By Nohad Topalian | 2024-07-31

BEIRUT -- As the Iranian regime's number one proxy, Hizbullah has long been on the receiving end of its largesse, with weapons flowing to it by land, air and sea from the Islamic Republic, even as regional tensions soar.

Hizbullah "has received large shipments of rockets and drones from Iran, its principal patron, and has more recently begun to produce its own weapons," the Washington Post reported July 10.

In 2022, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah announced the party was manufacturing its own drones in Lebanon.

Since the end of Lebanon's civil war in 1990, after which it illegally held onto its weapons, Hizbullah "has robustly expanded the size and the quality of its arsenal," said Dina Arakji, an associate analyst at Control Risks consultancy.

It has stockpiled an estimated 130,000 to 150,000 guided and unguided rockets, ballistic and anti-ship missiles, as well as explosives-laden drones.

And it has "reportedly acquired more advanced weaponry, particularly precision-guided missiles," Arakji told AFP.

Hizbullah has Iranian ballistic missiles it has yet to use -- among them the Iranian-made Fateh 110, military analyst Khalil Helou told Al-Fassel.

It has Shahed 136 attack drones and other Iranian drones, he said, as well as anti-ship Russian Yakhont missiles and Chinese-made Silkworm missiles.

The Iran-backed party has "thousands of small, homemade reconnaissance and attack drones," a Hizbullah opponent with knowledge of its arsenal told Al-Fassel.

It also has "large drones capable of carrying two Almas 3 class missiles, such as the Iranian Shahed and Mersad drones," he said.

Iranian-made Almas missiles are a clone of Russian Kornet missiles, Helou said. "As for the Zelzal, Faleq and Burkan missiles, they are Iranian made, while the drones launched by Hizbullah are manufactured with Iranian technology."

Stockpiling weapons

Hizbullah has been acquiring drones and has increased the speed with which it can stockpile weapons, senior party official Nawaf al-Mousawi told Al-Mayadeen, a pro-Iranian news channel based in Beirut.

He revealed that the quantity the party "used to deliver to its storage facilities in half a year is now being delivered within a month," the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) said in a March 26 analysis.

This indicates that Hizbullah "continues to build new storage facilities and bring in new missiles," it said.

Al-Mousawi hinted that Hizbullah has "new weapons" and that these weapons, including missiles, are more accurate and can be used on land or sea.

But "it cannot [really] be said that Hizbullah has new weapons," Helou noted, pointing out that all that is new is that the party recently used for the first time a drone already in its possession that fires S-5 missiles.