Is the Iran-backed terrorist movement Hezbollah on the ropes in Lebanon?

Hezbollah Faces Critical Setback After Israel CaptURES Strategic Ridge in Southern Lebanon

JERUSALEM — With Israel’s stunning capture of the strategically valuable Ali al-Tahir ridge in south Lebanon on Sunday, a major Hezbollah and Iran stronghold, the campaign to degradation of Tehran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” suffered a severe blow.

While the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) triumph is not a death blow, it means that the Iranian-regime-backed Hezbollah terrorist movement lost one of its key offensive bases to plan an invasion of Israel.

IDF Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, the founder and president of the Israel-based Alma Research and Education Center (Alma), told Fox News Digital that “In the past three years Israel has attacked Hezbollah against various areas, for instance, we degraded the amount of rockets and missiles.”

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Hezbollah members salute and raise the group’s yellow flags during the funeral of their fallen comrades Ismail Baz and Mohamad Hussein Shohury, who were killed in an Israeli strike on their vehicles, in Shehabiya in south Lebanon on April 17, 2024. (AFP via Getty Images)

He noted that the IDF has decimated 90% of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal. Zehavi said, “Today Hezbollah is holding between 10,000 to 15,000 rockets, which is much less than what it used to have. Most of the array of sophisticated missiles, accurate missiles and long-range missiles was either eliminated or neutralized.”

She said, “The capability to launch an invasion of thousands of terrorists into Israel which was the plan, and this was the preparedness three years ago. This capability doesn’t exist anymore since the IDF is based in South Lebanon along the borderline, preventing Hezbollah from coming back to those places.”

In late August, Alma released a widely read analysis on: “Hezbollah – Situation Assessment: From a Large-Scale Terrorist Army to a Persistent Dispersed Threat.”

Smoke rises after Israeli strikes in Lebanon, following an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, as seen from Marjayoun, Lebanon, March 5, 2026. (Karamallah Daher/Reuters)

Zehavi, who resides in northern Israel and has experienced Hezbollah’s massive aerial attacks into her region since the Lebanese terrorist movement joined Hamas in its war against Israel, warned that, “As long as Iran supports its main proxy, which is Hezbollah, it will be very difficult to prevent its rebuilding of its military capabilities and with everything that happened in Iran In the past year, Iran still supports Hezbollah.”

She noted that Iran still aids Hezbollah via “arms smuggling and money” and “they still put a lot of effort [into] that and the training and the involvement of Iran in Hezbollah in Lebanon. And this must be stopped.”

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Hezbollah weapons cache located near a UNIFIL post by IDF troops in southern Lebanon in 2024. (IDF Spokesman’s Unit)

Iran’s regime is a state-sponsor of terrorism and Hezbollah’s base is the Shiite community in Lebanon. Radical Shiite Islamism unites Iran’s regime with its chief proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon.

Alma, who has a deep knowledge of Hezbollah’s activities, wrote on X on Sunday: “The battle for the Ali al-Taher Ridge is over – the struggle with Hezbollah is not.”

According to Zehavi, Hezbollah “today is much more of a guerrilla organization than a terrorist army as it used to be. It is having a lot of difficulties in rebuilding its capabilities… It is dedicated to rebuilding its military capabilities. But it has a lot of challenges along the way with this regard because of the regime change in Syria, because of that fact that it’s much more difficult to transfer weapons through the airport in Lebanon and through Syria. But it doesn’t mean that it is not happening. They are still trying and some of it do pass.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter applaud after signing a framework agreement between Israel and Lebanon with State Department Counselor Daniel Holler, and Lebanon’s Ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadeh, at the State Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 26, 2026.
(Ken Cedeno/Reuters)

Hezbollah’s setback was also echoed by Israel TV’s Channel 12 chief political analyst, Amit Segal. He said the Hezbollah base Ali al-Taher was “Just 10 kilometers (just over six miles) from the Israeli border, with a clear view of the Litani and the Israeli Hula Valley, it was the place from which Hezbollah intended to coordinate its own Oct. 7 in the Galilee.”

Hezbollah’s ally, the Hamas terrorist organization, invaded Israel nearly three years ago on Oct. 7 and slaughtered over 1,200 people in southern Israel, including more than 40 Americans.

The IDF announced on Sunday that “Soldiers from the 36th Division have operated in recent weeks to clear and neutralize the two underground routes in the Ali al-Taher Ridge area in the Security Zone. The soldiers achieved operational control of the ridge area, both above and below ground, and cleared the area of terrorists. Some of the terrorists were eliminated, while others fled the area.”

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(Fadel Itani/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The IDF statement added that “Following operations in the underground routes over the past several

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