The ongoing United States-Israel attack on Iran, triggered by the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader last Saturday, has rekindled military and political action between Lebanon and Israel, as Hezbollah again takes centre stage while facing the most existential crisis in its history. Every aspect of Hezbollah’s political position in Lebanon, its military capabilities, and its war plans against Israel is now under intense scrutiny from regional and domestic actors.

The Lebanon-Israel front had been relatively quiet since the last Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire was agreed in November 2024 – “quiet” meaning that while Hezbollah and the Lebanese government routinely discussed whether and how to implement the government’s plan to disarm it, Israel violated the ceasefire daily, bombing numerous targets and killing dozens of people, and occupied more pieces of Lebanese land.

All that changed overnight after Hezbollah earlier this week launched a low-intensity but highly symbolic rockets-and-drones attack against northern Israel, for which Israel retaliated with bombings that killed at least 35 Lebanese and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from some 55 villages across the south. Israel also called up more than 100,000 reserves to participate in a planned military action in Lebanon to silence Hezbollah’s weapons. The Lebanese government, unusually, decisively announced on Monday “the immediate ban of all Hezbollah security and military activities”, which would now be considered “illegal”, and demanded the party surrender its weapons.

This rekindling of the Lebanon-Israel front during the US-Israeli........

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