🌳 Back from the dead

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Iran's IRGC Secretly Rebuilt Hezbollah From the Inside Out

• About 100 IRGC officers arrived in Lebanon within days of the November 2024 ceasefire, replacing Hezbollah's penetrated hierarchical command with a decentralized cell structure—limiting what each unit knows about the others, according to Reuters sources.
• The overhaul included IRGC officers retraining fighters, overseeing rearmament, and drawing up coordinated missile attack plans to be launched simultaneously from both Iran and Lebanon—a scenario first executed on March 11.
• Lebanon estimates 100 to 150 Iranian nationals with IRGC ties were operating in the country; the government asked them to leave in early March, and more than 150 departed on a flight to Russia on March 7.
• Around a dozen IRGC members have been killed in Israeli strikes since the new war began, including in the March 8 strike on a Beirut hotel.

The backstory: Iran's IRGC founded Hezbollah in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley in 1982. The relationship has always been deep, but the 2024 war—which killed Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and most of his top commanders—forced a more direct, hands-on Iranian intervention than ever before.

Why it matters: This is the most detailed account yet of how Iran rebuilt Hezbollah's military backbone in real time, even as Lebanon's government and the US were publicly declaring the group's strategic collapse.

Hezbollah's Own Sources: "Mission Accomplished" by Mid-December

• Four sources familiar with Hezbollah's postwar recovery told Middle East Eye that reconstruction began on November 28, 2024—one day after the ceasefire—with the group treating the pause not as peace, but as an "operational interval."
• By mid-December 2024, military commanders had informed Hezbollah's leadership that "everything that could be rebuilt had been rebuilt," though air defence systems remained difficult to restore.
• Hezbollah largely abandoned its previous communications networks after Israel demonstrated it could track leaders in real time, switching instead to couriers, handwritten notes, and compartmentalized channels.
• Since March 2, Hezbollah has launched hundreds of rockets and drones, with missiles reaching as far as Ashkelon in southern Israel.

Zooming out: The gap between the public narrative—that Hezbollah was "decimated," in Centcom's words—and the operational reality on the ground is now starkly, uncomfortably clear.

WHO Sends 22 Tonnes of Medical Supplies to Beirut via New Land Route

• The World Health Organization dispatched its first overland convoy from its global emergency logistics hub in Dubai, carrying 22 metric tonnes of medicines, trauma supplies, and emergency equipment bound for Beirut.
• The supplies are sufficient to support treatment for 50,000 patients, including 40,000 surgical interventions, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Saturday.
• The WHO has recorded 63 attacks on healthcare targets in Lebanon since March 2, resulting in 51 deaths and 91 injuries—almost all involving heavy weapons.

What to watch: The WHO says more shipments are already staged and ready to move, but with Lebanon's health system buckling under mass displacement and fuel shortages, the question is whether supply can keep pace with need.

QUICK HITS

• Rain saves the day: Lebanon's Litani River Authority announced its three hydroelectric plants are collectively producing 78 megawatts of clean energy—44 from the Joun plant alone—thanks to recent rainfall boosting water levels in the Qaraoun reservoir.
• Trump floats an exit: Three weeks into the war, Trump posted on Truth Social that the US is "about to achieve its objectives" and considering "gradually reducing" military operations against Iran—but hours earlier he'd ruled out any ceasefire, and the Pentagon deployed an additional 2,200 Marines to the region anyway.
• 118 children. Not numbers: British-Palestinian surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah is operating at the American University of Beirut Medical Center around the clock, telling AFP that 118 children have been killed and 370 wounded since March 2—his youngest patient is a four-year-old whose parents and three siblings were all killed.
• Barrot left empty-handed: French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot departed Beirut and Tel Aviv without a ceasefire, not even a temporary one—a Lebanese ministerial source told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that the real decision-making power remains elsewhere, and Lebanon's leaders couldn't even secure a 10-day holiday truce.
• 109 million rage-posts: A new digital analysis by the Arab Fact-Checking Community found that Lebanon's weapons debate generated over 5,200 posts and nearly 109 million impressions on X since March 2, with one cluster showing 95.8% negative sentiment—war on the ground, war of words online.

INTERNATIONAL

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan Cleared of All Misconduct Allegations

• A panel of three judges appointed by the ICC's Assembly of States Parties unanimously concluded that findings from a UN investigation "do not establish any misconduct or breach of duty" against chief prosecutor Karim Khan, according to Middle East Eye.
• Khan has been on voluntary leave since last May while the probe—initiated after a staff member accused him of sexual assault—was under review; his deputy prosecutors have run the office in his absence.
• The panel examined a 150-page UN report alongside over 5,000 pages of evidence, applying the "beyond reasonable doubt" criminal standard; the bureau now has 30 days to issue a preliminary assessment.
• The investigation unfolded as Khan's office pursued war crimes warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and then-Defence Minister Gallant, with the US imposing financial and visa sanctions on Khan and six ICC judges since February 2025.

What to watch: The bureau's next decision will determine whether Khan returns to lead an office still in the middle of a highly charged investigation into alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Syria's Damascus Alcohol Ban Signals Broader Shift on Personal Freedoms

• Municipal authorities in Damascus this week banned alcohol sales across most of the city, restricting purchases to closed bottles in a handful of Christian-majority neighborhoods only, with affected bars and restaurants given three months to convert into cafes.
• The ban is the latest in a series of morality-based restrictions since Assad's fall in late 2024, including mixed-gender dining bans, a makeup ban for female civil servants in Latakia, and modesty rules at public beaches.
• Critics argue the measure is economically damaging—Syria's economy is in severe distress with an estimated 90% of Syrians living below the poverty line—and that restricting sales to Christian areas introduces a sectarian dimension into public policy.

The bigger picture: Analysts say the ban reflects a deeper contest over what kind of state Syria will become, as local officials push conservative social norms while the national government publicly promises to protect personal freedoms.

Gaza's "Yellow Line" Cuts Off Farmers From 94% of Agricultural Land

• Israel's military redeployment in Gaza created a de facto new border—the "yellow line"—that now blocks Palestinian farmers from accessing approximately 60% of the Strip's fertile agricultural land, according to Independent Arabia.
• The FAO reports Israel has rendered about 94% of Gaza's agricultural land unusable through bombing, bulldozing, or military control; before the war, Gaza was 115% self-sufficient in vegetables and the sector employed 560,000 people.
• IDF Chief of Staff Lt Gen Eyal Zamir has publicly described the yellow line as "the new border line between Israel and the Strip," and Gaza's Ministry of Agriculture says the food gap now exceeds 85%, with vegetables becoming "a rare commodity."

Zooming out: With the agricultural sector having previously accounted for 11% of Gaza's GDP and a production value of $343 million, the near-total destruction of farming capacity points to long-term food dependency regardless of how the conflict resolves.

GHER HEK

• Thread, taste, and lineage: Lebanese mother-daughter duo Hoda and Mariam Baroudi—founders of textile collective Bokja and seasonal dining concept SiLA Table—are turning Lebanese heritage into art and cuisine, with plans to transform their Beit Mery home into a private dining experience space hosting chefs from around the world.
• Arsenal's nine-point moment: Sunday's Carabao Cup final at Wembley pits Arsenal against Manchester City, with the Gunners holding a nine-point Premier League lead and defender Gabriel Magalhães on 20 goals—just 2 shy of becoming the club's most prolific defender in Premier League history.
• BTS broke the internet: The K-pop supergroup's comeback album ARIRANG, featuring 14 tracks produced by Diplo and Ryan Tedder among others, became the most-streamed K-pop album in Spotify history on its first day, surpassing 5 million pre-saves before it even dropped on March 20.
• Nowruz, defiant and bright: Iranian American communities across Los Angeles, New York, and Nashville marked Persian New Year this week with candlelit vigils, fire-jumping traditions, and live concerts—including a female Iranian vocalist performing publicly for the first time since the 1979 revolution.

Thanks for reading—see you tomorrow.