BEIRUT - Hezbollah invested months in restoring its military stocks and logistics ahead of a new confrontation with Israel, drawing on Iranian backing and local arms production even as the group assessed it faced an existential threat, according to six individuals with direct knowledge of its preparations.
Those sources - three Lebanese people briefed on the group's activities, two foreign officials working in Lebanon and an Israeli military official - described how Hezbollah moved to replenish its rocket and drone inventories, maintain its organization and keep fighters paid as it anticipated further hostilities. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.
Rebuilding supplies and keeping fighters on payroll
The group allocated a reported monthly budget of $50 million, most of which came from Iran and was primarily used to cover fighters' salaries, one Lebanese source who follows Hezbollah's finances and operations said. A foreign official in Lebanon confirmed the figure. It was not clear from the accounts how long that funding stream had been in place or how it stacked up against the group's previous financial resources.
Those funds have also been directed in part toward humanitarian costs following the prior conflict. The group has said Iranian money helped pay rents for people displaced by the 2024 war, and one source noted that roughly 60,000 Lebanese - most drawn from the Shi'ite community that forms Hezbollah's base of support - remained displaced over the past year with many homes still in ruins.
Local production and Iranian assistance
The sources described a two-pronged approach to rearming: importing or smuggling material with Iranian support, and expanding domestic manufacturing of drones and rockets. An Israeli military official said Iranian funding had been used both to smuggle equipment in and to help produce arms locally, while also noting that Hezbollah’s manufacturing capacity had been degraded.
One foreign official said the group had already placed new rockets and Iranian-made logistical supplies in southern Lebanon prior to the most recent outbreak of hostilities. Video material released by the group showed a fighter assembling a drone in a wooded area; a defence analyst who reviewed the footage identified the unmanned aerial vehicle as a Shahed-101, which that analyst said could be produced domestically.
Operational posture and the first salvos
Despite surprising some of its own officials with the timing of its entry into the wider regional fight - the group launched rockets and drones on a Monday in what it framed as revenge for the death of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - Hezbollah had been preparing its military stockpiles and command-and-control network for an eventual rematch with Israel, the sources said.
Initial strike rates offer insight into how quickly the group could draw on those reserves. On the first day of its attacks, the group reportedly launched 60 drones and rockets, followed by a similar number the next day. By the third day of strikes the number of projectiles more than doubled, signalling access to larger caches of weapons, according to a foreign official who monitors Hezbollah's activity closely.
An Israeli think tank that tracks security along Israel's northern border assessed that, on the eve of the assault, Hezbollah's holdings included about 25,000 rockets and missiles, the vast majority short- and medium-range.
Elite units, recruitment pressures and battlefield losses
Hezbollah has redeployed elements of its elite Radwan force back into southern Lebanon; those units had been withdrawn after the heavy fighting in 2024. Israeli strikes after that conflict targeted what were described as training camps and facilities used by the Radwan force to store weapons and prepare fighters. In late February the Israeli military said it had struck eight compounds associated with that unit.
Those operations and the losses sustained during the 2024 war have placed strains on Hezbollah's manpower. The group suffered the loss of an estimated 5,000 fighters in that earlier conflict, an unprecedented blow to its fighting ranks, though a second Lebanese source said the organisation still numbered roughly 95,000 fighters.
Officials spoken to by the sources said Hezbollah had been having trouble recruiting new operatives, in part because of the scale of attrition and the targeting of its training and storage facilities.
Strategic calculus: believing a new war was inevitable
Multiple sources said Hezbollah came to the conclusion that another round of fighting with Israel was unavoidable - and that the next confrontation could threaten its survival. That assessment, the sources added, shaped the group's choices about when and how to act.
One Lebanese source said Hezbollah feared that Israel might carry out a strike designed to disable the group's ability to retaliate. A third foreign official familiar with the group's internal thinking said that fear helped drive Hezbollah's decision to deliver an initial salvo of attacks, prompted in part by concerns it would be targeted after Iran.
One Israeli military spokesperson said that the group "had a lot of arms left" while also seeking to rearm, adding that efforts to smuggle weapons were ongoing but were being countered. Domestic efforts by Lebanese authorities to disarm or seize Hezbollah weapons in southern Lebanon have been underway, yet one official observed that rearmament appeared to be outpacing confiscation efforts.
What remains uncertain
Several questions remain open based on the available accounts: how long the monthly budget has been sustained, the exact scale and rate of local weapons production given reported degradation of manufacturing capacity, and the pace at which rearmament will continue amid ongoing counter-efforts by Israel and Lebanese authorities. Sources also disagreed on the sufficiency of Hezbollah's remaining manpower and the durability of its command-and-control arrangements.
What is clear from the interviews is that Hezbollah invested both money and local production capacity in replenishing its drone and rocket inventories, even while sustaining serious losses and facing pressure on recruitment and manufacturing capability.
Humanitarian and operational consequences
The material support used to sustain fighters - including payments cited in the reported $50 million monthly budget - has also been partially directed toward civilian needs after the 2024 conflict, such as rent payments for displaced families. Yet large numbers of people remained displaced and living in damaged areas through the subsequent year, illustrating the wider social consequences of the fighting and the reallocation of resources toward both military preparedness and immediate humanitarian needs.
Hezbollah's ability to reconstitute elements of its arsenal and move fighters back into southern Lebanon underscores the continuing volatility along the Israel-Lebanon frontier and the complex interplay between foreign funding, local production and battlefield losses in shaping the group's capabilities.
Reporting for this article drew on interviews with sources inside Lebanon, foreign officials stationed in or focused on Lebanon, and an Israeli military official. Those contributors spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matters publicly.