Israel’s northern border has never been characterized by good relations between neighbors.
After the state’s founding, it quickly faced challenges in the north with Lebanon, a country that has refused to recognize Israel. That refusal, unchanged since 1948, set the groundwork for everything that followed on Israel’s northern border.
Many of the initial challenges met in the north were caused by Palestinian terrorism. In 1969, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasser Arafat, effectively gained autonomy within Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, providing a base for future terror attacks while weakening the Lebanese state.
A series of cross-border raids by Palestinian terrorists set the stage for Israel to take counter terrorism measures.
The Founding of Hezbollah
In June 1982, the IDF entered Lebanon to root out Palestinian terrorism, beginning the First Lebanon War, or Operation Peace for Galilee.
While the war sought to push back Palestinian terrorists from Israel’s northern border, the result was the foundation of a new – and far more sophisticated – terrorist organization.
After the IDF invaded Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria allowed for 800 Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) members to move through Syria and into Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley to establish and supervise training camps, teaching Lebanese how to confront the “enemy” – the IDF.
Related Reading: The Party of God: How the Iranian Revolution and Palestinian Terror Built Hezbollah
The establishment of such training camps set the stage for the undermining of the Lebanese army, which was unable to assert control in the regions where Israel was operating. The Lebanese army’s lack of control over terrorist organizations has continued to this day.
The weak state army thus empowered individual terrorists, trained and supported by the IRGC in the Beqaa Valley, to take up arms against the IDF, viewing their actions as an opportunity to push back a foreign occupation. These men ultimately came together to form Hezbollah.
From the perspective of the Iranian regime, the addition of the Shi’ite community in Lebanon would enable the revolution to be exported to Lebanon.
When, in 1983, Israel and Lebanon agreed to end the war formally, Hezbollah became determined to sabotage the agreement and prevent any form of peace. Israel, in an attempt to prevent further terrorism from entrenching itself on its northern border, established a security zone in coordination with the South Lebanese Army in 1985 that remained until 2000.
Becoming a Hybrid Organization
In February 1985, Hezbollah published its “Open Letter,” where it was explicit that the exportation of the Iranian revolution was a central goal of the establishment of the organization.
Beyond exporting the Iranian revolution, Hezbollah also sought to integrate social, political, and military aspects into its terrorist structure from the first years of its establishment. Specifically, it noted that its very “military apparatus” was not separate from its “overall social fabric.”
The establishment of social services served as yet another way to undermine the Lebanese state, as ordinary Lebanese – and specifically Shi’ites – became increasingly swayed to rely on the rapidly evolving terrorist organization.
In turn, Hezbollah continued to gain new Shi’ite members who viewed the organization as providing better and more just services, confirming Hezbollah’s position as a distinct entity operating within Lebanese society.
Hezbollah’s founding is also uniquely situated within the timeline of the Lebanese Civil War, which further enabled the organization to gain respect and responsibility by asserting its capacity to provide services.
By gaining more power than Amal, its opponent, though a strong ally, Hezbollah was able to position itself as the representative body of Shi’ites, which led to the implementation of a political wing in Hezbollah.
The Lebanese Civil War formally ended with the ratification of the Document of National Accord, commonly referred to as the Taif Accord, in 1989, resulting in elections being held for the first time in 15 years. Under the new political system, legislative seats became divided by religion, which worked in favor of Hezbollah, despite it being required to disband militarily under the Accord. By 1992, it had already won eight out of twenty-seven seats allotted to the Shi’ite community in parliament.
In keeping its weapons while gaining political power, Hezbollah’s placement as a hybrid organization was affirmed.
Over the next several years, the hybrid organization worked on expanding its international reach, much of which was driven by the third Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, a relentless cleric who was the mastermind behind many of the organization’s terrorist attacks.
While the security zone between Israel and Lebanon dissolved in 2000, Hezbollah remained determined to return to war.
Six years later, on July 12, 2006, the Second Lebanon War began when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel and raided the border, immediately killing three IDF soldiers, kidnapping two, and killing another five who immediately went to rescue the kidnapped. The war ended after more than a month of fighting, after the UN Security Council voted on Resolution 1701 – a resolution which Hezbollah has yet to abide by.
The Global Terrorism Arm of Hezbollah
Hezbollah sought to put pressure on the Israeli government by extending its operations globally, attacking Jewish and Israeli institutions. Most notable was the bombing of the Jewish center, AMIA, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1994, which solidified Hezbollah’s notoriety as a global terrorist actor. Despite previous acts of terrorism abroad or targeting other countries, the AMIA bombing marked a new stage for Hezbollah, underscoring its desire to impact Middle Eastern policy by any means.
But the international arm of Hezbollah did not remain limited to terrorist attacks. The terrorist organization has built an international enterprise worth millions of dollars based in narco-terrorism. Particularly in South America, Hezbollah has built a criminal arm dedicated to aiding in its financing. Weak state institutions in the Tri-Border Area, where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet, have led to the flourishing of criminal activity.
The External Security Organization Business Affairs Component (BAC), the criminal and financial wing of Hezbollah, operates a global network of front companies, international trade operations, and illicit trafficking rings to fund Hezbollah’s military and operational activities. For years, Hezbollah terrorists under the BAC worked to establish relationships with South American drug cartels, which are responsible for providing large amounts of cocaine to the drug markets in Europe and the U.S.
Venezuela is especially notable in Hezbollah’s South America drug trafficking scheme, moving illicit funds through a variety of banks. One such operation, disrupted in 2011, resulted in the seizure of $23 million in funds designated for Hezbollah. Another operation targeted by the U.S. Treasury in 2012 saw hundreds of millions of dollars laundered through smuggling and Lebanese money exchange houses and banks tied to Hezbollah, which ultimately received a portion of the funds.
In 2018, the U.S. government designated Hezbollah as one of the five leading transnational criminal groups, displaying its capability of partaking in criminal enterprises to benefit its political and militant activities.
A State Actor Operating on Behalf of Iran
Hezbollah’s financial schemes are not reliant only on its criminal operations. Its state backer, the Iranian regime, has spent the past several decades building Hezbollah into the terrorist organization it is today.
In recent years, the U.S. State Department believed that Hezbollah was receiving $700 million USD each year from Iran, accounting for the vast majority of the terrorist organization’s budget. In 2023, then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant further stated Hezbollah was not only receiving financial support from the Iranian regime, but tactical “knowledge and strategic weaponry,” including precision-guided munitions.
Much of this budget has gone towards Hezbollah’s infrastructure, including its tunnel network, some of which resemble the structure of the Iranian missile cities.
Since Hezbollah joined the war on October 8, 2023, it has continued to be the major recipient of the Iranian regime’s funds. In seeking to rebuild its infrastructure, the group pleaded for $2 billion – double the amount the Iranian regime was planning to send. In the second half of 2025, the terrorist organization received around $1 billion smuggled through a variety of countries.
Hezbollah uses these funds not only for terrorist infrastructure, but as a way to gain popular support from the Lebanese Shi’ite community. Effectively acting as a state actor, Hezbollah provides an array of services to communities in Lebanon.
The Islamic Health Organization, founded in 1984, trains and operates in 90 medical centers, providing first aid, medical services, and emergency civil defense services to the Shi’ite community, serving around two million people. It is also affiliated with Hezbollah and accompanies “Hezbollah combatants’ activities against the Zionist occupation.” Effectively, it operates as a human shield, providing more cover for the terrorist organization and its different wings.
Hezbollah further provides social services, jobs, and welfare support to its supporters, ensuring that people stay dependent on the terrorist organization. Its network of private schools financed by the Iranian regime work to indoctrinate youth into the terrorist organization. Even the teachers’ union has been coopted as a platform to push pro-Hezbollah propaganda in southern Lebanon.
By remaining apart from an official government institution while providing services to civilians, Hezbollah has remained capable of stretching its global terror arm, and, until recently, avoiding much accountability.
A Lebanon Free of Hezbollah
While the Lebanese government and civilians are ready to move toward a future free of Hezbollah, whose terror has brought destruction to Lebanon itself, the terrorist organization has made it clear that it will stop at nothing until it achieves its goal of destroying the Jewish state. Its continuous violations of ceasefire agreements with Israel while the Lebanese government simultaneously holds talks with Israel further exemplifies this.
Hezbollah’s evolution from an Iranian-regime-founded militia to a global terror network engaged in criminal enterprise has enabled it to threaten regional stability while continuing to act on behalf of the Iranian regime’s interests in the hope of exporting the revolution.
Specifically, the hybrid model is what gave the terrorist organization credibility in Lebanon for so many years. So long as Hezbollah exists, it will continue to destabilize Lebanon, threaten Israel with terrorism, and exploit weak countries globally for its own benefit. Its actions have only proven that it was never a “resistance” movement, but a transnational state-building project funded by the Iranian regime. And it is that very project that Israel has no choice but to dismantle.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
