Why Is Hezbollah Staying Out of the Iran-Israel War?
We've obviously spent a lot of time the last couple of days talking about Iran's ballistic missile systems, their defense systems, their nuclear sites, but not a lot about the proxies. And namely because the proxies have been remarkably quiet, specifically Hezbollah. Why have Hezbollah been so quiet this time around? As you say, remarkably quiet and remarkably degraded. Let's remember what happened back in September when Israel's war on Hezbollah began. They the military capability has almost been wiped out. Israel has said we've destroyed most of their missiles, stockpile their drone stockpiles. And I don't know if you remember those scenes from the idea of the videos that they were really destroying entire villages because they were detonating underground tunnels that Hezbollah built, and that's where they stored most of their arsenal. So arsenal wise, military capability wise, that's been degraded. And secondly, we have to look at Hezbollah's command and leadership status now. Those have been decapitated, especially with the killing of their most revered leader, Nasrallah, and most of their commanders, their high ranking military commanders. And third of all, we have to look at that support base, that support place base. That's always been a fuel for the group. The morale is not there for war. Reconstruction hasn't started. They are distributing very little amount of money to people to rebuild their homes, be it in Beirut, southern suburbs or in south Lebanon. And that is a massive if we're comparing it to 2006 after the Israel Hezbollah war, that was very much different. And Iran is financially squeezed. And you can see that on the ground with Hezbollah, that there is not much money going around. So these three things, plus the domestic pressure they're under, their influence in Lebanon has also been has also declined quite drastically. Right, with the new president who is very pro gulf and pro-U.S. and the new government, excuse me, the technocrats and this pressure to disarm Hezbollah, though the talks have not started locally for that. This is still massive pressure and it shows you how much the group, the group's influence in Lebanon has been degraded as well. So does that change? I mean, of course, a lot of what you listed seems to be structural now in nature, but will the calculus change? Should the US get involved militarily in the war? That's a very good question, and I think everyone's asking this same exact question. That's the concern. If the US joins this war, would Iran try to pressure the proxies to go in? Or because this would mean the survival of the regime now with the Houthis is a bit different. A lot of the experts who follow the Houthis really closely say they don't listen to Iran that much and they're not ideologically linked to the regime, as Hezbollah was before and even now. So the Houthis might not join and join. We saw just one coordinated strike between the Houthis and and Iran and that, of course, the Houthis are too far away. And sometimes those missiles don't even make it past the defense system. But yes, if the US joins, the big question would be would Iran play all of its cards, including, of course, not just US assets in the region, but would it try to revive those proxies? For me, it's it's hard to see that as it's financially being squeezed and its own military capability is also being squeezed. We're seeing it even rationing missiles maybe for that moment when the US joins.
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