With a monthly budget of tens of millions of dollars, Hezbollah saw a new war with Israel as inevitable and had been arming itself for months
Hezbollah launched drones and missiles at Israel on Monday to avenge the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, drawing Lebanon into the war that has raged across the Middle East. Six sources familiar with the Lebanese Shiite militia's preparations told Reuters the group had spent months rebuilding its arsenal of missiles and drones, with support from Tehran and its own arms factories, to prepare for a new war with Israel.
Affected but not completely neutralized after the 2024 war with Israel, the movement founded in 1982 by Iran's Revolutionary Guards had concluded that a new round of fighting was inevitable and that this time it could face an existential threat, the sources said.
Reuters spoke to three Lebanese sources with knowledge of Hezbollah's activities, two foreign officials in Lebanon and an Israeli army (IDF) official.
According to the sources, although the decision to attack Israel on Monday took some officials in the organization by surprise, Hezbollah was preparing its military stockpiles and command and control structure for a possible rematch with Israel.
Monthly budget of 50 million dollars
For this purpose, it used a monthly budget of 50 million dollars, most of the money coming from Iran and being allocated for the salaries of the fighters, said a Lebanese source who was informed about the financial and military activities of the group. One of the foreign officials confirmed the $50 million budget.
It is unclear at this time how long Hezbollah relied on this monthly budget and where it stands in relation to past financial resources.
The group said funds from Iran helped finance rents for people displaced by the 2024 war. About 60,000 Lebanese, mostly from the Shia Muslim community from which Hezbollah draws its popular support, have remained displaced over the past year, their homes still in ruins.
Hezbollah has also made efforts to replenish its stockpile of drones and missiles through local production, the first Lebanese source, foreign officials and Israeli military official said. The latter said Hezbollah used Iranian funding to both smuggle weapons and manufacture its own weapons, but its production capacity was diminished.
The second foreign official said that before the war began these days, the group had stationed in southern Lebanon new missiles and logistical materials made in Iran.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told Reuters that Hezbollah “still had a lot of weapons left” and was also trying to rearm. “They were trying to smuggle and we were stopping it,” Shoshani said.
US-brokered ceasefire in November
In 2024, the two-month war ended with a United States-brokered truce. Hezbollah stopped attacking Israel, which continued attacks on what it described as Hezbollah's efforts to rebuild its military capabilities. In addition, Israel maintained troops at five points in southern Lebanon.
Also last year, Lebanon began confiscating Hezbollah weapons, but Israel said the organization was arming itself faster than it was disarming.
In a statement to Reuters weeks before Hezbollah entered the regional war, the first Lebanese source confirmed that the group was rebuilding its military capabilities “in parallel” with the campaign launched by Israel to destroy them.
