(SeaPRwire) –   By: Julian Holbrooke

Hezbollah did not buy its 2024 arsenal. It received it. A new report from CENTEF, an Israeli nonprofit, puts the group’s weapons intake at $157 million. Iran supplied roughly $129 million of that as an in-kind grant. Hezbollah spent only $28 million on procurement. That $28 million covered small arms, ammunition, drone components, dual-use equipment, and items from its international procurement networks. The rest came as rockets, missiles, drones, ATGMs, air-defense systems, ammunition, launchers, naval equipment, and IED-related assets. This is not a normal arms market. It is a patron-client ledger. The patron sends finished weapons. The client handles the petty purchases. That split matters. Cash is traceable. Bank transfers leave records. In-kind transfers leave craters. Iran can deny a wire. It cannot easily deny a Fajr rocket once it lands. The $129 million figure also reveals intent. Tehran is not funding a state army. It is funding a forward depot. The depot sits near Israel. It absorbs Israeli strikes. It preserves Iranian escalation options. Hezbollah gets firepower. Iran gets distance. The group’s own $28 million procurement budget is small by design. It buys the boring stuff. It buys the parts that keep the bigger systems alive. This is dependency engineering. The client cannot switch suppliers without losing calibers, training, and spare parts. The patron keeps the leash. That is the first fact the headline misses. The number is $157 million. The story is control.

The CENTEF report, titled “Hezbollah Financial Statements,” relied on open-source data and known valuations. It counts 4,000 short-range Katyusha rockets. It counts 400 Falaq-1 and Falaq-2 rockets. It counts 120 Burkan rockets. The short-range rockets are estimated at $300 per unit. The Burkan rockets are estimated at $400. Those prices look trivial. A $300 rocket is not a precision weapon. It is a saturation tool. It forces shelters, sirens, and interceptor decisions. Then the report moves up the ladder. It details Iran’s Fajr series and Syrian-origin heavy rockets. The Fajr-3 is a 240mm artillery rocket with a 45-kilogram warhead. The Fajr-5 is a 333mm rocket. It has a GPS-guided Fajr-5C variant. Those rockets are estimated at $2,000 to $10,000. CENTEF estimates Hezbollah obtained 600 of them in 2024. The ATGM line is more revealing. Russian-made Kornets and Iran’s reverse-engineered Dehlavieh make up the bulk of Hezbollah’s anti-tank guided missiles. A Kornet round costs about $26,000. A Dehlavieh costs an estimated $12,000 to $15,000. This is where the accounting becomes strategy. Iran can supply a cheap copy at half the price of a Kornet. Hezbollah can fire it at armored vehicles, border posts, and sensors. The defender must spend far more to protect every possible target. A $12,000 missile can stall a mechanized push. A $300 rocket can empty a town for hours. The sticker price is not the military price. The military price is the cost imposed on the other side. CENTEF’s numbers show a layered arsenal. Cheap rockets create noise. ATGMs create friction. Fajr rockets create reach. The mix is built for attrition. It is not built for a decisive battle.

The battlefield has already changed the ledger. Hezbollah expended vast measures of its arsenal in attacks on Israel over the past year. Israeli forces decimated the group’s leadership ranks. IDF Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi is founder and president of the Israel-based Alma Research and Education Center. She told Digital earlier this month that the IDF has decimated 90% of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal. Her current estimate is 10,000 to 15,000 rockets. That is much less than Hezbollah used to have. Most of its sophisticated missiles, accurate missiles, and long-range missiles were either eliminated or neutralized. This is the collision point. Iran gave $129 million in weapons. Israel destroyed much of the high-end layer. The remaining force is still deadly. It is not the force that Iran designed for a strategic threat. It is a reconstituted harassment force. The $157 million intake is therefore a replenishment number. It is not a victory number. Iran’s real intention is not to make Hezbollah win. It is to keep Hezbollah in the game. A proxy that can fire rockets forces Israel to keep defenses, reserves, and intelligence assets in the north. A proxy that can fire ATGMs forces Israel to armor its patrols and limit movement. A proxy that can launch drones forces constant alert. None of that requires a long-range missile arsenal. It requires enough cheap weapons to create constant risk. Tehran can replace cheap weapons. It cannot quickly replace a killed command cadre. It cannot quickly rebuild lost precision manufacturing. It cannot quickly restore the trust of a battered organization. The in-kind grant keeps the group alive. It does not restore its prewar peak. This is the gap between the CENTEF report and the battlefield. The report measures inflows. The battlefield measures outflows and losses. Iran’s $129 million grant looks large in a spreadsheet. It looks smaller after a year of attrition. The 10,000 to 15,000 remaining rockets still threaten Israel. But the sophisticated, accurate, long-range tier is gone or degraded. That changes the political value of the proxy. Hezbollah becomes a nuisance with strategic branding. It is not a conventional deterrent. It is a cost pump. Iran can keep the pump running at a discount. That is the real return on the $129 million.

The geopolitical pendulum is not swinging toward Hezbollah. It is swinging toward a cheaper proxy model. Iran can send more Katyushas. It can send more Dehlaviehs. It can send more drone components through dual-use procurement networks. It cannot easily replace the leadership that Israel killed. It cannot easily replace the long-range missiles that were eliminated or neutralized. The next phase will be smaller. It will be more distributed. It will rely less on centralized storage. It will rely more on small cells and short-range fires. The $157 million headline will fade. The $129 million in-kind grant will continue. The number to watch is not the total value. The number to watch is whether Iran can restore the accurate, long-range layer. If it can, Hezbollah returns as a strategic threat. If it cannot, Hezbollah remains a dangerous but degraded proxy. CENTEF’s report gives Israel and its allies a useful map. It shows where the dependency sits. It shows what Iran pays for. It shows what Hezbollah buys on its own. That map should drive the next round of interdiction. Target the procurement networks. Target the dual-use imports. Target the air-defense and ATGM supply lines. Do not chase the headline total. Chase the specific systems that restore reach. The $129 million grant is not charity. It is control. Break the control, and the arsenal becomes scrap.

Author bio: Julian Holbrooke, an overseas international relations analyst and columnist for major European dailies, tracking Middle East proxy finance, sanctions, and state-backed militant logistics.