How Hezbollah rebuilt itself for a war of attrition with Israel
Submitted by Hadi Masoumi Zare on Wed, 06/03/2026 - 08:50
After the 66-day war of 2024, the Lebanese group overhauled its command structure, combat doctrine and fighting strategy, but its greatest challenge may lie at home
Members of the Islamic Association inspect buildings destroyed by Israeli air strikes near Jabal Amel Hospital in the southern port city of Tyre on 2 June 2026 (Marwan Naamani/ZUMA Press Wire) On Last week, the Israeli and Lebanese governments announced a US-mediated agreement in Washington to renew their "ceasefire" and pursue a "comprehensive" settlement.
Despite the ongoing Israeli bombing and military incursion into south Lebanon, the terms require only Hezbollah to halt its attacks. The Lebanese resistance group swiftly rejected the negotiations, calling them "absurd, humiliating and insulting".
For over ten weeks, Hezbollah has fought Israel's renewed assault on the south with a leaner war of attrition, leaning on drones and small specialised units to bleed Israeli forces while keeping its own structure intact.
Nearly 70 days after Hezbollah entered the Ramadan War, the latest round of fighting that erupted in March 2026, one can cautiously yet clearly say that today's Hezbollah differs significantly from the force that fought in 2024, at least in its military organisation, battlefield readiness and operational flexibility.
That assessment rests on the course of the fighting and the performance of the movement in the current war, on a comparison with the War of Support (Harb al-Isnad) of 2023 and the 66-day war of 2024, and on direct field observation and conversations with political actors, commanders and resistance fighters within Hezbollah.
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This difference is not limited to equipment, weaponry or combat tactics. It points to a deeper reconsideration of command mechanisms, combat doctrine and force deployment, and even of the very definitions of victory and defeat in war.
What is unfolding in southern Lebanon today resembles a gradual process of reconstruction and organisational adaptation after a costly and exhausting 30-month experience, from 8 October 2023 to 2 March 2026.
Yet, as Lebanon's leaders sign on to a deal that would disarm the resistance while demanding nothing of the occupier, its survival may turn less on the battlefield than on the internal politics and fragility of Lebanon itself.
A rebuilt force
Perhaps the most important transformation lies in command and control.
During the 66-day war, one of Hezbollah's principal weaknesses was the vulnerability of its communications chain and the difficulty of coordinating between command headquarters and field units.
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At certain stages, this led to disruptions in decision-making, delayed responses and the attrition of combat capability.
In the recent war, however, operations have continued across multiple fronts simultaneously, unit performance has held without prolonged interruption, and the connection between the battlefield and headquarters has been sustained.
There are several indications that Hezbollah, having learned from the experiences of the War of Support and the 66-day war, has fundamentally transformed the structure of its military organisation
This indicates that Hezbollah has, to a large extent, successfully restructured its communications and command mechanisms.
Even under severe pressure and heavy attacks, such as the attacks of 8 April 2026, the military organisation did not collapse, and the command chain managed to preserve its cohesion.
One important sign of this transformation is effective fire control, the orderly rotation of forces, the delivery of weapons to frontline positions, and even the offline collection and continuous publication of battlefield footage from units in action.
Unlike the previous period, when troop movements were sometimes disrupted under wartime pressure, these processes now appear to follow prearranged schedules and predefined patterns.
In the new model, the primary objective is not to saturate the battlefield with manpower, but to preserve instead a certain level of combat effectiveness and prevent the attrition of operational forces.
One key factor behind this transformation appears to be the new Hezbollah leadership's policy of greater centralisation in military command: reducing multilayered decision-making, empowering younger and more motivated commanders, and monitoring them closely and holding them accountable for their missions.
Moreover, there are several indications that Hezbollah, having learned from the experiences of the War of Support and the 66-day war, has fundamentally transformed the structure of its military organisation.
Previously, each commander held a degree of authority and discretion. That arrangement had its advantages, but it also slowed decisions when speed mattered most. The movement has now concentrated authority under a unified command, which can accelerate critical decisions and protect command cohesion.
At the same time, and seemingly in tension with this, Hezbollah has reduced the dependence of field units on central headquarters and granted mid-level commanders greater operational authority, allowing them to make decisions according to battlefield conditions.
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This is not merely a tactical adjustment; rather, it reflects a new understanding of contemporary warfare.
Quality over quantity
In a prolonged war of attrition against an enemy that dominates the air and constantly targets forces and infrastructure, the more successful organisation is the one that can preserve its combat effectiveness and sustain fire even if central command is disrupted.
Hezbollah today appears to be moving towards a model in which flexibility, survivability and continuity of operations take precedence over absolute centralisation - a design in which mission takes priority over structure. This has enabled some field units to keep operating and maintain fire under intense pressure, without waiting for direct orders, acting instead within predefined frameworks.
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One of Hezbollah's most important lessons from the previous war has been a reassessment of how it uses manpower and weaponry. The resistance appears to have concluded that a model based on accumulating forces, maintaining an extensive battlefield presence and massing firepower against Israel is not only ineffective, but can also be ruinously costly in lives.
Accordingly, the movement is now prioritising quality - limited but specialised forces equipped with precise and effective weaponry - over quantity. In this logic, idad, or preparedness, matters more than tadad, or numbers.
Quality, skill, endurance and operational effectiveness have gained the upper hand over sheer numerical strength and the flooding of the battlefield with units.
This is precisely why the main burden of the current war rests on drone units, missile forces, anti-armour units and the emerging first-person view (FPV) drone units.
Unlike the previous period, Hezbollah no longer favours the large-scale deployment of manpower in combat zones. It prefers to keep most of its forces - especially infantry and non-specialised units - in reserve, both to limit its own casualties and to strike more effectively deep into enemy territory.
A war of attrition
Its most far-reaching change, though, may be in combat doctrine.
In the 2024 war, the central principle was to defend territory and block any enemy advance at almost any cost, even at the price of heavy casualties. Today, the signs suggest Hezbollah has shifted towards a different logic of imposing continuous costs on the enemy by every possible means.
This approach, centred on gradual attrition and mounting enemy casualties, reflects a redefinition of victory and defeat on the battlefield. Preventing the enemy from consolidating its position now matters more than preventing the temporary occupation of territory.
From Hezbollah's current perspective, then, losing part of the territory may no longer necessarily signify defeat and humiliation. What matters more is that the enemy cannot consolidate its presence and remains exposed to continuous attrition.
By this logic, even the complete fall of the area south of the Litani would not necessarily amount to a definitive strategic defeat.
Such an outcome would undoubtedly be painful and costly for Hezbollah, psychologically and politically. But, much as in the 1980s and 1990s, it could at the same time increase the social legitimacy of anti-occupation resistance, reduce domestic pressure on the movement, and create the conditions for a prolonged and costly war of attrition against Israel, built around an FPV-drone model.
Preventing the enemy from consolidating its position now matters more than preventing the temporary occupation of territory
In such a doctrine, FPV drones would play the role once held by the martyrdom operations of the 1980s and 1990s.
Alongside these structural changes, the war has brought a marked and tangible recovery in the morale of both field forces and the resistance's social base.
Between the 66-day war and the current conflict, Hezbollah's fighters and its support base in Lebanon faced a series of psychological and reputational pressures: a sense of failure in the War of Support, the heavy losses of the 66-day war, the killing of hundreds of Hezbollah members during the 15-month ceasefire, and the anger and disillusionment that followed the assassination of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Yet these same factors appear to have become sources of motivation for Hezbollah's base and cadres, and a source of pressure from below on the command to re-enter the war with Israel.
In parallel, the visible results of the reconstruction of the military organisation on the battlefield - not least through the FPV-drone footage Hezbollah has published - have helped restore self-confidence and lift the morale and resilience of both its social base and its structure.
Despite all these gains, the main threat Hezbollah faces today is not necessarily the battlefield itself, but rather Lebanon's fragile domestic situation.
The refugee crisis and its economic and social consequences, together with efforts by certain domestic actors - including the current Lebanese government - to inflame political and sectarian tensions, could undermine the Hezbollah's battlefield performance and its ability to sustain a successful war of attrition.
So while the signs of Hezbollah's adaptation and reconstruction on the battlefield are clear, the durability of this situation will ultimately depend on the dynamics of Lebanon's internal environment - an environment that may, in the end, prove more decisive than the warfront itself.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Hezbollah Opinion
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