Hezbollah is in a crisis. The group suffered an unprecedented drubbing by Israel, which decimated most of its arsenal, eliminated a substantial number of its fighters, and killed its iconic Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah faces near-total Israeli freedom of action in Lebanon, growing skepticism about its utility at home, and the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime, which has severed its supply line through Syria. Within Hezbollah’s core constituency—Lebanese Shiites—these developments have left the group vulnerable to criticism. Many can now plausibly accuse Hezbollah of compounding five years of severe economic hardship, beginning with Lebanon’s 2019 financial collapse, with an unnecessary war that has left their homes in ruin and reconstruction uncertain.
Hezbollah desperately needed a lifeline to secure its future in Lebanon. The massive turnout to Nasrallah’s funeral on February 23 may have provided one, deterring Beirut from either seizing its arms or undermining its domestic standing.
Hezbollah derives its domestic strength—and its longstanding immunity from disarmament or restraint by the Lebanese government—not through force of arms alone but through widespread popularity among Lebanese Shiites, Lebanon’s likely largest and fastest-growing sect. In Lebanon’s May 2022 parliamentary elections, the group garnered 356,000 of the 1.8 million votes cast—the most of any party by approximately 150,000 votes. Polls from January and September of 2024 showed that between 89 percent and 93 percent of Lebanese Shiites support Hezbollah.
This extensive support reflects the group’s “Nation of Hezbollah” model of membership, first articulated in its foundational 1985 Open Letter, which prioritized a party’s “responsiveness with the masses” over territorial control. As a result, Hezbollah developed a broad, flexible concept of membership to attract as much support as possible.
This served a pragmatic purpose. Gaining Shiite support at all granted Hezbollah domestic legitimacy and secured its place in Lebanon’s sectarian-power sharing system. The larger that support, the more influence Hezbollah had within that sectarian system—and therefore adopting a membership model designed to maximize support was vital.
Road to reconstruction
Popular support will also prove critical to Hezbollah achieving its post-war priorities, the first of which is retaining its arms. In his December 5 speech, the group’s new Secretary-General Naim Qassem bowed to reality and the Lebanon-Israel ceasefire agreement, agreeing that “the presence of armed individuals and the resistance’s weapons” would be “banned south of the Litani River”—amounting to a tactical withdrawal from most of south Lebanon. However, Qassem and the rest of Hezbollah have insisted that the agreement does not apply north of the Litani, meaning that the question of Hezbollah’s arms in the rest of Lebanon must be resolved through Lebanese consensus and dialogue on a national defense strategy.
Hezbollah’s other, equally important priority is ensuring that post-war reconstruction funds reach its battered community. Qassem insisted that this must also be the Lebanese government’s priority, after ensuring Israel’s complete withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Seeking to shifting the onus of reconstruction—and the potential backlash if aid does not materialize—from Hezbollah squarely to the Lebanese state, Qassem stated that Beirut had a “responsibility” to “attract donations or call for [aid] conferences or rely on [help] from [foreign] countries” for reconstruction.
SIGN UP FOR THIS WEEK IN THE MIDEAST NEWSLETTER
Securing these two priorities is of existential importance for Hezbollah as they are essential to regain whatever trust Shiites lost in the group for inviting the recent war with Israel. Without its arms, the group could no longer claim to be “The Resistance.” After all, that image is the basis of much of Hezbollah’s appeal, and it also serves as its justification for retaining the figurative stick it uses—often as a last resort—to deter hostile action within Lebanon and, more vitally, dissent from within the Shiite community.
As for reconstruction, Iran has allegedly been channeling funds to its main regional instrument—one billion dollars the day after the ceasefire went into effect. However, that’s a pittance compared to the estimated eight billion to eleven billion dollars in war damage. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s access to Iranian coffers has been complicated by a combination of Assad’s downfall and Israeli threats, which led Beirut to temporarily clamp down on Hezbollah’s alternate funding route through Hariri International Airport by, for example, seizing cash shipments. If reconstruction aid does not materialize, Hezbollah will likely face an unprecedented eruption of anger from within its own support base.
Numbers game
Enter Nasrallah’s funeral, the purpose of which, as Qassem stated, was not only an outpouring of grief but also a domestic show of force. Vast attendance was therefore necessary.
Turnout numbers varied. Citing event organizers, Al-Jadeed and the Lebanese National News Agency offered a slightly implausible preliminary estimate of 1.4 million people, while Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International reported “hundreds of thousands” both in Camille Chamoun Stadium, Lebanon’s largest sports arena where the funeral began, “and surrounding areas.” Meanwhile, Reuters estimated one million attendees based on an unnamed “Lebanese security source,” anonymous Hezbollah sources told AFP that the event drew “around 800,000” participants, and a Lebanese official speaking on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press put the number at 450,000. The newspaper Al-Joumhouria claimed that 200,000 people from the Beqaa valley alone had headed to Beirut to participate in the funeral.
The final say on turnout, however, goes to the Beirut-based research and consultancy firm Information International. It dismissed both the inflated 1.4 million figure provided by the funeral organizers and the minimal estimate of a 200,000-person turnout, calling the latter “very low” and illogical, “given nearly 40 percent of attendees were in the stadium.” Instead, they estimated that 700,000 to 900,000 people attended Nasrallah’s funeral, with “no more than 15,000” of them coming from abroad, “based on [Hariri International Airport’s] daily activities.”
For comparison, the February 16, 2005, funeral of slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri attracted around 150,000 people.
Arms control
Hezbollah’s gambit, it would therefore appear, paid off—seemingly rebutting claims that the war and its effects had drained the group of a critical mass of supporters and left it domestically vulnerable. But that turnout now also serves to forestall any potential action by Lebanese authorities, who are already wavering on reining in the group. Both the ostensibly sovereigntist President Joseph Aoun and longtime ally, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, have accepted Hezbollah’s position on resolving the question of its arms.
This is also likely to critically impact Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who has already made concessions to Hezbollah while forming his cabinet—Lebanon’s real executive authority—in recognition of the country’s political realities. Salam, if his government and its policy statement win a parliamentary vote of confidence, will hold the premiership until Lebanon’s May 2026 parliamentary elections, when his government will dissolve by operation of law. Meanwhile, Salam has a long list of vital tasks to accomplish during his short term in office, including steering Lebanon through economic recovery, repairing and upgrading the country’s dilapidated infrastructure, enacting political and judicial reforms, and overseeing post-war reconstruction. These would be monumental tasks in a functioning state. In Lebanon, accomplishing them will require all hands on deck and avoiding political infighting.
With the numbers it brought out on February 23, Hezbollah can threaten the premier with—at a minimum—obstructionism if the group senses his government is moving against its arms or withholding or conditioning reconstruction aid to areas under its control. At worst, clashing with a Hezbollah that has retained pre-war levels of Shiite support could risk igniting a civil war.
Most Shiites who support Hezbollah are not unwavering Khomeinists. They back the group for practical reasons: its extensive social-clientelist network, the protection from external threats they believe Hezbollah’s private arsenal provides, and the domestic dignity and equality the traditionally disenfranchised sect derives from the group’s domestic political weight. But the relationship between party and population isn’t entirely transactional. Hezbollah has spent decades building an emotional symbiosis between the two—one that has remained relatively unchallenged by Shiite opposition alternatives, whose already small numbers are disunited and lack resources.
By bringing the community out to Nasrallah’s funeral in the hundreds of thousands, Hezbollah sent a message to its domestic opponents and the government: An attack on Hezbollah is an attack on the Shiites writ large. That doesn’t mean Hezbollah’s survival is absolutely guaranteed. But it has now, to Lebanon’s and the region’s misfortune, created a bridgehead that it can widen—over years, perhaps decades, and quite likely in fits and starts—to ensure it remains a fixture in Lebanon’s future.
David Daoud is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on Hezbollah, Israel, and Lebanon issues. Follow him on X: @DavidADaoud.
Further reading
Image: People gather next to a vehicle carrying the coffins of former Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, who were killed in Israeli airstrikes last year, near the burial site of Hassan Nasrallah, on the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon February 23, 2025. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY