BEIRUT, Lebanon — It was too dangerous to meet in person.
Israel has been hunting him and his comrades, picking them off by airstrike and drone, in surprise attacks that often kill civilians alongside them.
In a 40-minute phone call late Thursday, a Hezbollah field commander told NPR how he was wounded in Israel's vast bombardment of Beirut a day earlier, which killed more than 350 people, according to Lebanese authorities. An Israeli missile exploded in the street next to a building in the capital's southern suburbs, where he was sheltering. Flying glass and debris injured him in the arms and legs, the commander says. Two people, he said, died next to him.
The next day, as he spoke to NPR, he was back on his feet.
"I have an enemy occupying my land," he said. "Where am I supposed to be?"
He gave only his nom de guerre, Jihad, out of fear Israel would track and kill him. He also gave his age: 62. He's been a member of Hezbollah's military wing since 2001, and his current rank is "the equivalent of a two-star," he said, though declined to give his exact job title, which could also identify him. He said he commutes back and forth between Beirut's southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has offices, and southern Lebanon, where he commands troops engaged in combat with Israel.
"Let's just say my expertise is those things that fly," he laughs. He means rockets, which Hezbollah has been firing into northern Israel by the thousands.
After the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants retaliated on March 2 by firing rockets south from Lebanon. They briefly halted attacks this week, on news of a ceasefire between the United States and Iran, which Hezbollah says it believed would cover Lebanon. But after Israel insisted it didn't, and launched its biggest assault on Lebanon since the start of renewed war, Hezbollah says it's resumed firing rockets.
"We're fighting an enemy that has the latest weapons, all the technology, but we are holding our ground," Jihad says. "If you're skilled, you let him get closer. What kind of nerves do you have, and what kind of steadfastness?"
"That's where the battle happens," he adds.
NPR spoke to Jihad to get a rare glimpse into his secretive Shia Muslim militia's continued capabilities, its new command structure, and fresh tactics the group is using to evade Israeli surveillance. He cited "mistakes" his group made in 2024, which led to Israel's killing of Hezbollah's then-leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and described how the organization has rearmed since then.
The United States, Israel and many other countries consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The group has military and political wings, and 14 of its lawmakers sit in Lebanon's parliament.
The group has said it opposes talks planned for Tuesday in Washington between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors, which represent the two countries' first official negotiations since 1983.
Passing notes on the battlefield
NPR spoke to Jihad by phone, but he was not on his own device.
Hezbollah largely eschewed cell phones and other technology after a September 2024 Israeli attack in which thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded near-simultaneously, killing dozens of people. Israeli intelligence agents have described their decade-long plot to embed explosives in batteries in the devices, which were sold to Hezbollah by a fake company in Europe.
Since then, Jihad says the group no longer imports any electronics. "We don't trust anything anymore," he says. He uses an old-fashioned walkie-talkie himself. "Everything we have is old," he says, mentioning old-school Motorola devices and radio transmitters.
Some battlefield orders even come via handwritten notes, carried by couriers on motorbikes, he says.
Hezbollah has a new org chart
Hezbollah has gone back to basics since that pager attack, and Israel's killing later that same month of Nasrallah, Jihad says. Another founding member, Naim Qassem, has replaced him.
Qassem has "changed the whole approach," Jihad says, adopting a decentralized command structure first pioneered by Imad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah leader killed in a 2008 car bombing in Syria. He split fighters into semi-autonomous units that don't communicate for security reasons.
"One specializes in shooting, another watches the road. Another might even specialize in wrapping sandwiches [for the fighters]!" he says. "You execute your own specific tasks, with no understanding of what we as a whole are doing."
Under Qassem, Jihad says he believes Hezbollah is both closer to Iran, and also more compartmentalized. He tries to compare the command structure to something NPR might be more familiar with.
"For example, in journalism, you do this and he does that. Your job reflects what you've studied and what your experience is," he says. "It's like that. We have courses and qualifications, depending on the professional track you're on."
How Hezbollah rearmed after 2024
This Israeli invasion has reignited a long-running conflict that was supposed to have paused with a November 2024 ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, in which Lebanon's Army promised to disarm Hezbollah in the country's south. The United Nations says Israel violated that ceasefire thousands of times between late 2024 and early this year, with continued airstrikes that have killed more than 100 civilians.
While Hezbollah held its fire during that period, Jihad says they never disarmed. He says they pointed Lebanese soldiers to disused, defunct or damaged old stockpiles they no longer needed, and let them confiscate those. But Hezbollah's real arsenal was largely untouched, he says.
"They didn't confiscate anything! We gave them empty boxes, or a few old items to go blow up," he explains.
He says Hezbollah's weapons weren't as depleted by the 2024 war as Israel believed, and that the group has re-armed since then — with a mix of imported weapons and domestically manufactured ones.
"These days, on the internet, you can learn how to manufacture anything," Jihad says.
He wouldn't say where the assembly of weapons happens. But Hezbollah is known to operate a network of underground tunnels and caverns. Some of the entrances were destroyed by Israel in 2024, but experts say many of the structures remain intact and in use.
Hezbollah traditionally got most of its weapons from Iran, via Syria. But after the fall of its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in December 2024, Qassem lamented that his group's supply route had been severed.
Jihad says that ended up not being the case.
"There's nothing that can't be smuggled through Syria — Kornets, Konkurs," he said, naming Russian-made anti-tank weapons.
An abrupt ending
After 40 minutes, Jihad said he had to go. He sounded nervous. NPR could hear Israeli drones buzzing behind him, and warplanes flying low.
"We need to change our position," he said.
And then he hung up.
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