A year on from Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, reports say Hezbollah, the Lebanese group he led, is regrouping.
Analysts believe that while a weakened Hezbollah can no longer pose a significant threat to Israel, it can still create chaos and challenge opponents domestically as it tries to find a political footing to preserve its clout.
Long viewed as the strongest nonstate armed actor in the region, Hezbollah found its star waning in the past year, culminating in an international and domestic push for it to disarm entirely.
Handled recklessly, analysts believe, pressures to disarm the group could lead it to lash out and create internal strife that could outweigh international and regional pushes.
Hezbollah’s rhetoric remains defiant, and it has promised to reject Lebanese government efforts to disarm it – as its current leader, Naim Qassem, reiterated on Saturday to a crowd of thousands of people who had gathered at Nasrallah’s tomb to commemorate his assassination.
“We will never abandon our weapons, nor will we relinquish them,” he said to the crowd, adding that Hezbollah would continue to “confront any project that serves Israel”.
Hezbollah started trading attacks with Israel on October 8, 2023, the day after the latter launched its war on Gaza. This continued until September 2024 when an Israeli military intensification and subsequent invasion killed about 4,000 people in Lebanon, injured thousands more and displaced hundreds of thousands.
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