How Hezbollah struck back after a year of strategic patience, tilting battlefield in its favor

By Hiba Morad

Hezbollah's battlefield performance since early March – after more than a year of strategic patience – has exposed not only Israeli vulnerabilities but also a profound ignorance regarding the nature of the resistance and its ability to recover.

Speaking to the Press TV website, a security source close to the Lebanese resistance movement said the movement continues to successfully target Israeli troops and settlements with “steady barrages of rockets and drones, which evade interception and strike their targets.”

He noted that the performance of the resistance on the battlefield, its ability to strike deep into Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, its new tactics on the ground, especially using hard-to-detect fiber-optic FPV drones, as well as the steadfastness of its people, will enable it to reshape the deterrence equation once again.

“The drones, in particular, are changing the equation on the ground quite efficiently,” the source said, referring to the barrage of drones launched by the resistance fighters for weeks before the ceasefire was announced last week.

These drones – equipped with fiber-optic spools that physically connect them to their operators – are effectively immune to electronic jamming, allowing uninterrupted real-time video transmission and command control.

This capability enables operators to guide the drones precisely toward targets, even in heavily contested electronic warfare environments.

The source said the Israeli regime must fear that “the walls, even the skies, have ears” – whether inside the battlefield or inside the occupied territories – noting that the regime and its military apparatus “is exposed wherever it exists.”

“We are keeping track of their movement, their plans in many instances, and they must understand that yes, it is as if they are fighting ghosts,” the source, who has been closely involved in the retaliatory operations that came over a year after the last ceasefire.

“We master the new tech-war pretty well, but they keep underestimating our capabilities.”

Miscalculations regarding Hezbollah

Since the 2024 Israeli war on Lebanon, the mainstream narrative in the US, the Israeli-occupied territories, US-backed governments in the region, and the Lebanese government has suggested that Hezbollah is experiencing nothing more than a "cadaveric spasm."

According to the source, these miscalculations – that Hezbollah is on its last legs – constituted a success in themselves, proving time and again that the Israeli enemy remains fundamentally ignorant about the resistance movement and its dynamics.

The new Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, has reassured audiences in several speeches that the resistance is in a "rehab" phase and has nearly recovered.

In his latest speech on Monday, the Hezbollah leader noted that the Tel Aviv regime is currently at an impasse, and the Lebanese movement remains fully prepared, strong, and invincible.

"The resistance continues to be strong and cannot be defeated, and the enemy was surprised by the steadfastness of the fighters," the Hezbollah leader said.

He added that the Islamic Resistance fighters will continue their resistance in defense of Lebanon and its people, like it has always done, particularly since early March.

"We will not return to what existed before March 2. We will respond to Israeli aggression and confront it," Sheikh Qassem stressed, referring to over a year of strategic patience during which the Israeli regime continued to breach the ceasefire almost regularly.

Hezbollah bounces back stronger

The deadly spark of the war against the Lebanese nation was a devastating attack targeting thousands of Hezbollah fighters and ordinary citizens across the country through the detonation of their pagers and walkie-talkies in September 2024.

That attack was followed by an all-out war on Lebanon, the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, his successor Sayyed Hashem Safiedine, and dozens of other resistance leaders and commanders.

It prompted many military pundits in the West to write Hezbollah’s premature obituary.

Yet, during the past 15 months of non-stop Israeli violations and breaches of the ceasefire, Hezbollah rebuilt itself and pulled itself together to emerge stronger and more determined to defend and liberate its land and people.

Speaking to the Press TV website, Abou Jawad – a resistance fighter who has been with the movement since its establishment – said the resistance knew that November 27, 2024, was not a call to end the war, but a temporary ceasefire.

“It was a phase during which we were able to recover, rethink and reconstruct ourselves and strategies in the face of a cunning Israeli enemy that enjoys committing immense war crimes,” said Abou Jawad, who lost one eye and three fingers in the pager blast.

Since the first day following the ceasefire, the resistance started its "rehab" journey on all levels, he told the Press TV website.

“The rhetoric among analysts was that Israel had destroyed the resistance and its capabilities by 80%. Israel thought the resistance had collapsed. But we were growing stronger and more resilient despite the injuries, pain and loss,” he stated.

On September 27, Sheikh Naim Qassem said that “Hezbollah sustains broad social support and has recovered operationally, that it is advancing, rebuilding, and prepared to defend Lebanon.”

A pre-emptive move

Striking its enemy in response to the assassination of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, a revered spiritual authority for many Shias in Lebanon, Hezbollah launched six missiles toward Israeli-occupied territories on March 2.

Meanwhile, the media exposed the forever-cunning nature of the illegitimate regime, proving once again that the resistance movement was righteous in taking action.

Based on media reports from early March 2026, Israeli regime officials revealed their own foolhardiness, stating that Israel had planned a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah, but the resistance group “beat Israel to it” by launching rockets first.

As Abou Jawad puts it, “the cunning and expansionist identity of the Israeli regime was also put in the limelight during the first days of the war as Israeli goals in the war against Lebanon shifted from immediately disarming Hezbollah to reestablishing a 'South Lebanon Security Zone', and from 'targeting what they dub as Hezbollah infrastructure' into killing innocent civilians even while sleeping at night.

The cumulative toll from Israeli aggression against the country – since its resumption on March 2 until April 25 – has reached 2,496 martyrs and 7,725 wounded, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.

Even after the ceasefire was reached last week, due to pressure imposed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Israeli occupation launched a wave of attacks against South Lebanon, targeting several villages and particularly civilians, in a blatant violation of the ceasefire.

Strategic patience, high performance

Abou Jawad told the Press TV website that what the Israelis do not understand is that Hezbollah “knows well how to practice strategic patience.”

“We do not fight with missiles and drones only. We initially depend on our strategic patience, will, beliefs and insight. Of course, we have also developed skills on the different levels, including AI, but that has no value if it is not combined with patience and faith,” he said.

“Let Israel wait for our coming surprises in the future. I think as time goes by and events unfold, the Israeli soldiers will prefer to commit suicide before entering Lebanon’s territory.”

Earlier this month, Haaretz reported nearly a dozen suicides in one month as Israeli media warned that the occupation army is bogged down in Lebanon, noting that Hezbollah holds the buffer zone and no exit strategy exists for the occupying forces.

Abou Jawad asserted that the Israeli regime has achieved no real goals in the so-called "Lion's Roar" aggression, noting that its inability to secure any real victory prompts it to kill more civilians and create "fake targets" to compensate for its catastrophic failure on the battlefield and its inability to hold ground.

Israeli media seconds that. In a report published on Friday, the Maariv Israeli newspaper stated that Israel's war on southern Lebanon is "falling apart on itself," and that the situation there has deteriorated to the point where the original framing of the war has lost all meaning.

“There are more surprises in the offing for the Israeli regime. We held back for more than a year to honor the ceasefire despite repeated provocations. Now the game has changed,” the source close to the resistance movement told the Press TV website.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk