicate to the outside world after 2024, that [idea of] going back to the roots of resistance."

"You just make it clear to the enemy that occupation and offensive warfare would be very, very costly and [would] not give you any results. So, with that you go back to the original model of guerrilla warfare, which, as you can see now, they're still good at," he added.

Indeed, the latest attack on Kiryat Shmona came just days after four people were injured when a Hezbollah rocket hit an apartment block in the town. The group says it has managed to strike the town, which has a population of 25,000 people, on seven occasions.

"Hezbollah is seeking a 'victory image' that, from its perspective, will be achieved by causing Israeli residents in communities near the border to leave," the Alma think tank said, noting also the group's continuing ability to attack Israeli soldiers in Lebanon.

All this comes after a three-week Israeli campaign that, according to Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief Eyal Zamir, has struck "2,000 targets, dozens of weapons depots, and eliminated hundreds of terrorists."

The Israeli attacks, mostly air strikes but also some ground operations, have killed more than 1,000 people and displaced around 1 million, according to the Lebanese authorities.

The Revolutionary Guards

Israel's military response also included a strike on a four-star downtown Beirut hotel that Israel said killed five senior commanders from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on March 8.

The IDF said the commanders were involved in aiding Hezbollah with financing and intelligence, highlighting how Iran not only bankrolls but also exerts influence on the group.

It was followed by reports that Russia had evacuated more than 100 Iranians, thought to include diplomats and embassy staff, on a special flight from Lebanon.

Wimmen, the Beirut-based analyst, indicated it was likely at least some of these people were also IRGC figures fleeing future Israeli strikes. It's not clear if others remain or if they are now working remotely.

In a TV interview on March 22, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said the IRGC was still directly commanding Hezbollah. It was, he said, "managing the military operation in Lebanon" after its members entered the country illegally using "forged passports."

Salam's government is under pressure from Israel to take action against Hezbollah, but Lebanon's military ability to do so is limited and any action could also risk of sparking civil strife within the country.

Wimmen said it was hard to gauge to what degree the IRGC controlled Hezbollah but that its influence has certainly grown since the group's former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli air strike in 2024.

"I think it's pretty well established and credible that he and Khamenei would talk on eye level," he said, referring to Iran's former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli air strike on February 28.

"It's very clear -- and it would be nonsense to expect anything else -- that this balance, that the needle there, has shifted significantly toward the IRGC after Nasrallah and all the other senior [Hezbollah] leaders were assassinated," Wimmen added.