Hezbollah armed strength
, a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, has an exceptionally strong military wing, thought to be stronger than the Lebanese Army and equivalent to the armed strength of a medium-sized army. A hybrid force, the group maintains "robust conventional and unconventional military capabilities", and is generally considered to be the most powerful non-state actor in the world.
Estimates vary widely, but as of October 2021, Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed his organization has 100,000 trained fighters. In 2017, Janes assessed Hezbollah's strength at more than 20,000+ full-time fighters and approximately 20,000+ reservists. They are financed in part by Iran and trained by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Hezbollah's military budget is $700 million according to 2018 U.S. official estimates.
Hezbollah's primary adversary is Israel, and to a large extent its military strength is based on rockets. Hezbollah's strategy against Israel uses rockets as offensive weaponry combined with light infantry and anti-armor units to defend their firing positions in southern Lebanon. Estimates of Hezbollah's total rocket count range from 40,000 to 120,000, which is considerably more than most countries.
Hezbollah possesses limited numbers of anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, as well as thousands of anti-tank missiles. The group does not have manned aircraft, tanks, or armored vehicles in Lebanon, as they cannot counter Israeli air supremacy.
Hezbollah's tactical strengths are cover and concealment, direct fire, and preparation of fighting positions, while their weaknesses include maneuver warfare, small arms marksmanship, and air defenses. Though Hezbollah's light infantry and anti-tank squads are well-regarded, Hezbollah as a whole is "quantitatively and qualitatively" weaker than the IDF.
Sources generally agree that Hezbollah's strength in conventional warfare compares favorably to state militaries in the Arab world. A 2009 review concluded that Hezbollah was "a well-trained, well-armed, highly motivated, and highly evolved war-fighting machine" and "the only Arab or Muslim entity to successfully face the Israelis in combat."
Hezbollah typically does not discuss their military operations. Accurate and reliable information on their strengths and capabilities is often non-existent or classified. Hezbollah, Israel and others may have reasons to misstate the movement's capabilities. Estimates for Hezbollah's overall strength and manpower vary widely.
History
Formation
The Lebanese Civil War began in 1975. Three years later, the Palestine Liberation Organization occupied much southern Lebanon in an attempt to raise an army and destroy the state of Israel. Israel invaded in 1982 and shattered the PLO, but occupied southern Lebanon and created a Christian proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, to hold the territory. A narrow strip of land running the length of the Israeli border was termed the "security zone." Lebanese Shia, driven by a desire to gather forces to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, founded Hezbollah in 1982, with the organization being named and reorganized in 1985.In 1982, hundreds of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from Iran traveled to Lebanon's rugged Bekaa Valley and began training various Shiite groups, including Islamic Amal and the Dawa Party. The ongoing civil war and Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon created an environment for resistance against the Israeli forces. "The movement gained momentum quickly due to logistical, financial, and military support from both Syria and Iran" and engaged Israel in guerrilla warfare. The physical geography of southern Lebanon is green and hilly with deep valleys, which favored the defender and was ideal for Hezbollah's "classic" guerrilla warfare.
Hezbollah's initial tactical choices involved human wave attacks, similar to those used by Iran in the Iran–Iraq War in which some Hezbollah elements participated, and terrorist tactics like kidnappings, aircraft hijackings, and mass-casualty suicide attacks to hurt Israel's resolve to fight. Hezbollah engaged in short raids to harass and kill and did not try to hold territory. Although initially very successful, these choices imposed a heavy cost on Hezbollah in casualties and in public opinion.
The Central Intelligence Agency in 1985 said Hezbollah's command and control was "virtually non-existent" and described Hezbollah as not a hierarchy but defined by personal loyalties, personal rivalries, and family ties. At this time, operational decisions were inefficiently passed through multiple clerics and imams in Beirut, who were far from the front lines. Hezbollah had a military structure and separate responsibility for operations, logistics, communications, intelligence, training and recruitment. This lack of a hierarchy was similar to contemporary left-wing liberation movements.
Tactics around 1985–1986 were mainly planting landmines, detonating IEDs and occasionally gathering bands of armed men to shoot at the Israelis. Hezbollah was not able to use sniping at this time. An IDF intelligence officer described Hezbollah in the mid-1980s as a "rag-tag group" that "failed every time". A 2014 review considers the group's tactical performance during this period poor and "very amateurish." The CIA says that prior to spring 1986, Hezbollah's attacks were more "undisciplined acts of desperation" rather than military actions.
Growth
Despite these problems, Hezbollah continued to grow in size, and in 1986, the CIA considered its military strength comparable to Lebanon's major militias. The total membership of Hezbollah and closely affiliated groups grew from "several hundred" in 1983 to 2,000–3,000 in 1984 and to a few thousand in 1985. In mid-1986, Hezbollah massed 5,000 fighters for an event in the town of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley. Hezbollah was numerically smaller than Amal in 1986, but trends were favoring Hezbollah.At this time, Hezbollah had many part-time fighters and very few full-time members, making it sensitive to casualties. Hezbollah's "skill in fighting the Israeli Army and Israel's proxy militia forces", as well as the corruption and inefficiency of Hezbollah's rival Amal, were critical in building credibility and public support. In south Lebanon, Amal was widely seen as "too moderate" and accommodating of Israel, leading many Shia to back Hezbollah.
Hezbollah also received backing from pro-Hezbollah factions of Amal that had split from top Amal leadership. Assessments of Hezbollah's position at this time vary. The CIA assessed at the time that "Hezbollah’s policy of confronting Israel and its surrogates is working" and that Hezbollah held a "qualitative edge" in warfare over the SLA and Amal, while an independent review says that by 1987 Hezbollah's strategic position was deteriorating.
On April 18, 1987, a Hezbollah human wave attack on a fortified SLA outpost failed and resulted in 24 dead, killing around 5% of Hezbollah's full-time fighters in a single day. As a consequence of this setback and others like it, Hezbollah was forced to change its strategy. Outgunned by the Israelis and outspent by richer Lebanese sects and political parties, Hezbollah was forced to learn fast and reappraise its tactics, strategy, and organization.
Suicide attacks gave way to "sophisticated, coordinated, and timed attacks" and short, quick ambushes. In May 1987, Hezbollah began to coordinate infantry and artillery as combined arms, and "improved their capability to attack Israeli helicopters, and demonstrated improvements in extracting wounded from the battlefield." Hezbollah moved from squad-sized attacks around 1986 to platoon- and company-sized attacks by spring 1987, and launched a simultaneous attack on multiple targets in September 1987.
Hezbollah's attacks in the late 1980s became better planned and developed in complexity, especially in involving supporting fire. Hezbollah removed most mid-level commanders in the late 1980s, delegating their authority to local commanders, which improved both operational performance and security. Hezbollah trimmed its ranks of loosely affiliated reservists and switched its tactics to IEDs, ambushes, and indirect fire. Originally, Hezbollah was just one of several militias fighting the Israelis, but by 1985 it was preeminent. By the late 1980s, it was clearly dominant.
In May 1988, after years of rivalry and clashes, Hezbollah waged a brief but intense war with Amal for control of Beirut's southern suburbs, which at the time contained about one-quarter of Lebanon's population. As Amal was allied with Syria, Hezbollah clashed with the Syrian Army troops occupying Lebanon at that time. Hezbollah won in the streetfighting and escalated to targeted assassinations and encouraging defections, forcing Amal to seek Syrian mediation. Amal and Hezbollah have remained begrudging allies ever since.
After Hezbollah prevailed militarily, they soon imposed harsh Sharia law on their territory, such as banning coffee and unveiled women, and lost the hearts and minds of their people. Most Lebanese are not Shiite, and even most of Lebanon's Shiites do not want to live in an Islamic state. Support for Hezbollah is much higher than support for hardline Shiite religious rule.
Faced with declining public support and collapsing tourism, Hezbollah was forced to abandon its rhetoric of an Islamic republic and entered Lebanese politics in 1992. Later efforts by Hezbollah to create social institutions, rebuild homes destroyed by the fighting, and bring sewage, jobs, and electricity to Shiite areas were critical for building public support. In 1989, the Taif Accord ended the Lebanese Civil War, and allowed Hezbollah to intensify its military efforts against the IDF.
1990s
Hezbollah improved rapidly in the early 1990s, progressing from losing five fighters for every Israeli soldier killed in 1990, to 1.5 in 1993, a ratio that roughly held till the end of the decade. Hezbollah ended human-wave attacks in 1990 and began conducting attacks with two units: an assault team and a fire support team with 81 mm mortars. Accumulating combat experience was critical to this improvement in tactical proficiency. By the early 1990s, Hezbollah attacks were "characterized by careful planning and well-practiced professionalism."Hezbollah in the early 1990s performed dedicated staff work, mirroring their Israeli adversaries. Improved intelligence and reconnaissance abilities were also major drivers of better overall fighting ability. In 1992, Hassan Nasrallah took control of Hezbollah, and he is generally considered to have provided strong leadership. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hezbollah refocused on quality over quantity, substantially improved training, and accumulated more weapons: by the early 1990s, they "had amassed a significant arsenal." Their small arms at this time included AK-47 and M16 rifles, Bangalore torpedoes, hand grenades, RPGs, and M40 recoilless rifles. Iran was largely responsible for this arms increase, and flew planeloads of weapons and ammo into Damascus every month. Hezbollah introduced full combat uniforms in the early 1990s and improved their small-unit tactics and field security.
Throughout the 1990s, Hezbollah waged a cat-and-mouse of IEDs with the IDF, with Hezbollah developing increasingly sophisticated IEDs and the IDF countermeasures. Hezbollah may have used cell phone-detonated IEDs against the IDF as early as 1995. IEDs were the main source of Israeli casualties during the occupation period. IED attacks increased about 50% each year from 1995 until 2000. On September 29, 1992, Hezbollah launched its first coordinated attack on multiple outposts.
In 1993, Hezbollah engaged in a seven day period of intensified fighting with Israel, which resulted in enormous damage to Lebanese infrastructure and civilians but little lasting military harm to either Hezbollah or Israel. The conflict saw the first major use of unguided Katyusha rockets fired onto IDF occupied Israeli areas by Hezbollah, a tactic used by the PLO a decade before and became a defining practice of Hezbollah in the future. Hezbollah used its first AT-3 Sagger anti-tank guided missile in September 1992 and used its first AT-4 Spigot missiles in 1997, the same year, Hezbollah acquired the powerful American TOW ATGM. The anti-tank weaponry used by Hezbollah steadily increased in quality over the duration of the insurgency. By 1998, Hezbollah had destroyed three Merkava Mk 3 main battle tanks with these missiles.
Hezbollah started seriously developing anti-tank tactics in 1997, with a focus on being able to hit the same spot on a tank multiple times to defeat Israel's sophisticated reactive armor, a tactic that remains a part of Hezbollah's repertoire today. Although Hezbollah's ATGM weaponry at the time – and still today – remains far inferior to the IDF's Spike system, being able to destroy Merkava tanks was a psychological victory. Hezbollah improved in their ability to use mortars and artillery during this time.
Not all of Hezbollah's weapons were as successful. Although Hezbollah acquired SA-7 'Grail' anti-aircraft missiles and first fired them in November 1991, they had almost no success attacking Israeli aircraft. Hezbollah's anti-aircraft abilities remain one of the group's largest weaknesses. Hezbollah fighters used "basic light infantry tactics" during this period, like IEDs, mortars, and small ambushes.
Around 1995, a small group of fighters went to Bosnia to train Muslims in the civil war. This was probably Hezbollah's first expeditionary endeavor. Hezbollah continued to find suicide attacks morally acceptable, but phased their usage out because they were no longer tactically effective. Hezbollah launched just four suicide attacks in the 1990s. This is part of Hezbollah's long-term trend towards non-terrorism forms of violence.
During the 1990s, Hezbollah particularly targeted Shiite conscripts in the SLA for defections, desertion, or intelligence. Along with Hezbollah's use of PSYOPS and propaganda warfare, this led to plummeting morale within the SLA. SLA morale, and even IDF morale, declined as the insurgency went on. Although the insurgency had sometimes seemed "tepid" in the early 1990s, the 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath greatly increased the level of violence.
Hezbollah and Israel engaged in a sixteen-day campaign marked by thousands of rocket and artillery strikes and intensified fighting. Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets into Israel during the conflict, and their "rocket performance improved particularly between 1993 and 1996." The campaign ended with the written April Understanding, which established well-understood "rules of the game" and allowed retaliation if either side crossed "red lines," particularly attacks on civilians. Since then, Hezbollah has followed typical strategic doctrine of escalation and deterrence.
Fighting briefly lulled after the 1996 conflict as Hezbollah recovered from the fighting, but Hezbollah's logistics were "resilient," and Hezbollah dramatically escalated the level of violence thereafter. Hezbollah performed 100 attacks from 1985 to 1989 and 1,030 attacks in the six-year period from 1990 to 1995. It launched 4,928 attacks from 1996 to 2000, including at least 50 attacks per month for three years and over 1,500 attacks in 1999 alone.
After abandoning the tactic of frontal assaults on SLA and IDF outposts around 1987, Hezbollah resumed the practice a decade later with radically changed tactics. On 18 September 1997, Hezbollah attacked 25 outposts simultaneously and used ATGM teams to target reinforcements. By the end of the occupation, Hezbollah was using heavy weapons and engaging in hours-long firefights with the enemy. In October 1998, Hezbollah first deployed an explosively formed penetrator, a sophisticated and powerful IED that can penetrate almost any armor.
Hezbollah considers 1998, 1999, and 2000 to be their most successful years of insurgency. In 1997 and 1998 combined Israeli and SLA casualties exceeded those of Hezbollah. A research paper by analyst Iver Gabrielson argues that by the late 1990s, Hezbollah had become a "tactically proficient" organization. By identifying and targeting Israel's weak point, casualties, Hezbollah was able to win a war of attrition. Amid escalating violence, poor morale, and intense political pressure at home, the war in Lebanon became too much for Israel. On May 24, 2000, the IDF departed southern Lebanon for the first time in 18 years, and the SLA militia immediately collapsed. Although Hassan Nasrallah had once promised to "slaughter" SLA members in their beds, there were no revenge killings.