Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has taken a far more hands‑on role in restructuring and preparing Lebanon’s Hezbollah for the ongoing war with Israel and the United States, deploying roughly 100 IRGC officers to rebuild the group’s military command after its heavy losses in 2024, two people familiar with these IRGC activities said.
The overhaul was the first of its kind for Hezbollah, a Shi'ite Muslim group founded by the IRGC in 1982, highlighting a direct involvement approach after the blows of the 2024 war, including the killing of its leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders.
Iran's investment seemed to pay off, getting Hezbollah back on its feet in time to enter the current war.
The two sources said IRGC officers tasked with helping Hezbollah recover arrived shortly after a ceasefire in November 2024, and set to work even as Israel continued to strike Hezbollah targets throughout the country. One of them said the deployment involved about 100 officers.
IRGC reshapes Hezbollah command structures breached by Israeli intelligence
Arab reports from February indicated that Hezbollah considered another war with Israel as inevitable and spent months readying itself with active assistance from Tehran, constituting a leadership shift in the group.
Since then, IRGC officers seem to have reshaped Hezbollah command structures that had been breached by Israeli intelligence - a factor that had helped Israel kill many Hezbollah leaders.
Sources told Al Arabiya and Al Hadath in February that the IRGC officers were not only supervising the rebuilding of Hezbollah's military infrastructure but were also personally managing and executing strategic war plans.
An Israeli military spokesperson said on March 12 that Hezbollah remains a relevant and dangerous force despite the damage Israel has inflicted on it over the last three years.
Hezbollah has fired hundreds of missiles at Israel since it entered the regional war on March 2, prompting an Israeli offensive that has seized substantial territory in southern Lebanon. More than 1,000 people have reportedly died in Lebanon since the operation began.