Category World News

Beirut, Lebanon – After more than a year of holding fire, Hezbollah last week launched a volley of missiles and drones towards an Israeli military site in the northern city of Haifa.

The Lebanese group said the attack was in response to the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the United States-Israeli war on Iran on February 28. Iran is Hezbollah’s main benefactor.

Since then, Israel has carried out a fierce air campaign on Lebanon, killing nearly 500 people, including 83 children, and forcing half a million from their homes. It also launched a new ground incursion into the south of the country, ordering troops to “take control of additional strategic positions” as it opened a new front in the regional war prompted by the attacks on Iran.

But as regional tensions rise, military experts and analysts say the Israeli escalation and Hezbollah’s resumption of fighting are complicating the Lebanese government’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah.

Under the terms of a 2024 ceasefire deal between Hezbollah and Israel after more than a year of fighting, Israeli troops were to withdraw from southern Lebanon, and the group’s fighters were to go north of the Litani River that runs across the south of the country.

Both sides would stop attacks, and the south would be handed over to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) – even though Israel violated the ceasefire more than 10,000 times as it continued to target Hezbollah targets across the country, according to United Nations peacekeepers, and killed more than 100 civilians.

Analysts say the increasingly contentious issue of Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon cannot come about before the end of the war in the country, due to the active fighting and its potential effect within LAF ranks. Such a solution is also seen as highly tied to the US and Israel’s war on Iran.

“If there is an Israeli invasion, the Army cannot arrest someone opposing the Israelis on their own land,” Hassan Jouni, a retired brigadier general with the LAF, told Al Jazeera.

Israeli soldiers on Lebanese land

Hezbollah’s decision to enter the fighting reportedly took much of the Lebanese political establishment by surprise.

The government, which in August 2025 approved a plan to have the LAF disarm Hezbollah, immediately declared the group’s military activities “illegal”, while Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called Hezbollah’s move a “strategic mistake”, in an interview with Lebanese newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour.

The Reuters news agency reported that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a longtime steadfast ally of Hezbollah, was surprised by the move after he had received “assurances” from Hezbollah that it would not retaliate against Israel for its attacks on Iran.

One week into the resumption of fighting, however, the conflict shows no signs of slowing down.

A Lebanese military source told Al Jazeera that Israeli ground troops are present in numerous points, mostly in unpopulated land a few kilometres (miles) into Lebanese territory. Data collected by conflict monitor ACLED showed the Israeli forces had also engaged in clashes with Hezbollah fighters in villages in the central and eastern sectors of southern Lebanon.

Multiple analysts told Al Jazeera the presence of the Israeli army in southern Lebanon would make the army’s job of disarming Hezbollah impossible, foremost in that any occupation would lead to a renewed form of resistance – be it from Hezbollah or another group.

“No one can implement the government’s decision [to enforce the illegality of Hezbollah’s military actions],” Qassem Kassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah. “And today there is an Israeli occupation. Everyone will become part of the resistance.”

For years, Hezbollah was considered Lebanon’s most capable fighting force. Formed in the early 1980s with considerable support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC), it grew to become a regional actor, with members deployed in countries such as Syria and Yemen.

The LAF, meanwhile, has faced severe economic struggles that have led to defections and soldiers working second jobs to get by. Still, according to a 2024 Arab Barometer report, 85 percent of Lebanese citizens say they have a high level of trust in the army.

The LAF has also proven it can be an effective fighting force when called upon. Joseph Aoun, now Lebanon’s president, led the LAF in operations against ISIL (ISIS) and other armed groups along the Lebanese-Syrian border in 2017.

“It’s a solid institution, and it has considerable combat capabilities, especially regarding special forces,” Jouni said.

Still, multiple sources told Al Jazeera the army could not confront Hezbollah directly because there was no political consensus in the country, and any such confrontation could lead to internal strife.

During the Lebanese civil war from 1975 to 1990, the Lebanese army split along sectarian lines. Various sources told Al Jazeera that such a scenario could repeat should the LAF confront Hezbollah, with Shia members defecting rather than fighting relatives.

“You can’t rely on them in a confrontation with Hezbollah,” Jouni said. “First, this confrontation will inevitably lead us to a very violent civil war.”

The army source said the public demand on the LAF currently falls into two groups.

“The first side wants the army to confront Hezbollah,” the source said. “And that could split the army, which has a sizable Shia contingent,” the source added.

“The other side wants the army to fight Israel, and that would be suicide.”

Much like the Israeli army, the LAF is funded and equipped predominantly by the US. But the US also provides Israel’s military with billions of dollars and far superior equipment to the LAF, creating a disparity between the two national armies.

Raids and checkpoints over confrontation

Even if the divisiveness over Hezbollah’s weapons was not present, there is still the question of the army’s capacity.

Hezbollah is well-trained in street combat and rebel warfare tactics. It also has experience fighting in Syria on the side of former President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and against Israel in southern Lebanon.

The LAF, on the other hand, is more suitable for special operations, Jouni said. “It’s not geared towards chasing Hezbollah members in the streets of Lebanon,” he said. “That would deplete the army.”

Various sources told Al Jazeera that instead, the LAF has focused on stopping people carrying unsanctioned arms at checkpoints. That has included Hezbollah members.

Seth Krummrich, a retired US Army colonel who worked with the LAF during his time as the former chief of staff for Special Operations Command Central, told Al Jazeera that it would be unlikely for the Lebanese army to directly confront Hezbollah battalions in combat.

“At best, we can expect arrest warrants and raids,” Krummrich said. “But not head-to-head fighting with foot soldiers.”

However, with the current security status quo, disarming Hezbollah would be impossible, experts said. First, Hezbollah fighters, particularly its elite Radwan Force, are engaging Israeli troops on Lebanese territory. And second, even if the LAf focused on areas where there are no clashes, it would be a logistical nightmare.

The military source said much of Hezbollah’s weapons are in deep valleys north of the Litani River that are dangerous to access. This is where the LAF was supposed to disarm Hezbollah in phase two of the disarmament plan – between the Litani and Awali Rivers.

The source said the danger was even greater because Israel is attacking those areas and soldiers have been killed, even during the supposed ceasefire, by Israeli attacks.

A suspected Iranian attack on a high-rise residential building in Bahrain’s capital of Manama has killed a 29-year-old Bahraini woman and injured several others.

When Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran had spent two decades studying US wars to build a system that could keep fighting even if the capital was bombed, he was describing more than resilience; he was outlining the logic of Iran’s defence doctrine.

At the centre of that doctrine is what Iranian military thinkers call “decentralised mosaic defence” – a concept built on one core assumption: that in any war with the United States or Israel, Iran may lose senior commanders, key facilities, communications networks and even centralised control, but must still be able to keep fighting.

That means the priority is not simply defending Tehran, or even protecting the supreme leadership itself. It is preserving decision-making, keeping combat units operational and preventing the war from ending with a single devastating strike.

In that sense, Iran’s military was not built for a short war. It was built for a long one.

What is mosaic defence?

“Mosaic defence” is an Iranian military concept most closely associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), particularly under former commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, who led the force from 2007 to 2019.

The idea is to organise the state’s defensive structure into multiple regional and semi-independent layers instead of concentrating power in a single command chain that could be paralysed by a decapitation strike.

Under this model, the IRGC, the Basij, regular army units, missile forces, naval assets and local command structures form parts of a distributed system. If one part is hit, others keep functioning. If senior leaders are killed, the chain does not collapse. If communications are severed, local units still retain the authority and capacity to act.

The doctrine has two central aims: to make Iran’s command system difficult to dismantle by force, and to make the battlefield itself harder to resolve quickly by turning Iran into a layered arena of regular defence, irregular warfare, local mobilisation and long-term attrition.

That is why Iranian military thinking does not treat war primarily as a contest of firepower. It treats it as a test of endurance.

Why did Iran adopt this model?

Iran’s shift towards this model was shaped by the regional shocks that followed the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

The rapid collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime appears to have left a deep mark on Iranian strategic thinking. Tehran saw what a highly centralised state looked like when confronted with overwhelming American military power: The command structure was struck, the system fragmented and the regime fell quickly.

Rather than making its military more dependent on central control, it moved towards diffusion. Rather than assuming it could match US or Israeli conventional superiority, it focused on surviving it.

Iran’s doctrine assumes that any invading or attacking force will have far superior conventional technology, air power and intelligence capabilities. The answer, in Iranian thinking, is not symmetrical confrontation. It is to disrupt the enemy’s advantages, prolong the conflict and raise the cost of continuing it.

How would it work in war?

In practice, the doctrine assigns different roles to different institutions.

The regular army, or Artesh, is expected to absorb the first blow. Its armoured, mechanised and infantry formations serve as the initial line of defence, tasked with slowing enemy advances and stabilising the front.

Air defence units, using concealment, deception and dispersal, try to blunt enemy air superiority as much as possible.

The IRGC and the Basij then take on a deeper role in the next stage of conflict. Their task is to turn the war into one of attrition through decentralised operations, ambushes, local resistance, disruption of supply lines and flexible operations across varied terrain, including urban centres, mountains and remote regions.

This is where the Basij becomes especially important. Originally founded by order of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the force was later more tightly integrated into the IRGC’s wartime structure. After 2007, its units were folded into a provincial command system spanning Iran’s 31 provinces, giving local commanders wider room to act according to geography and battlefield conditions.

That local autonomy is central to the doctrine. It means war can continue from below even if leadership from above is degraded.

Beyond the land battle, naval forces play their part through anti-access tactics in the Gulf and around the Strait of Hormuz. Their mission is to make free movement dangerous and costly through fast attack craft, mines, antiship missiles and the threat of disruption in one of the world’s most sensitive energy corridors.

Missile forces, especially those controlled by the IRGC, serve as both deterrent and deep-strike capability, aimed at imposing costs on enemy infrastructure and military targets.

Then comes Iran’s wider regional network: allied armed groups and partner forces across the Middle East, whose role is to widen the battlefield and ensure that any war with Iran does not remain confined to Iranian territory.

Instead of allowing the enemy to isolate one front and destroy one command structure, Iran seeks to spread the war across time, geography and multiple layers of conflict.

Why time matters

One of the clearest expressions of this doctrine is economic as much as military.

A Shahed drone, for example, is widely estimated to cost tens of thousands of dollars to manufacture. Intercepting it can cost vastly more once interceptor missiles and integrated defence systems are taken into account.

That asymmetry matters because it turns time into a strategic weapon.

If one side can produce low-cost weapons in large quantities while forcing its opponent to spend far more to defend against them, then prolonging the war itself becomes a means of pressure. The point is not necessarily to win through immediate battlefield superiority. It is to make the cost of stopping every threat unsustainable over time.

That is one reason Iranian military doctrine places such emphasis on endurance, stockpiles, decentralisation and attrition. It is built around the possibility that the stronger side may eventually find the price of continued escalation too high.

The influence of prolonged war theory

Iran’s doctrine did not emerge in an intellectual vacuum. It overlaps in important ways with the theory of prolonged war most famously associated with Mao Zedong.

During the Japanese invasion of China, Mao argued that a weaker side did not need to defeat a stronger enemy quickly. It could instead survive the initial imbalance, stretch the conflict, wear down the enemy’s logistics and political will, and gradually alter the balance over time.

Iran’s doctrine is not a copy of Mao’s model. But it shares the same central premise: that war is not decided only by relative military capability at the outset. It is also shaped by time, endurance, adaptability and the ability to survive the opening shock.

That logic influenced many 20th-century conflicts, from Vietnam to Algeria to Afghanistan. It remains central to how analysts understand the staying power of weaker states and armed groups facing militarily superior enemies.

Who developed this thinking inside Iran?

Among the most prominent ideological figures associated with this thinking is Hassan Abbasi, a hardline strategist often described as one of the IRGC’s key theorists of asymmetric and long-duration conflict.

Abbasi’s importance lies not only in military ideas but also in the way he connects strategic concepts to ideological narrative. In Iran’s system, prolonged war is not treated purely as an operational necessity. It is also framed as a political and civilisational struggle in which society, belief and state institutions must all be prepared to absorb pressure and keep functioning.

That makes the doctrine broader than battlefield planning. It becomes a way of organising state resilience.

Mohammad Ali Jafari, meanwhile, helped translate much of this thinking into institutional form. Under his leadership, concepts such as decentralised defence, localised command, irregular response and distributed resilience became more deeply embedded in the IRGC structure.

What is the “fourth successor”?

Perhaps the clearest expression of this wartime logic lies in succession planning.

Before his killing, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei reportedly instructed senior Iranian officials to ensure that multiple predesignated successors existed for every key military and civilian post. The reported number was as many as four replacements for each senior position. That is what gives rise to the idea of the “fourth successor”.

The point was not merely to name an heir at the top. It was to build layers of succession throughout the system so that the assassination, disappearance or isolation of one leader would not create paralysis. Even if a first replacement could not assume control, a second, third or fourth would already be in line.

At the same time, a narrow inner circle was reportedly authorised to take key decisions if communication with the top leadership became impossible.

This reflects the same logic as mosaic defence: Do not allow the system to depend on any single node. Make it possible for the state to keep operating even after severe shock.

Why does this matter now?

Because the doctrine suggests Iran was preparing for exactly the kind of war its adversaries hoped would break it quickly.

The United States and Israel have long relied on doctrines of rapid dominance, precision targeting and leadership decapitation. In that framework, destroying command centres, communications nodes and senior figures is expected to produce systemic collapse, or at least strategic paralysis.

Iran’s answer has been to design against that outcome. This does not make the system invulnerable. It does mean it was built on the assumption of severe loss and disruption, with continuity preserved through redundancy, decentralisation and organisational resilience.

That approach was shaped not only by foreign threats, but also by Iran’s own internal history. In the years after the 1979 revolution, the new regime faced violent challenges from armed opposition groups, most notably the Mujahedin-e Khalq, whose assassinations and bombings exposed the fragility of a leadership-centred order.

The Iran-Iraq War reinforced the same lesson. Eight years of attritional conflict gave the Islamic Republic experience not only in mobilisation and endurance, but in governing through prolonged war.

A doctrine built to survive shock

Taken together, all of these point to a simple conclusion: Iran’s strategy was not designed for a brief exchange of blows.

It was designed for a war in which commanders might be killed, communications severed, infrastructure hit and central authority strained – but in which the state, the armed forces and the wider security system would continue functioning.

That is the significance of mosaic defence. It is not simply a military tactic; it is a theory of survival.

It assumes that the enemy may dominate the skies, strike first and strike hard. But it also assumes that war can still be extended, dispersed and made costly enough to frustrate the search for quick victory.

That is where the “fourth successor” puzzle fits in. It offers a window into a broader Iranian view of conflict: that the system must be able to absorb shock, replace itself under fire and turn the passage of time into part of its defence.