Hezbollah Learns from Iran, Winning Big Against Zionism | Laith Marouf

## Introduction The striking lesson emerging from recent months of conflict in Western Asia is not merely one of military exchanges but of strategic learning and adaptation. The conversation recorded with Laith Marouf highlights a region in which non-state actors and allied states have absorbed the lessons of recent confrontations with the United States and Israel, then reshaped their tactics and political posture accordingly. What looks like a stubborn, localized resistance in Lebanon is better understood as part of a broader Axis of Resistance that learned from Iran’s campaign: how to endure, innovate, and exploit fissures between global and regional powers. The result is a political landscape in which conventional expectations about coercion, demobilization and unilateral victory no longer hold. ## The MOU and Hezbollah’s Weapons The memorandum of understanding (MOU) that briefly captured international headlines promised a forced normalization of Israeli military presence contingent on Hezbollah’s disarmament. In practice, the MOU has proven detached from the reality on the ground. The conversation from Lebanon portrays the document as more aspirational than operational: a paper attempt by political actors with limited domestic authority to ink a settlement that neither its authors nor its supposed enforcers can realize. The crucial point is that the MOU underestimated the balance of force and the political resilience of a highly armed non-state actor. Hezbollah’s arsenal and organizational depth have been reshaped since the mid-2000s. The group has moved through phases—from militia to semi-conventional force, particularly during the Syria conflict, and now back toward a hybridized, guerrilla-centric model optimized for asymmetry. Weapons and tactics have diversified: anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), waves of drones, and targeted FPV (first-person-view) systems controlled via long fiber-optic lines. These systems are not mere theatrics; they have inflicted substantial losses on Israeli armor and logistics—hundreds of vehicles and a significant portion of what remained of Israeli tank stocks in recent months, according to battlefield reports. The MOU assumed an ability to neutralize that military capacity; the reality is that Hezbollah’s firepower and tactical flexibility make coercive demobilization implausible without external military conquest—something neither Israel nor the United States appear willing or able to execute. ## Civil War Fears and the Lebanese Army One persistent fear has been that Lebanon might descend into a new civil war, with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) forced to confront Hezbollah. That scenario suited Israeli strategic aims: a fragmented Lebanon would neutralize a hostile actor without Israel having to carry out wide-scale destruction. Yet the recorded discussion makes clear that such a scenario is now highly unlikely. The LAF remains, in many respects, a representative national institution with deep social roots; a large percentage of its rank-and-file and officers are from the Shia community. The social fabric and recruitment patterns make it politically and morally improbable that the army could be turned into an instrument against a major segment of Lebanese society. Furthermore, political attempts to politicize or purge the military’s leadership have failed to produce compliant commanders. Rumors that civilian leaders tried and failed to remove the army chief of staff underscore that the formal state apparatus lacks both the will and capability to wage an internecine campaign against Hezbollah. The prospect of mutiny, desertion, or mass refusal renders the notion of a state-led anti-Hezbollah operation unrealistic. Alternative pathways to provoke intercommunal violence—via proxy militias or foreign-backed death squads—also look hollow. The militias of the 1970s are largely shadows; today’s Christian hardline groups are weak and geographically constrained, while Wahhabi proxy forces are diminished, dispersed, and depleted after years of conflict elsewhere. In short, Lebanon’s internal political-military structure is presently a poor instrument for manufacturing an all-purpose civil conflagration. ## Drones, Innovation, and Resistance Tactics What is most striking in the recent fighting is the centrality of technological innovation adapted to asymmetric warfare. Innovation, not material parity, has been the decisive multiplier. The Axis of Resistance invested heavily in systems that exploit urban and territorial complexity: underground networks, small-unit infiltration and assymetric strike platforms. Iran’s own development of advanced missiles—hypersonic and multi-warhead systems—reshaped deterrence calculations at the strategic level. At the tactical level, Hezbollah’s retooling has been equally consequential. FPVs with fiber-optic control and night-vision suites, for example, present a response to conventional electronic warfare that circumvents jamming and surveillance vulnerabilities. These systems have been used for targeted assassinations of officers and for disrupting rear-area logistics, often operating tens of kilometers from launch points. The lineage of these methods can be traced to battlefield innovations in Syria, where Hezbollah learned to target mobile leadership and command nodes. Likewise, Palestinian actors demonstrated how low-cost, improvised means—paragliders, massed paratrope-style infiltrations, and homemade munitions—could achieve disproportionate tactical effects. What unites these techniques is an emphasis on survivability, surgical targeting, and the transformation of tactical success into strategic messaging. Longevity and the capacity to innovate under pressure have become principal weapons for actors that cannot match state opponents in conventional terms. ## Hezbollah’s Goals in South Lebanon Hezbollah’s strategic objectives in the south are not limited to territorial control or attrition against Israeli forces; they are also political and deterrent in nature. The conversation portrays Hezbollah as intent on making the occupation politically and militarily costly, thereby deterring future Israeli adventurism and preventing unilateral attempts at disarmament. The resilience of southern communities, combined with Hezbollah’s embeddedness in local social structures, turns territory into a complex battlefield where conventional force projection is less effective. Beyond immediate military calculus, Hezbollah’s posture communicates a regional message: endurance and punitive capability. By sustaining pressure in the south—through ambushes, targeted strikes, and denial of freedom of movement—Hezbollah aims to reduce the political appetite in Jerusalem and allied capitals for escalation. The group also seeks to consolidate popular legitimacy inside Lebanon by positioning itself as the bulwark against both foreign aggression and domestic political betrayal. When political elites in Beirut sign on to agreements that threaten resistance forces, Hezbollah’s continued operations undermine the credibility of those elites and reassert a parallel security logic that rebalances power domestically. ## Khamenei Funeral and Regional Signals The way political rituals and events are leveraged reveals much about shifting geopolitical alignments. The Khamenei funeral—cited in the discussion as a focal moment—served as more than a ceremonial gathering; it became a stage for signaling cohesion and reach among regional allies. Such events perform symbolic work: they showcase solidarity, demonstrate logistical and security capacities, and remind adversaries that retaliation or escalation will be met with coordinated responses. The funeral also highlighted the political consequences of battlefield outcomes. Iran’s ability to absorb pressure and maintain retaliatory capacity changes the bargaining calculus for regional powers and external patrons. The optics of large, orchestrated displays of s

Hezbollah Learns from Iran, Winning Big Against Zionism | Laith Marouf While Israel and the US would love to foster a civil war in Lebanon, the social forces in the country are NOT going along with the evil plan. In fact, Lebanon is currently haunting IDF soldiers, and there is little they can do. Laith Marouf of Free Palestine TV joins from Lebanon to discuss Israel’s attacks, Hezbollah’s role, the Lebanon ceasefire claims, the US-Iran war, new drone tactics, Israel’s losses, leadership assassinations, the media battle, and why he believes the Axis of Resistance is gaining strength across the region. Links: Free Palestine TV: https://www.freepalestine.video Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:24 Lebanon Under Attack 00:02:00 The MOU and Hezbollah’s Weapons 00:07:29 Iran War’s Impact on Lebanon 00:12:08 Civil War Fears and the Lebanese Army 00:16:20 Hezbollah’s Size and Military Shift 00:19:28 Drones, Innovation, and Resistance Tactics 00:24:52 Israeli Losses and Damage Claims 00:29:05 Hezbollah’s Goals in South Lebanon 00:32:36 Assassinations and Hezbollah’s Renewal 00:37:53 Khamenei Funeral and Regional Signals 00:41:45 The Media War and Public Opinion 00:47:47 Next Round of War with Iran 00:50:11 Where to Follow Laith Marouf #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. Today we have an update with Laith Marouf from Free Palestine TV. Laith is, at the moment, of course, in Lebanon, and we'll be talking about the assault on the country that he's reporting from and the updates about the MOU. Laith, welcome. #Laith Marouf Great to be with you, Pascal. Thank you for having me. #Pascal Well, let's start right with Lebanon, where you are at the moment. How are things developing? What are the Israelis doing, and what kind of movements have you seen over the past couple of weeks? #Laith Marouf Well, although there is supposed to be a ceasefire, there's not really one. There are continued Israeli attacks on South Lebanon and continued destruction of villages that they are currently occupying, as well as the resistance continuing to fight them back. Every day we hear about the ambushes that Hezbollah sets up or assassinations of Israeli officers with the use of FPVs. So the battle continues -- 1 of 13 -- on the ground. And all this talk about ceasefire or memorandum of agreement seems to be in the imaginary or a different reality than the one we are living here. And this is because the prime minister and president of the country who are pushing for this agreement don't really have any power in the country. And so, whatever the Americans and the Israelis may have hoped that this collaboration between the president and prime minister may deliver on, they're unable to do so. So the reality on the ground is that we are going to continue, I think, this war until there is a true victor in it. #Pascal We've had this about a week ago now, right? This kind of agreement between the government of Lebanon and Israel that the Israeli occupation could basically continue until Hezbollah is demilitarized—no, not demilitarized, sorry—until they give up all their weapons. What's your assessment of that one? I mean, to me, right now, Lebanon's leadership strikes me as very similar to what Pétain was in the Second World War for the French. But how do you make sense of this? #Laith Marouf Yeah, it's very much a Vichy regime. You know, remember the president and prime minister came into power right after the assassination of Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, and that pager terrorist attack and the fall of Damascus to the hands of the Jolani Wahhabi death squads. So there was, at that point, a high in the imperialist Zionist camp, and they pushed through the appointment of this president and prime minister. The resistance bloc in Lebanon was weak, so they let it happen. But now, you know, there's a 180-degree shift in the power balance in Western Asia. The United States and Israel were defeated in their war against Iran, and they cannot bring to fruition whatever plots they had in 2025. Maybe if the United States had pushed this agreement, if it wasn’t too victorious in its head in 2025, and instead of letting Israel destroy Lebanon for no reason at that time, had pushed for this agreement, then maybe they would have been able to achieve something. But now, this is not gonna pass. There is no military power that can force Hezbollah to disarm, and the Israelis have had their wings clipped by the United States after Israel's defeat in the military operations in South Lebanon and its threats to use genocide and ethnic cleansing or mass casualty events as its form of warfare, with the threats of attacks on Beirut a few weeks ago when, of course, Iran said it would retaliate by bombing Aminu's colonies in Palestine. And so what we have right now is that the Israelis cannot win a military confrontation with Hezbollah. At the same time, they're not allowed by the United States and by Iran to conduct genocidal warfare as a replacement for their failures on the field in regular warfare. So this is where we're at, and I think Hezbollah is going to be victorious if this continues this way. -- 2 of 13 -- #Pascal So your interpretation is actually that the United States this time is putting pressure on Israel not to commit genocide, not to repeat what it already did in Gaza, because it seems to me that they outwardly threatened to rinse and repeat Gaza in Lebanon. But your interpretation is that this time the U.S. is actually putting real pressure on them. #Laith Marouf Yeah, and I don't think that the U.S. really wants to put this pressure. But because the U.S. has lost the war with Iran, its own interests right now are starting to diverge away from the interests of the Jewish colony. So, you know, prior to this and the war on Iran, the strategic goal of the United States to remain the hegemon in Western Asia aligned perfectly with the strategic goal of the Jewish colony, which is to exist permanently in Western Asia. And now what we see, with much of the military power of the United States in Western Asia being destroyed, and a host of other vassals that the United States has in Western Asia—mainly the Arab monarchies—shattering into collapse, with all their finances in ruins and their ability to influence Arab and Muslim populations becoming weaker and weaker, this is threatening the strategic goal of the United States to remain the hegemon in the region. And this is why there are beginnings of these divergences between the tactical maneuvers that the Jewish colony and the Americans perform in the region. And of course, this is visible and known to the axis of resistance, and they are hammering on the differences between the United States and Israel. #Pascal Last time we talked was shortly after the beginning of the war between the U.S., Israel, and Iran. And now we are speaking on July 3rd, so three months later, four months later. How has that time period been since February 28th? How did you experience the changes that came with, well, the losing of the United States in this battle, which I think culminated in the signing of the MOU, where the United States had to basically admit and put its signature under a piece that says, like, yeah, fine, we lost? And how did that impact the situation in Lebanon? Did you actually feel that, you know, the Israelis couldn’t continue as they did before? #Laith Marouf Yes. You know, when we look at the battlefield, again, we see how Hezbollah has innovated and was able to destroy more than 500 Israeli tanks in the south of Lebanon in these three months. This is a huge number. It's 50% of the remaining tanks that the Israelis have. This is above and beyond, of course, the armored vehicles and technical vehicles like bulldozers and what have you that were -- 3 of 13 -- destroyed. And we're, you know, seeing how the financial, you know, effect that the Gulf countries had—the vassals in the Arab world—that all the millions they had to spend on influencing internal politics in the Arab and Muslim countries are now not available. You know, so the Emiratis, the Qataris, have specifically withdrawn, I think, from intervening not only in Lebanon but in much of the Arab and Muslim world. They don't have enough money to waste with the destruction of their oil and gas industry. And now we see only Saudi Arabia still having some influence in Lebanon. And because Saudi Arabia has also seen the effects of this war on the other monarchs in the Arabian Peninsula, I think they are being more cautious. They're not throwing all their money in the same direction as the Israelis and the Americans are. We're seeing more and more of the political parties in Lebanon come out in support of the resistance as an effect of this. You know, money talks, and when it's not, then, you know, internal influences become more effective in changing the opinions of these leaders. So over the last week, we saw 22 parties in Lebanon make public statements against the memorandum of agreement. And that's basically the vast majority of political parties in the country, representing the vast majority of sects and the vast majority of regions. So this all wouldn't have happened if Iran hadn't won the 44-day war. And this is, of course, affecting the ability of the prime minister or president of Lebanon to deliver on what the Americans want. Even when we talk about, you know, the United States and the Zionists wanting the Lebanese military to be the one that's confronting Hezbollah to disarm it, if there was anyone within the Lebanese military that thought, yeah, maybe we can do that—well, now that's gone. So over the last week, we heard multiple times rumors that the president is attempting to fire the chief of staff, General Rudolf Haikal, and he didn't do it. So that means that he has no replacement for him that will agree to the stupid, suicidal move of using the Lebanese military to confront Hezbollah. So the victory of Iran and the axis of resistance in the 44-day war is translating openly in front of everybody to huge changes in Lebanon. #Pascal We have statements from Israeli politicians on their TV saying that what should be aspired to is a civil war, to foster a civil war in Lebanon. And what you outlined, right—the Lebanese army versus Hezbollah and everything going up in flames and pure chaos. And of course, we all understand how and why that would suit Israel very well. But so, is your analysis in that case that this scenario is now less and less likely just because the Lebanese government has no military that could realistically fight a civil war? #Laith Marouf Yeah, yeah. I think it's now an impossibility. It was already something that is hard to achieve—to get the Lebanese military to attack Hezbollah. Because around 60% of the soldiers and officers in the -- 4 of 13 -- Lebanese military are from the Shia sect. And by the way, the Lebanese military, in my opinion, is a patriotic institution. It has never confronted Hezbollah at any time, not only this time. And so it's kind of the only institution in the government of Lebanon that is still truly representative of the majority of the population. So there would have been a mutiny if the president and the prime minister forced the army to confront Hezbollah. This is prior to the victory of Iran. So now, with the victory of Iran, I think the leadership of the military that is patriotic is more emboldened and even feels more protected, that it can reject openly pressures on it to kill its own citizens. So that's out of the picture, I think, at this moment. So the other option that the Americans and the Zionists have is to cause a civil war, as you're saying, and that would require other militias. And when we look at the landscape of militias in Lebanon, it's no