The current state of play with whether Hezbollah can rearm itself in this ceasefire period and who well and rapidly it can do so are highly dynamic.
On one hand, the speed and scope of the rearming Hezbollah can accomplish have been radically reduced, while on the other hand, the terror group is far from running out of options for smuggling in new weapons, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
With Iran potentially imminently receiving several billion dollars as part of its ceasefire deal with the US, and with it due to eventually receive up to $300 billion, top Israeli officials are extremely worried that Hezbollah could make a comeback even after the battering it took over the last almost three years.
The challenges posing a re-arming Hezbollah
First, let's start with the new challenges Hezbollah has if it wants to rearm.
In December 2024, the Assad regime, which had allowed Hezbollah-Iran free reign to pass through its territory to smuggle weapons to the Lebanese terror group.
Until then, the Post understands that Hezbollah and Iranian operatives could show up anywhere in Syria with a simple slip of paper authorizing them to get through any area to accomplish their smuggling goals.
This included large trucks carrying oversized long range precision missiles and other strategic weapons.
Following the fall of the Assad regime, and the new Sunni regime of Ahmad al-Sharaa deciding to chase and hunt Hezbollah-Iranian Shiites who would dare to try to smuggle weapons through Syria, the Lebanese terror group lost the once open highways and many smuggling routes.
In addition, the Post has learned that Hezbollah has lost much of its large industrial scale manufacturing capability for weapons both in Syria and in Lebanon.
However, despite Hezbollah being less able to threaten Israel with smuggling strategic weapons, the Post understands that Hezbollah is succeeding at smuggling lower grade weapons through Syria and through other means - especially since the ceasefires kicked in.
For example, Hezbollah smugglers can still sneak across portions of the porous Lebanese-Syrian border.
This is true for Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon since none of the borders are closed hermetically.
Moreover, the Post understands that there are long-standing historical cross-border smuggling networks in these areas which continue on no matter who is ruling.
All of this is true even though Israel has directly hit Hezbollah's special smuggling Unit 4400.
The remaining smugglers may be less efficient and talented, but there are still smugglers.
Could the same deal with Lebanon have been sealed on March 16?
Another issue which has arisen is questions about whether Israel could have struck the same deal with Lebanon back on March 16 which it ended up agreeing to in late June.
On March 16, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun publicly appealed to Israel to start negotiations over a ceasefire in which he would place a path toward normalization and peace on the table.
Israeli political officials summarily rejected the offer as "too little too late," saying they were going to use this was to demolish Hezbollah until it was forced to disarm.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that Hezbollah is down to 8% of its pre-2023 war 150,000 rocket arsenal, the Post understands that nailing down the exact volume of rockets is hard, and even that statistic would leave them with well over 10,000 rockets, not to mention a new FPV drone fleet.
Cumulatively, this still large supply of weapons along with large remaining forces (Netanyahu has said 9,000 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, but Hezbollah's pre-war force estimates were between 30,000-50,000) leaves the Lebanese terror group as a significant, if weakened, threat.
If Hezbollah is not beaten and is not agreeing to disarm even in July, what was the point of delaying cutting a deal with the Lebanese government for around three months which could have been sealed in mid-March?
There is a debate on this issue, but at least those in the Israeli political and defense establishment who believe continuing the war longer was worth it, defend their position as follows.
The view would be Aoun was ready for a deal, but under very different conditions and that even if Hezbollah is far from beaten, the Hezbollah of March of this year still posed a much larger threat than what is left of Hezbollah which exists now.
For example, Israelis viewed Aoun's March offer as framed around a full withdrawal as an opening condition. In contrast, the late June deal flips the burden onto the Lebanese army, starting with IDF partial withdrawals from only two locations in favor of the Lebanese army, in order to check that Hezbollah is kept out, before the IDF undertakes additional withdrawals, the Post has learned.
Officials view this change in emphasis as making the late June Lebanon deal into the antithesis of the MOU with Iran, in which the Islamic Republic did not commit too very much upfront, at most possibly informally committing to nuclear concessions on the tail end of the deal.
Also, the Post understands that part of the purpose of continuing the war was to further separate (or return the separation) between the Iran and Lebanese fronts.
It is unclear whether this separation has been achieved in light of Iran succeeding at least twice in pressuring US President Donald Trump into pushing Israel to restrain itself in the face of Hezbollah attacks, but there is some optimism that the signing of the Lebanon deal under new circumstances may achieve the separation.
Israeli officials feel positive about the military campaign and that Israel's position got stronger versus Hezbollah even after the fall 2024 war and after March of this year.
Still, the Post understands that officials believe that the next step must be an extended campaign to prevent Hezbollah from rearming, and there is heavy skepticism about how successful this process will be.
Why should Israeli officials trust the Lebanese army to enforce keeping Hezbollah and its weapons out of areas where it commits to do so, when the history is consistently ineffective?
In fact, the Lebanese army warns Hezbollah before they inspect many areas so the terror group can move its weapons elsewhere, the Post has learned.
There are concerns that the Lebanese army will give fake answers about progress and that the Americans may accept these poor excuses.
Many Israeli officials do not want to discuss what could happen if Trump wants Israel to withdraw from more portions of Lebanon sooner than conditions on the ground would justify to advance other goals, such as keeping his Iran deal on track.
But even if some less good scenario like that plays out at some point, Israel's 2026 invasion and clearing of larger portions of southern Lebanon of Hezbollah weapons since March than the clearing job it did in fall 2024, will have heavily delayed any future potential invasion capability by Hezbollah versus northern Israel by a period of years.
All of this comes after the lessons of October 7 showed that had Hezbollah's Radwan special forces invaded northern Israel when Hamas invaded the south, some officials believe they could have caused as much as 10 times more harm.
France, Trump, and the lessons of Hezbollah's drone threat
One additional factor which no Israeli officials are mentioning now, but which some mentioned back in mid-March when rejecting the Lebanese offer for negotiations toward normalization could also have been which third party country was the moderator.
At the time, France was co-sponsoring the talks, and Israel has lost trust in France since fall 2025 when it led a group of countries into recognizing a Palestinian state and because France tried to get Israel to end the 2024 war against Hezbollah before the IDF's beeper operations and other fall 2024 successes.
In contrast, the most recent talks were sponsored by Trump, who Israel currently views as overall its closest global ally.
Regarding FPV drones, while Israeli officials mourn the many soldiers who were wounded, and a small number who were killed, by these drones when the war extended beyond March, most still do not view them as a strategic threat.
A strange theme repeatedly echoed by Israeli political and defense officials is that they were taken by surprise regarding the FPV drone threat since Hezbollah did not use these fiber-cable based drones which are impervious to GPS jamming during the fall 2024 war.
But the Post has pressed numerous such Israeli officials on this point since the FPV drones appeared in Ukraine already a couple years ago, which in the current globalized state of information, should have led Israel to realize the same threat would pop up soon with Hezbollah.
No Israeli official has really given a strong answer to this last question, though some have said that they expected that it would take Hezbollah longer to adapt such a new kind of weapon.
In any event, they say that Hezbollah still lacks the capacity to mass produce such drones, but that if the IDF does not block such future production, they could emerge as a strategic threat if their volume reaches levels in the thousands.