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Beirut, Lebanon – The Lebanese group Hezbollah has launched only one attack in the 14 months since a ceasefire with Israel began – despite more than 11,000 Israeli violations.

The Israeli attacks continue to devastate parts of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley and are keeping approximately 64,000 Lebanese displaced.

Hezbollah has not been in a position to respond after being weakened during the 2024 war, in which most of its military leadership was killed, including longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, analysts say.

But the group hasn’t ruled out a response – especially as Hezbollah is increasingly under pressure to disarm.

“No one can predict when Hezbollah will respond,” Qassem Kassir, a journalist close to Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera. “It’s linked to the escalating Israeli aggression, [a Hezbollah response will happen] if a suitable opportunity presents itself, and in the event that diplomatic efforts fail.”

‘Hezbollah committed to the ceasefire’

When the ceasefire was announced between Hezbollah and Israel on November 27, 2024, the Lebanese group was badly weakened militarily and politically. The fall of its ally in Syria, the al-Assad regime, less than two weeks later, cut off a crucial land supply route used to transport financing and weapons from Iran.

The ceasefire stipulated that both Hezbollah and Israel would cease their attacks, Hezbollah would pull back its forces from south of the Litani River that runs across south Lebanon, and Israel would withdraw its forces from its northern neighbour.

But Israel has not stopped attacking Lebanon, and it continues to occupy five points in southern Lebanon. Other issues that are of importance to Hezbollah and the Lebanese state include the fate of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails and reconstruction, which Israel has prevented through the repeated targeting of construction equipment.

Still, Hezbollah has only attacked Israel once since November 2024. The lone strike was in December 2024, when Hezbollah responded to repeated Israeli attacks by firing at an Israeli military post. No one was harmed, but Israel responded to that attack by killing 11 people in Lebanon.

In the months since, Israel has killed more than 330 people in Lebanon, including at least 127 civilians, and a top Hezbollah commander, Haytham Ali Tabatabai.

“Hezbollah committed to the ceasefire in order to give the Lebanese state, government, and army the opportunity to implement the ceasefire and achieve demands through diplomatic means, as promised by the President of the Republic [Joseph Aoun],” Kassir said. “Furthermore, it wants to take the time to rebuild and allow people to return to their villages and homes.”

‘No position to respond’

For years, Hezbollah’s military capacity acted as a deterrent to Israeli aggression. But that changed after the last war.

Analysts said that should Hezbollah respond, it would likely incur the wrath of Israel’s military, bringing back a scale of violence that displaced more than 1.2 million people and killed thousands.

“Hezbollah is simply in no position today to respond to Israel,” Lebanese political analyst Karim Emile Bitar told Al Jazeera. “Any retaliation from Lebanon would provoke an uproar in the domestic political arena, and it is also likely to be highly ineffective from a military standpoint. The party is simply too weak to enter into such an endeavour.”

“Israel has changed the rules of engagement through deep intelligence penetration, cyber-enabled targeting, AI-assisted surveillance, and precision strikes that degrade command, logistics, and leadership,” Imad Salamey, a political scientist at the Lebanese American University, told Al Jazeera.

There is, however, one scenario that might force Hezbollah’s hand, analysts said. An attack on Iran, Hezbollah’s longtime benefactor, could kick the group into action.

On January 26, Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem delivered a televised speech addressing his party’s position on US threats to attack Iran.

“We are determined to defend ourselves,” Qassem said. “We will choose in due course how to act.”

Hezbollah is a notoriously secretive group. And following a war where the group felt exposed by Israeli intelligence, their secretiveness has likely intensified. Still, reports in local media and some analysts have spoken about a potential divide in the group over its position vis-a-vis Iran, and how disarmament should proceed, if at all.

Iran’s survival

With that in mind, some members of Hezbollah may view the survival of the Iranian government as existential and push them to attack the US’s most fervent regional ally, Israel.

“The only scenario in which [Hezbollah may attack Israel] is if there is a genuine, clear and present existential danger to the very survival of the Iranian regime and if the Iranian regime orders all its regional proxies to go all in,” Bitar said. “Otherwise, I think Hezbollah is most likely to stay out of it.”

Salamey said that only a “dramatic external shock” like a regional war including Iran would draw in the group. Otherwise, any response “would likely require a clear crossing of red lines that directly threaten Hezbollah’s core survival, not symbolic or tactical losses.”

Growing tensions between the United States and Iran have left the two countries one spark away from a fire. An unprecedented accumulation of US military forces in the Middle East, coupled with Washington’s reliance on gunboat diplomacy, has distinctly increased the risk of war—one that engulfs Iran and the region, with far-reaching regional and global costs.

In the aftermath of the recent crackdown on protests in Iran, US President Donald Trump announced that it was time to remove Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His administration then deployed the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and supporting warplanes, along with various air defence assets—including additional THAAD and Patriot missile systems—across the Middle East.

As military assets have been accumulated, Trump has threatened that if Iran does not agree to a deal, “the next attack will be far worse” than last June’s US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

From the US perspective, a favourable agreement would require Iran to demolish its nuclear enrichment programme and ballistic missile capabilities, while also pulling back its regional influence. Such maximum demands, combined with Tehran’s deep distrust of negotiations with the US, make a deal highly unlikely. Alaeddin Boroujerdi, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, clarified on Monday that civilian nuclear capability, as well as missile and drone capabilities, represent a “red line” for Tehran.

This does not necessarily signal a permanent diplomatic stalemate. However, Tehran interprets the US’s maximum demands as a potential threat of regime change—a notion repeatedly emphasised by Trump and hawks in Washington and Tel Aviv. In this context, another US strike would represent an “existential threat” to the Islamic Republic, eliminating any incentive for restraint.

The impact of any US military action against Iran would principally depend on the attack’s type, scale, and targets, potentially triggering a severe crisis in Iran, across the region, and globally.

Trump favours surgical and targeted military operations, which would probably combine leadership decapitation with efforts to significantly damage Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) military bases, Basij units—a paramilitary force under IRGC control—and police stations, which the US designates as responsible for firing on demonstrators.

Any US effort to impose regime change through military means would undoubtedly lead to dangerous outcomes domestically and regionally. In Iran, an attack could lead to the consolidation of power. But it could also lead to a full takeover by the IRGC or even internal conflict.

An attack on Iran similar to the one last year could well result in the Iranian people rallying behind the flag and rejecting regime change for several reasons. First, the Iranian people are afraid of a scenario similar to Syria and Libya where there is state collapse. Second, there is no credible moderate opposition that can lead change. Third, there is strong sociopolitical cohesion within Iran.

Political institutions, the military, and the IRGC are well-organised and benefit from substantial resources generated by a sanctions-induced rentier system. Moreover, significant segments of society—particularly the working-class groups often referred to as “revolutionaries”—are aligned with this structure.

If the attack is successful in targeting senior leadership of the Islamic Republic, this could bring about a succession crisis, create decision-making vacuums, and deepen competition within the regime. Under these circumstances, tensions between state institutions and military-security entities would grow. Given the concentration of hard power in the hands of the IRGC, the probability of establishing a military-dominated state would expand.

The US and Israel may also try to encourage the outbreak of civil war to geopolitically weaken Iran. Last month, there were calls from some US officials, such as Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, to arm Iranian protesters. That could easily extend to armed groups, and there are a number of those that have clashed with the Iranian authorities that the US can turn to.

Among them are the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), formerly designated as a “terrorist” organisation by the US and the European Union (EU); the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an armed Kurdish group looking for the secession of Iran’s western Kurdistan province; Al-Ahwaziya, an Arab nationalist movement supporting the separation of the oil-rich Khuzestan province in the southwest; Jaish al-Adl (Jundallah), an armed group operating in southeastern Iran; and pan-Turkic groups in the northwest chasing the alliance of Turkic populations across Turkiye, Azerbaijan, and Iran.

Facing Washington’s continuing escalatory rhetoric and track record of regime change operations, Iran has adopted a so-called madman strategy, simultaneously issuing conciliatory and confrontational signals. This posture is apparent in Tehran’s expressed openness to establishing a framework of negotiations with the US, alongside Khamenei’s speech on Monday, which warned that any military attack on Iran would cause a “regional war”, underscoring the state’s prevailing priority of thwarting regime change at any cost—even at the risk of regional and global consequences.

Iran has made clear that it will retaliate, including through allied forces in the region, potentially drawing Israel and Gulf states into a broader regional skirmish. This would trigger political instability and economic vulnerability, which in turn may prompt substantial capital flight, chiefly from the Gulf states, as well as increasing flows of refugees and migrants to Europe.

Moreover, if Iran attacks shipping in the Strait of Hormuz or Gulf energy infrastructure, there would be a spike in global oil and gas prices, exacerbating market volatility, inflationary pressure from higher energy costs, and a knock-on effect for fragile economies, which would further worsen migration pressures.

In the current situation, any US military escalation poses a risk not just for Iran but for the whole region. Middle Eastern history demonstrates that once a conflict is triggered, it spreads like a wildfire, destabilising the whole region in unpredictable ways.