The Lebanon-based Iranian proxy terrorist organization Hezbollah held multiple events on Monday in solidarity with Tehran, declaring that it would continue in the “just and divinely inspired battle” against Israel and America.
“Israel is criminal, and America is tyrannical. We have the right to say ‘No’ to both,” Sheikh Naim Qassem, the head of the terrorist organization, declared, according to the Iranian propaganda website PressTV.
Hezbollah operates in Lebanon with the veneer of a political party, but in reality serves as a proxy terrorist organization for Iran that threatens Israel and functions as a bridge between Tehran and rogue state allies such as Venezuela and Cuba. At its peak in the last decade, Hezbollah had constructed a formidable drug trafficking operation in Latin America; at home, Hezbollah operatives benefited from a deal offering them authentic, but unwarranted, Venezuelan legal documents such as passports and birth certificates.
The jihadist terror group was once the strongest member of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” a global network of terrorist organizations funded by Tehran’s largess. The State Department estimated in 2020 that Iran was funding Hezbollah to the tune of $700 million a year, compared to $100 million a year for Gaza’s terrorist Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) groups combined. Hezbollah was among the first groups to come to the aid of another Iranian proxy terror group, Hamas, following the latter’s gruesome siege of Israel on October 7, 2023.
On June 13, however, when Israel announced a military operation to degrade the Iranian armed forces and its growing nuclear threat, Hezbollah did not participate in defending Iran. Its leadership remained largely absent from the conflict throughout its entirety; Iran and Israel, along with the United States, agreed to a ceasefire on June 23.
Qassem, who succeeded longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah last year, abruptly resurfaced in the public eye on Monday, a week after Iran’s conflict with Israel ended.
“We are in an active defensive mode. Don’t tell us not to defend ourselves!” Qassem bellowed in a speech in Beirut, according to a translation by PressTV. “Don’t ask us to surrender to the tyrants who want to control the destiny of humankind. We will never bow down and surrender to aggressors. Never to humiliation!!!”
“The occupation is temporary, but liberation is ultimate,” Qassem declared, vowing that Hezbollah would “act in defense of our right.”
“We can shape a future of dignity and have glamour once justice prevails. It is when we liberate our land and prevent Israel and the US from imposing their diktats upon us,” he asserted.
In a separate event on Monday, another senior Hezbollah member, Mahmoud Qomati, celebrated the Iranian terror state and promised that Hezbollah would continue to support Tehran.
“We will never abandon our duty to protect our land, nor allow its occupation or the weakening of our dignity and resistance,” Qomati reportedly said, according to Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). IRNA did not indicate that Qomati commented on Hezbollah’s absence in the 12-day war with Israel.
“Qomati also warned that U.S. President Donald Trump and his allies are trying to distort the truth and undermine the credibility of Iran’s courageous leader,” IRNA added.
Hezbollah took arguably the most prominent position in defense of Hamas after the October 7 attacks, repeatedly targeting Israel from the north for much of the end of 2023 and into 2024. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) engaged in several campaigns to contain the Hezbollah threat and later declared the return of Israelis evacuated from the north to protect them from Hezbollah attack as a war goal.
Hezbollah and Hamas both sustained tremendous damage in the second half of 2024, including the eliminate of their leaders. In September, a surprise attack using pagers, walkie-talkies, and other simple technology as explosives targeted hundreds of Hezbollah members, the devices exploding simultaneously throughout Lebanon. Israel did not take credit for the attack, but many reports suggested that Israel’s intelligence services orchestrated it.
By the end of the month, Israel had eliminated Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on Beirut, leaving the organization with minimal organization at the top.
Reports surfacing in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli attack on Iran on June 13 indicated that Hezbollah, battered by its losses, was not planning to intervene to protect its patrons in Tehran. “The group has made it clear that it does not intend to take part in any retaliatory action to support Iran,” the Emirati newspaper The National reported last month, citing anonymous Hezbollah sources who quipped, “Iran can defend itself.” The newspaper found no evidence of active terrorist activities in locations in Lebanon typically used to attack Israel and reported that the Lebanese government had encouraged Hezbollah not to participate in the conflict.
On June 26, shortly after the ceasefire, The National reported that Hezbollah abstained from participating in the fight partly due to its eroded capacity to fight and partly as a result of pressure from both Iran and Lebanon, the former urging the group to rebuild and the latter urging it to not to bring more war to the already devastated country. According to an anonymous alleged American official, Hezbollah was “under pressure to preserve themselves” and had “taken a knee” on the current fight.
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