Hezbollah got $200 million from Iran to help displaced Lebanese, sources say

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hezbollah has received $200 million from Iran to help Lebanese displaced by this year’s war with Israel, two people with direct knowledge of the transfer said, in what would be the first significant aid from the terror group to supporters who bore the brunt of the conflict.

The US disputed the claim. US State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement that the money “is not there,” accusing Hezbollah of “trying to save face with fake stories about cash influxes from Iran.”

The sources said Hezbollah received the cash last month despite a tightening US economic chokehold on Iran and increasing difficulties in getting funds to Tehran’s Lebanese ally.

Intermediaries who moved the money charged a 20% fee, reflecting the risks of dealing with the group, they said. One said this was four times the normal fee.

Asked for comment, a Hezbollah official said an amount had been secured, and a plan for distributing it would be announced in the coming days, without elaborating on the source of the funds.

The Iranian foreign ministry, Iran’s permanent mission in Geneva, and the Lebanese government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Hezbollah attacked Israel in early March in support of its patron Iran, as it faced an Israeli-American assault. Israel’s subsequent bombardment and invasion of southern Lebanon uprooted hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah’s Shi’ite Muslim constituents.

But those displaced have so far received little to no assistance from the terror group, founded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1982, which has suffered heavy Israeli blows after sparking two wars since 2023.

The State Department’s Pigott said Hezbollah had caused misery for Lebanese and had itself been decimated, while its backer Tehran was suffering under a US blockade of oil exports. “The United States will continue to strangle Hezbollah’s finances through sanctions while supporting the ability of Lebanon’s legitimate government to rebuild the South,” Pigott said.

Aiding 50,000 families

Hezbollah would use the funds to pay an initial $3,000 per family, and priority would go to those whose villages had been destroyed or were inaccessible due to Israeli forces’ presence, the sources said. These number around 50,000 families, one of the sources said.

Iran has maintained financial support for Hezbollah through years of crippling US sanctions: it transferred $1 ​billion to the group in the first 10 months of 2025, according to the US Treasury Department.

Tehran has never acknowledged financing Hezbollah. Iran’s policy of funding regional proxies has stirred domestic anger against the clerical rulers in the past and could prove particularly sensitive at a time of worsening hardship in Iran.

Iran had promised Hezbollah more funding after Tehran signed an interim deal with Washington in June that allowed Iran to sell its oil, Reuters reported at the time. That agreement collapsed in July.

Washington has since intensified economic pressure on Iran, tightening sanctions and imposing a naval blockade to block Iranian oil exports.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said in a speech last month that the group would soon contribute to a project aimed at housing thousands of people displaced by the war, using “available resources and donations,” without elaborating.

Hezbollah’s ability to fund local services and provide post-conflict aid has helped shore up its support in the past. Following a war with Israel in 2006, the group immediately handed out large cash payments to those impacted and moved swiftly to help rebuild its stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

But this time there has been little sign of reconstruction. Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said last month that the total reconstruction costs from the two wars since 2024 could exceed $27 billion.

A costly war

The two sources provided no details on how the money got to Lebanon.

One of them said it was increasingly difficult for Hezbollah to move funds via financial companies that once processed such transfers. Such firms based in Iraq and Dubai were no longer an option, and they were also now under pressure in Turkey, the source said.

Hezbollah’s foes believed money was currently the group’s “oxygen,” the source added. Despite the difficulties securing funding, the terror group had not stopped paying its fighters and the family members of those killed in combat, the source said.

In Lebanon, the war has inflicted a heavy price on the Shi’ite Muslim community from which Hezbollah draws support. Israel has razed villages across a swath of territory it has seized in the south, saying it aims to shield northern Israel from Hezbollah attacks.

Hezbollah said seeking to reestablish presence in southern Lebanon pilot zones

Hezbollah is also carrying out limited activity in southern Lebanon’s three pilot zones after the IDF withdrew and allowed the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to deploy there, the Kan public broadcaster reported on Wednesday.

Israeli troops began withdrawing from the pilot zones in July under a US-brokered plan, which envisioned Lebanese army troops confiscating weapons from Hezbollah in parts of southern Lebanon and phased withdrawals of Israeli troops, who are eventually meant to leave Lebanon.

Hezbollah, which was forced north of the Litani River, is now reportedly seeking to reestablish its presence in the towns of Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, Froun and Srifa, using local actors and gathering intelligence.

A Lebanese political figure opposed to Hezbollah told Kan that the government is failing to do its job, adding that disarming the group is at least as critical as Israel’s withdrawal.

“If Hezbollah enters every place Israel leaves, that is also a critical point,” he said.

The IDF did not immediately comment on the report.

Separately, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said one of its posts was targeted on Wednesday near the border with Israel by small-arms fire, but there were no casualties.

“This morning, several rounds of small arms fire impacted a UNIFIL position near Kfar Shouba along the Blue Line in Sector East,” the UN force said in a statement, referring to the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon.

The blue helmets described the shooting as “unacceptable.”

“Such deliberate attacks gravely endanger the lives of peacekeepers,” it said, adding that it was investigating the incident.

UNIFIL did not say who it suspects of targeting the post. The IDF did not issue any immediate comment on the claim.

Under US pressure, the UN Security Council decided in August to fix December as the end of the mandate for UNIFIL, which has been deployed since 1978.

Last month, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam insisted at the UN on the need to “avert the vacuum” that would be caused by withdrawing the peacekeeping mission deployed in the country’s south without a viable replacement.

UNIFIL currently has 7,500 blue helmets from around 50 countries.

Israel has long argued that the observer force has failed in its mission, doing little to block Hezbollah from building up its forces near the Israeli border over the decades.

Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed more than 4,300 people since March 2, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.

The Israeli military has said that it has killed over 2,500 Hezbollah operatives, including hundreds of members of the terror group’s elite Radwan Force, since early March.

Forty IDF soldiers and one Defense Ministry civilian contractor have been killed in southern Lebanon in the same period. Two civilians were also killed by Hezbollah rockets, and an Israeli civilian was mistakenly killed in the north by Israeli artillery shelling.