BEIRUT, June 3 — The war between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah has devastated swathes of Lebanon, though a partial de-escalation agreement announced on Monday has averted renewed airstrikes on the capital Beirut for ‌now.

Israel seeks to end the threat posed by Hezbollah rocket fire and force the group to disarm but Iran wants an end to the Israeli campaign in Lebanon as part of any settlement with the United States to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

What are Hezbollah’s origins?

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards founded Hezbollah in 1982 during Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, part of Tehran’s effort to export its 1979 Islamic Revolution and fight Israeli forces that had invaded Lebanon in 1982.

Hezbollah runs its ‌own social services, including schools and hospitals, and has solid backing among Lebanon’s Shiah Muslims.

Together with its ally, the Amal Movement, Hezbollah dominates the representation of Shiahs in Lebanon’s sectarian ruling system in parliament, the cabinet and other posts.

How did it become so powerful?

While other groups disarmed after Lebanon’s civil war, Hezbollah kept its weapons to fight Israeli forces occupying the predominantly Shiah Muslim south. It retained its arsenal even after Israel withdrew in 2000.

In 2006, during a five-week war, it fired thousands of rockets into Israel. The war erupted after Hezbollah crossed into Israel, kidnapping two soldiers and killing others.

Hezbollah’s arsenal grew after 2006. The US Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook said it was estimated to have as many as 150,000 rockets and missiles in 2020 and in 2022 was estimated to have 45,000 fighters.

Hezbollah’s veteran leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed by Israel in 2024, said the group had 100,000 fighters.

A woman holds an image of Iran's Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, and a Hezbollah flag during a rally in Tehran June 1, 2026. — Majid Asgaripour/Wana (West Asia News Agency) pic via Reuters

How did it get involved in the latest war?

After the 2006 war, Hezbollah became involved in conflicts outside Lebanon as the spearhead of the Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance”.

It sent fighters to Syria to help then President Bashar al-Assad fight rebels, aided Iran-backed Shiah militias in Iraq, supported the Houthis of Yemen and deepened ties with Palestinian militant group Hamas.

After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah opened fire on Israeli positions in the frontier region, declaring solidarity with the Palestinians.

They traded fire until September 2024, when Israel detonated thousands of booby-trapped pagers used by Hezbollah members, stepped ‌up airstrikes that killed the group’s main leaders and sent troops into south Lebanon.

A ceasefire was announced in 2024 that was meant to halt attacks and see Hezbollah disarmed, but both sides accused each other ⁠of repeated breaches.

After Israel and the US attacked Iran on February 28 and killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah ⁠Ali Khamenei, Hezbollah fired at northern Israel, prompting a major Israeli military campaign into Lebanon.

Israel has seized territory deep into south Lebanon, razing villages, displacing ⁠most civilians and establishing a military presence. Hezbollah has fired ⁠back with drones and rockets at Israeli forces and ⁠into northern Israel.

How badly hit has Hezbollah been?

In the 2024 fighting, Israel killed much of Hezbollah’s command and thousands of fighters and destroyed much of the group’s arsenal.

The toppling of Assad in Syria in December 2024 choked Hezbollah’s main supply route from Iran and tilted the regional power balance against it.

However, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards rebuilt much of Hezbollah’s military command, sending in its own officers and laying plans for the current conflict, Reuters has ⁠reported.

Since outright warfare resumed on March 2, Hezbollah has paid a heavy price with as many as several thousand of its fighters killed, according to internal casualty estimates from within the group.

What is Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon?

Hezbollah long had a decisive say over state affairs but was unable to get its way over the formation of the 2025 post-war government, which adopted a policy of establishing a monopoly on arms.

Lebanese have been at odds over Hezbollah’s arms for decades: opponents accuse it of dragging Lebanon into wars, supporters see its weapons as key to defending the country.

After the 2024 conflict, international and local pressure on Hezbollah to disarm grew, and Lebanon’s government began confiscating the group’s weapons in southern Lebanon.

But the group rejected disarming in full, saying it could lead to civil war. Its comments evoked memories of 2008, when Hezbollah ⁠fighters took over parts of Beirut in an armed conflict sparked by the government’s vow to take action against the group’s military communications network.

After the 2026 war erupted, the Lebanese state outlawed Hezbollah’s military activities but could do little to halt the fighting.

Terrorism designations

The United States holds Hezbollah responsible for suicide bombings in 1983 that destroyed the US Marine headquarters ⁠in Beirut, killing 241 service personnel, and a French barracks, killing 58 French paratroopers. It also blames Hezbollah for a suicide attack on the US Embassy in Beirut in 1983.

Lebanese officials and Western intelligence agencies have said groups ⁠linked to Hezbollah kidnapped ⁠Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s. Referring to those attacks and hostage-taking, Nasrallah said in a 2022 interview they were carried out by small groups not linked to Hezbollah.

Western governments, including the United States, and Gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, deem Hezbollah a terrorist group. Some, notably the European Union, have designated its military wing a terrorist group, drawing what critics say is an artificial distinction with its political wing.

Argentina blames Hezbollah and Iran for the bombing of a Jewish community ‌centre in Buenos Aires in which 85 people died in 1994 and for an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 that killed 29 people. Hezbollah and Iran deny any responsibility.

A UN-backed court convicted three Hezbollah members in absentia over the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, a Sunni Muslim politician killed in 2005 by a truck bomb in Beirut, along with 21 other people. Hezbollah has denied any role. — Reuters

The United States and Iran reached a preliminary peace agreement on Sunday to end three and a half months of war in the Middle East, according to an announcement by Pakistan, whose prime minister said the agreement will be signed next Friday in Switzerland. Both Iran and U.S. President Donald Trump have confirmed the deal. The Republican has also announced the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz following the signing of the agreement.

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Southern Lebanon — which was turned into a battleground between Israel and the pro‑Iranian militia Hezbollah in 2023 — has suffered a new wave of devastation since February 28, when the Israeli and U.S. governments declared war on Iran and Hezbollah once again took up arms in solidarity with its ally. Israel then shifted its focus from Iran to striking Lebanon, intensifying both its military offensive and its occupation of the neighboring country.

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BEIRUT, June 14 — Lebanon reported Israeli strikes in the country’s south on Saturday, as the Israeli army issued evacuation warnings for the city of Nabatieh and more than 20 other locations ahead of raids.

The latest strikes came as the US and Iran indicated they were close to reaching a deal on ending the Middle East war that could also include Lebanon, drawn into the conflict when Hezbollah attacked Israel in support of its patron Tehran.

The state-run National News Agency (NNA) said Israeli airstrikes had hit several areas, particularly around the southern city of Nabatieh.

An AFP photojournalist in the Nabatieh area heard blasts around Kfar Remman, which has been repeatedly targeted, and saw a plume of smoke rising from Kfar Tebnit, which was not included in the evacuation warnings.

The Lebanese army later said one of its soldiers had been severely wounded after being hit by an Israeli drone on the road between Kfar Remman and Nabatieh. That had followed an initial attempt to target him as he was moving near a hospital close to the city.

NNA also said an Israeli strike killed a local official in Rihan, the southern region of Jezzine.

An AFP correspondent in Nabatieh said the city was almost deserted, reporting artillery shelling there and in nearby areas overnight and on Saturday.

Evacuation warnings

The Israeli military had issued two warnings to residents of 24 locations – both in and around Nabatieh, and nearer to the coast – to “evacuate your homes immediately and move to the north of the Zahrani River”, around 45 kilometres from the southern border with Israel.

Last month Israel declared all areas south of the river “combat zones”, and has since been heavily striking the area.

Hezbollah, which has kept up attacks on invading Israeli troops, said its fighters launched drone attacks on Israeli military vehicles in the south.

It said it had thwarted an overnight “infiltration” attempt by Israeli forces in the Kfar Tebrnit area near Nabaiteh after ambushing them and engaging in a “firefight with medium weapons”.

The group also reported clashes with Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of Majdal Zoun, closer to the border with Israel.

Israel’s military also said it “intercepted a suspicious aerial target that crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory”.

It later announced that “over the past 24 hours, more than 70 Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites were struck”.

Fresh strikes hit two areas in Lebanon’s eastern Baalbek area later Saturday, NNA reported.

‘Fateful test’

Iran insists that Lebanon must be part of any agreement to end the wider Middle East war, and a senior US official said Friday that a draft peace deal “includes Lebanon”.

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah have respected a ceasefire meant to take effect in April, and a conditional truce deal announced this month after Lebanese-Israeli negotiations in Washington also failed to halt the fighting.

Hezbollah rejected both the direct talks and the conditional agreement, which requires it to cease attacks but makes no mention of Israel doing so or withdrawing troops from Lebanon.

Lebanon says Israel’s massive campaign of airstrikes and ground invasion have so far killed 3,756 people.

Lebanon’s leaders, meanwhile, have accused Tehran of treating their country as a “bargaining chip”.

Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Fayyad said on Saturday Lebanon should make do with any US-Iran deal that included the country.

“We want the Lebanese state to negotiate for itself, and nobody is suggesting forfeiting this role,” Fayyad said.

“However, the state must abandon the policy of being crushed in the face of the Israelis and submission to the Americans.”

The prime minister of Pakistan, which has mediated between Tehran and Washington, insisted Saturday that a deal was closer “than ever before”.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said in a statement that Lebanon faced “a fateful test.

“Either its people unite around a sovereign state that monopolises weapons, upholds the law and protects citizens irrespective of their affiliation or position, or it remains hostage to the logic of militias,” he said.

Further Israel-Lebanon talks are scheduled for later this month. — AFP

On one of the main roads out of Dahieh, the name given to the Beirut suburbs now at the heart of Middle East geopolitics, a row of streetlights bearing the same photograph of Iran’s penultimate supreme leader, the late Ali Khamenei, seem to bid farewell to those leaving the area. A few meters further on, as the city of Beirut begins, the iconography that floods Dahieh with the faces of Iranian and Hezbollah leaders — its Lebanese allies — vanishes, as does, to a large extent, the threat of Israeli strikes.

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The ceasefire that has never truly stopped the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah followed the same dynamic on Thursday after being extended in a new round of talks in Washington.

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