Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel in aid of Iran after the launch of the US-Israeli Operation Epic Fury are the final nail in the coffin for the group. Two days into the war, as the Iranian regime knew it would not be able to win the war militarily, it swiftly adopted a model of pursuing survival through widening the geographical scope of its retaliation. Despite having been weakened militarily at the hands of Israel in 2024, Hezbollah’s intervention that began on 2 March forms a key part of Iran’s survival strategy. However, by summoning Hezbollah to act, Tehran is almost certainly sealing the group's fate.
While Hezbollah has had a degree of agency at the level of domestic engagement in Lebanese affairs, it is Tehran that makes decisions of war and peace for the group. During the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025, Hezbollah did not intervene at the request of Tehran. The fight between Iran and Israel at that time was ultimately limited and didn't constitute an existential threat to the Iranian regime.
Therefore, the regime judged that Hezbollah’s assistance was neither needed nor desired. Tehran calculated that its interests would be better served by preserving what had remained of Hezbollah’s military capacity for a bigger potential battle, putting deployment of the group on standby for when the regime would find itself facing the prospect of annihilation.
In preparation for this scenario, right after the November 2024 ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel and into February 2026, Iran sent more Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers to Lebanon to directly run Hezbollah’s affairs, filling in some of the gaps left by Israel’s assassinations of the top tiers of Hezbollah’s leadership.
In clear contravention of the ceasefire terms, Hezbollah continued to move and train its fighters inside Lebanon and to try to smuggle weapons into Lebanon from Syria. It also embarked on an effort to overcome the loss of its arsenal by refurbishing long-range missiles that had been damaged by Israeli strikes. Its stockpile of missiles went down from 150,000 in 2023 to only 25,000 at the beginning of 2026, with most of the remaining missiles being short and medium-range ones.
The US and Israel have made it explicit that the goals of their current joint campaign against Iran are maximalist, aiming to neutralise the threat that the Iranian regime poses to regional and international security. Their level of military action in Operation Epic Fury confirms this heavy-handed approach.
Although Iran retaliated strongly in the first two days of the war, the military superiority of the US and Israel remains unquestionable. With Iran’s missile launching ability fast curtailed, it activated Hezbollah to distract Israel by opening another war front.
