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Hezbollah Rebuilds Military Capabilities in Southern Lebanon With Iranian Support Amid US Pressure, Israeli Strikes
Lebanese army members and residents inspect the damages in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, Lebanon, Feb. 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Karamallah Daher
The terrorist group Hezbollah is rebuilding its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon with Iranian support while openly defying international calls to disarm — a move that has heightened fears of a renewed conflict with Israel and prompted intensified diplomatic efforts by the United States and Egypt to prevent further escalation.
As Lebanon stands on the brink of a major new conflict, the government is intensifying efforts to meet the ceasefire deadline to disarm the Iran-backed terrorist group, while trying to avoid plunging the nation into a civil war.
On Monday, Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem once again refused to lay down the Islamist group’s weapons, rebuffinh mounting US pressure and warnings of a possible Israeli military response.
In an interview with the Lebanese outlet Al-Manar, Qassem insisted that the group’s military arsenal is a “legitimate tool for resisting Israel’s occupation and threats.”
“Our weapons are a legitimate means of defending the homeland and our existence,” he said. “There is no separation between our survival and that of the nation, and we reject becoming a target for the enemy’s conditions or calculations.”
The Iranian proxy group also warned that the risk of an escalated conflict “exists,” vowing to defend itself against “Israeli aggression until [its] last breath.” However, Hezbollah also said it has “no intention” of starting a war.
On Tuesday, the Alma Research and Education Center, which focuses on Israel’s security challenges along its northern border, released a new study revealing that Hezbollah, with Iranian backing, has been actively rebuilding its military capabilities, in clear breach of the ceasefire agreement with Israel brokered last year.
According to the report, Hezbollah, with support and sponsorship from the Islamist regime in Tehran, is intensifying efforts to rehabilitate its military capabilities, including the production and repair of weapons, arms and cash smuggling, recruitment and training, and the use of civilian infrastructure as a base and cover for its operations.
Despite suffering heavy losses in its war with Israel, the study also found that the group still maintains several tactical and underground tunnels — among its most valuable assets — particularly in areas where Israeli ground operations did not reach.
“Hezbollah retains operational strike capability in various formats … [but] it does not have broad invasion capability into the Galilee [northern Israel],” the study said.
Tal Beeri, a Middle East expert and author of the report, explained that the Iran-backed terrorist group “is not facing an actual dismantling of its weapons.”
“The State of Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces are limited in their ability and willingness to enforce weapons disarmament, among other reasons due to demographic issues, internal cooperation, fear of confrontation, and accessibility constraints,” Beeri said.
With support from Iran, Hezbollah has prioritized survivability and a shift toward covert operations, using civilian infrastructure and activities as both cover and a base for its military rehabilitation, the report explained.
In recent weeks, Israel has conducted strikes targeting this network, particularly south of the Litani River, where Hezbollah operatives are historically most active against the Jewish state.
For years, Israel has demanded that Hezbollah be barred from carrying out activities south of the Litani, located roughly 15 miles from the Israeli border.
The Lebanese government is now facing mounting pressure from Israeli and US officials to disarm Hezbollah and establish a state monopoly on weapons.
According to Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Israel appears to be preparing to confront Hezbollah again, following recent military strikes.
“War is coming, unless Lebanon’s leadership wakes up from denial and faces its responsibilities to its own citizens,” Ghaddar said in a post on X.
“What can be done? Start disarming Hezbollah in a more serious way – that is, north of Litani and the Beqaa, while targeting Hezbollah’s political and financial infrastructure,” she continued.
WAR IS COMING…
All signs, the military escalation by the IDF on Hezbollah, the drones flying all over Lebanon, the military exercise held by the IDF north of Israel right on the border of Lebanon, among other red flags, all lead to one conclusion: that Israel is readying for…— Hanin Ghaddar (@haningdr) October 24, 2025
As the Lebanese government pushes to meet a year-end deadline to disarm the terrorist group, the army has been actively dismantling Hezbollah arms caches across the country.
Media reports indicate that the country’s armed forces have reportedly run out of explosives, but operations are set to continue. The army has reportedly been cautious to avoid inflaming tensions, especially among Hezbollah’s Shi’ite base of support, and to buy time for Lebanon’s politicians to reach an agreement about the group’s weapons in other parts of the country.
Earlier this year, Lebanese officials agreed to a US-backed disarmament plan, which called for Hezbollah to be fully disarmed within four months — by November — in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from the five occupied positions in the country’s southern region.
Even though the Lebanese government agreed to a five-stage plan aimed at restoring authority and limiting the influence of the Iran-backed terrorist group, Hezbollah has pushed back against any government efforts, insisting that negotiations to dismantle its arsenal would be a serious misstep while Israel continues airstrikes in the country’s south.
The terrorist group has even threatened protests and civil unrest if the government tries to enforce control over its weapons.
On Monday, US Deputy Middle East Envoy Morgan Ortagus met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in Beirut to discuss ongoing disarmament efforts and possible next steps to stabilize the southern region.
According to a press release from his office, Aoun expressed his intention to implement UN Resolution 1701, which would allow the Lebanese army to deploy in the country’s south and ensure that Hezbollah is not armed or present in the area.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration approved $230 million in aid for Lebanon’s security forces to support their efforts to disarm the Iranian proxy.
Last fall, Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, following the group’s rocket and drone attacks on northern Israeli communities — which they claimed were a show of solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas amid the war in Gaza.
In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah.
Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.
However, Israel maintained troops at several posts in southern Lebanon beyond the ceasefire deadline, as its leaders aimed to reassure northern residents that it was safe to return home.
Jerusalem has continued carrying out strikes targeting remaining Hezbollah activity, with Israeli leaders accusing the group of maintaining combat infrastructure, including rocket launchers — calling such activity “blatant violations of understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
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Vance downplays ‘little skirmishes’ as Israel bombs in Gaza and Hamas fails to return hostages
Israel carried out a bombing campaign in Gaza on Tuesday in response to what it said was violations of the two-week-old ceasefire by Hamas.
Hamas, meanwhile, rejected the claim that it was behind an attack on Israeli soldiers and said Israel’s bombing was the ceasefire violation.
The two developments, plus Hamas’ continued holding of 13 hostages’ remains, represented the biggest threats yet to the U.S. brokered ceasefire in the two-year-long Gaza war. But U.S. Vice President JD Vance said he remained unconcerned.
“The ceasefire is holding,” Vance told reporters in Washington. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be little skirmishes here and there.”
Vance traveled to Israel last week as part of a U.S. pressure campaign to preserve the truce and set the region on a path toward a deeper peace. Both Israel and Hamas have tested the terms of the ceasefire.
Hamas has not released the remains of all of hostages as required by the ceasefire and on Monday night returned remains belonging to a murdered Israeli whose body had previously been returned to Israel. Video footage from Gaza appeared to show Hamas placing the remains underground before retrieving them to hand to the Red Cross for transport to Israel — a charade that the Red Cross denounced as “unacceptable” in a statement.
Hamas said it would halt the planned release of another hostage’s remains on Tuesday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he ordered “immediate and powerful strikes in Gaza” following a meeting of his security advisors.
The strikes followed an attack on Israeli soldiers in Rafah, a portion of Gaza that remains under Israeli military control.
“The attack on IDF soldiers in Gaza today by the Hamas terror organization crosses a glaring red line to which the IDF will respond with great force,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “Hamas will pay many times over for attacking the soldiers and for violating the agreement to return the fallen hostages.”
Hamas said it did not carry out the attack and that the airstrikes, which it said killed at least nine people in Gaza, represented a violation of the ceasefire. But it said it remained committed to the truce, which has so far allowed it to reassert control within Gaza. A second phase, required once all hostages are released, calls for Hamas’ disarmament.
Vance said he understood that an Israeli soldier had been attacked. “We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president’s peace is going to hold despite that,” he said.
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Harvard Demands Dismissal of Latest Antisemitism Lawsuit
A Jewish student at Harvard University harassed by anti-Israel protesters. Photo: Screenshot
Harvard University on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss an antisemitism lawsuit which alleges that administrative officials violated civil rights law when they declined to impose meaningful disciplinary sanctions on two students who allegedly assaulted a Jewish student during a protest held to rally anti-Israel activists just days after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israeli communities.
According to The Harvard Crimson, the university’s lawyers contended that the Jewish student, Yoav Segev, has not backed his claim with evidence and that his grievance is founded not in any legally recognizable harm but a disagreement regarding policy.
“Mr. Segev’s allegation, then, is not that Harvard failed to take action, but simply that he disagrees with the actions taken after the investigation,” the university’s lawyers wrote in a filing submitted on Monday, adding that the school believes Segev’s contention that Harvard “conspired” to deny him justice cannot be substantiated.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Segev endured a mobbing of pro-Hamas activists led by Ibrahim Bharmal and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, who stalked him across Harvard Yard before encircling him and screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as he struggled to break free from the mass of bodies which surrounded him. Video of the incident, widely viewed online at the time, showed the crush of people shoving keffiyehs — traditional headdresses worn by men in the Middle East that in some circles have come to symbolize Palestinian nationalism — in the face of the student, whom they had identified as Jewish.
Nearly two years after the assault, Bharmal and Tettey-Tamaklo have not only avoided hate crime charges but also even amassed new accolades and distinctions — according to multiple reports.
After being charged with assault and battery, the two men were ordered in April by Boston Municipal Court Judge Stephen McClenon to attend “pre-trial diversion” anger management courses and perform 80 hours of community service each, a decision which did not require their apologizing to Segev even though Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight described what they did as “hands on assault and battery.”
Harvard neither disciplined Bharmal nor removed him from the presidency of the Harvard Law Review, a coveted post once held by former US President Barack Obama. As of last year, he was awarded a law clerkship with the Public Defender for the District of Columbia, a government-funded agency which provides free legal counsel to “individuals … who are charged with committing serious criminal acts.” Bharmal also reaped a $65,000 fellowship from Harvard Law School to work at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamic group whose leaders have defended the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s atrocities against Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.
As for Tettey-Tamaklo, he walked away from Harvard Divinity School with honors, according to The Free Press, as the 2024 Class Committee for Harvard voted him class marshal, a role in which he led the graduation procession through Harvard Yard alongside the institution’s most accomplished scholars and faculty. Harvard did, however, terminate his serving as a proctor for freshmen students.
The US campus antisemitism crisis has kept Harvard University in the headlines.
Earlier this month it disclosed a $113 million budget deficit caused by the Trump administration’s confiscation of much of its federal contracts and grants as punishment for, among other alleged misdeeds, its admitted failure to combat antisemitism on its campus.
According to Harvard’s “Financial Report: Fiscal Year 2025,” the university’s spending exceeded the $6.7 billion it amassed from donations, taxpayer support, tuition, and other income sources, such as endowment funds earmarked for operational expenses. Harvard also suffered a steep deficit in non-restricted donor funds, $212 million, a possible indication that philanthropists now hesitate to write America’s oldest university a blank check due to its inveterate generating of negative publicity — prompted by such episodes as the institution’s botching the appointment of its first Black president by conferring the honor to a plagiarist and its failing repeatedly to quell antisemitic discrimination and harassment.
“Even by the standards of our centuries-long history, fiscal year 2025 was extraordinarily challenging, with political and economic disruption affecting many sectors, including higher education,” Harvard president Alan Garber said in a statement. “We continue to adapt to uncertainty and threats to sources of revenue that have sustained our work for many years. We have intensified our efforts to expand our sources of funding.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Mamdani’s BDS Support Under Spotlight as New Report Shows Israeli Firms Boosted NYC Economy by $12.4B Last Year
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
One week out from New York City’s mayoral election, frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s ardent support for boycotting Israel will likely face renewed focus from New Yorkers concerned about their wallets, with a new report revealing that Israeli firms pour billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs into the local economy.
A new study from the United States-Israel Business Alliance revealed that, based on 2024 data, 590 Israeli-founded companies directly created 27,471 jobs in New York City last year and indirectly created over 50,000 jobs when accounting for related factors, such as buying and shipping local products.
These firms generated $8.1 billion in total earnings, adding an estimated $12.4 billion in value to the city’s economy and $17.9 billion in total gross economic output.
As for the State of New York overall, the report, titled the “2025 New York – Israel Economic Impact Report,” found that 648 Israeli-founded companies generated $8.6 billion in total earnings and $19.5 billion in gross economic output, contributing a striking $13.3 billion in added value to the economy. These businesses also directly created 28,524 jobs and a total of 57,145 when accounting for related factors.
From financial tech leaders like Fireblocks to cybersecurity powerhouse Wiz, Israeli entrepreneurs have become indispensable to the city’s innovation ecosystem. The number of Israeli-founded “unicorns,” privately-held companies with a valuation of at least $1 billion,” operating in New York City has quadrupled since 2019, increasing from five to 20.
“When Israeli tech entrepreneurs think about entering the US market or positioning their companies for global growth, New York City is at the top of the list,” US-Israeli Business Alliance President Aaron Kaplowitz said in a statement. “Ultimately, this cosmopolitan appeal translates into more local jobs and more money flowing through the city’s economy.”
The report came out days before next week’s New York City mayoral election, in which Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, remains the frontrunner. However, a new Suffolk University poll released on Monday showed a tightening race, with former New York Gov. and independent candidate Andrew Cuomo cutting Mamdani’s lead in half to just 10 points, 44 percent to 34 percent.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career, has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and refused to recognize its right to exist as a Jewish state.
He has also been an outspoken supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel on the international stage as a step toward its eventual elimination. It is unclear to what degree Mamdani would seek to implement his BDS activism if elected mayor.
Such positions have raised alarm bells among not only New York’s Jewish community but also Israeli business owners and investors, who fear a hostile climate under Mamdani’s leadership.
One Israeli tech CEO, speaking to the New York Post on condition of anonymity, said that his business could be another to flourish in New York but that a Mamdani administration would make him think twice about landing in the city.
“I need to see if his words have any meaningful impact on the ground,” the CEO told the Post. “If someone on our team is moving to New York, I want them to be in a pleasant area where they don’t feel fearful, or, from a business perspective, deal with people that are shying away because the company’s Israeli.”
During his short tenure in city politics, Mamdani has amassed a substantial anti-Israel track-record.
In 2021, Mamdani issued public support for the BDS movement. In May 2023, he advanced the “Not on our dime!: Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence Act,” legislation which would ban charities from using tax-deductible donations to aid organizations that work in Israeli communities in the West Bank. Mamdani argued that the legislation would help the state fight against so-called Israeli “war crimes” against Palestinians.
On Oct. 8, 2023, 24 hours following the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust when Hamas invaded Israel, Mamdani published a statement condemning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Netanyahu’s declaration of war.” He also suggested that Israel would use the terrorist attacks to justify committing a second “nakba,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists to refer to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
Five days later, Mamdani further criticized Israel’s response to the Hamas-led massacre, saying that “we are on the brink of a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza right now.”
In January 2024, he called on New York City to cease sending funds to Israel, saying that “voters oppose their tax dollars funding a genocide.”
Mamdani is also a member of the controversial Democratic Socialist of America organization (DSA), which has formally endorsed the BDS movement.