After setbacks, Iran sees Lebanon cease-fire as chance to regroup

Iran has said that the halt in fighting is a victory for Hezbollah. But behind the scenes, officials worked quietly for a cease-fire to stem the group’s losses.

By Susannah George, Suzan Haidamous and Mustafa Salim

DUBAI — The cease-fire this week between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon has relieved some of the pressure, at least temporarily, that was building on the militant group’s key patron, Iran.

Iranian officials have publicly framed the halt in fighting as a victory for their ally. But behind the scenes, they worked quietly for a cease-fire, diplomats said, a tacit admission of the damage Israel inflicted on an organization essential to Tehran’s strategy of deterrence.

For more than a year, Iran has navigated soaring tensions unleashed by the war in Gaza, where Israel is battling Hamas, another ally of Tehran. It has at times engaged with Israel directly, including in tit-for-tat strikes, although it has generally stayed out of the fray, allowing allied militias to go on the attack.

But once the low-simmering conflict between Israel and Hezbollah exploded into war, and Israel decimated the group’s senior leadership, pressure on Iran escalated exponentially. One of its commanders was killed in the September strike targeting longtime Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah.

Then in October, Israel carried out multiple airstrikes targeting Iran’s air defense systems and missile production facilities — an operation that compelled Iranian leaders to push for a cease-fire, according to Western and regional diplomats briefed on the talks who, like others quoted in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive communications.

“We now know that those attacks were quite severe,” one Western diplomat said of the Israeli strikes in Iran, referring to a damage assessment conducted by the diplomat’s government. “They were feeling the heat,” the diplomat said of Iranian leaders.

But any respite could be brief: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an address to the nation, said he supported the cease-fire in Lebanon so that Israel could “focus on the Iranian threat.”

“I am determined to do anything needed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” he said Tuesday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi at a news conference at the Iranian ambassador's residence in Lisbon on Wednesday. (Jose Sena Goulao/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Iranian officials have for months suggested the country could revisit its ban on nuclear weapons and opt for a bomb to restore deterrence, worrying U.S. officials. “I can tell you, quite frankly, that there is this debate going on in Iran … whether we should change our nuclear doctrine,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters Thursday, according to state media.

What Iranian leaders do next could determine the next phase of the conflict with Israel. Iran’s official line is that the cease-fire was a demonstration of Hezbollah’s military might. “Hezbollah once again shattered [the] myth of Israel’s invincibility,” Araghchi wrote in a post on X.

But the reality on the ground is much more grim. Hezbollah is still counting its dead, its supporters have had their towns and villages destroyed, and a World Bank assessment estimated $8.5 billion in physical damage and economic losses for Lebanon because of the war.

What Iran did was seize an opportunity to preserve what was left of Hezbollah, according to Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at London’s Chatham House think tank.

Because of that, the cease-fire allows Iran some reprieve: It can take stock of Hezbollah’s losses, start rebuilding the movement and potentially reassess its regional strategy of deterrence, which relied heavily on the Lebanese group, once the strongest of Tehran’s allied militias.

“It is important to build on what was achieved on the Lebanese front and move toward further escalation [against Israel], particularly from Iraq and Yemen,” the Iran-backed leader of Yemen’s Houthi militants, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, said in a speech this week addressing the Lebanon cease-fire.

Both the Houthis and Iran’s proxy militants in Iraq have fired drones and missiles at Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. But the attacks have been largely symbolic — most of the missiles and drones are shot down before reaching Israeli territory. And some Hezbollah members have grown disillusioned with Iran and its network of armed groups, also known as the “axis of resistance,” which they say failed to come to Lebanon’s aid during its worst war in decades.

“Lebanon was at its most vulnerable during heavy bombings, yet support from other members of the resistance axis, including Yemen and Iraq, was minimal at best,” said an individual close to Hezbollah and familiar with the group’s thinking. He blamed Iran for not providing more support during the war and said Hezbollah had expected other Iran-backed groups to relieve some of the pressure by ramping up their own attacks on Israel.

“Tehran was unwilling to escalate the situation,” the individual said.

Such sentiment could complicate reconstruction efforts in Lebanon. After the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, Iran provided significant funding to the group to help rebuild and maintain support among its Shiite Muslim constituencies in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s suburbs.

Iranian officials have again pledged to fund Lebanon’s recovery, according to public statements and the individual close to Hezbollah. But after decades of U.S. and international sanctions, as well as a spiraling currency crisis, it’s unclear whether Iran has the resources to rehabilitate swaths of Lebanon.

Still, Iran’s involvement in the postwar period could deepen its influence.

“Iran is prepared to allocate funds for reconstruction and to ensure Hezbollah’s survival, as well as to maintain support within the Shiite community,” the individual close to Hezbollah said. “However, this support is now more directly under Iranian influence,” he added, saying the group expects Iran to send advisers to supervise funding and retrain Hezbollah’s military ranks.

But Vakil cautioned against “zero-sum assessments of Iran’s strengths and weaknesses.”

“The strength of Iran’s network, the axis of resistance, is its fluidity,” she said, adding that Iran has developed these relationships with armed groups to survive for the long term.

In the coming weeks, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, as well as Iran, could shift in part to Syria, where Israel has significantly ramped up strikes in recent months, according to the United Nations’ special envoy to Syria.

The war-battered country is a key conduit for supplying Hezbollah with weapons, Israel says, and the Syrian government coordinates closely with Iranian military commanders, one of whom was killed Thursday in Aleppo in a surprise attack by rebels.

On Monday, Israeli strikes in Syria also targeted three bridges near the border with Lebanon. Israel’s military said in a statement that they were “used as smuggling routes to transfer weapons to the Hezbollah terrorist organization.”

“These strikes follow similar operations in recent weeks targeting Syrian regime smuggling in the area,” the military said.

Despite the setbacks, the partnership between Hezbollah and Iran is likely to endure, Vakil said.

“The Iranian relationship with Hezbollah doesn’t end with this defeat to Israeli forces,” she said. “This is a relationship that was nurtured and cultivated over decades. The relationship will certainly live on.”

Haidamous reported from Beirut. Salim reported from Baghdad.