When the Israel Defense Forces unleashed Wednesday their heaviest airstrikes on Lebanon since the start of the conflict in October, it said several of its targets were sites associated with Hezbollah’s elite Redwan force.
Long barely known, its fighters put on a show last year for local and foreign reporters who were invited on a media tour of one of its training camps on a pleasant spring day in southern Lebanon. The demonstration gave a rare glimpse of a group that has increasingly become a focus of Israeli operations.
On a hill near the village of Aaramta, about 15 miles from the Israeli border, the group conducted what its channel dubbed “Hezbollah Wargames.” Drones carrying the Hezbollah and Lebanese flags fluttered above as the paramilitaries drilled below, firing explosives at targets, fighting hand to hand and simulating cross-border attacks on mock Israeli outposts.
The show of fighters — many of them strongly built, all wearing balaclavas — was intended to publicly flex Hezbollah’s military muscle. They were members of the al-Hajj Radwan force, an elite fighting unit within Hezbollah.
Here’s what to know about these forces.
What is the Radwan force?
The unit was created to launch offensive attacks, including forays into Israel, an official close to Hezbollah told The Washington Post. The unit is believed to have been engaged in the fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border since Oct. 7. Israeli officials have long expected it would be at the helm of any future Hezbollah foray into Israel.
Israel estimates the unit’s strength at thousands of operatives. Its goal, the Israel Defense Forces says in a recent video, is to “conquer the Israeli Galilee.”
“Deployed along the Blue Line in between Israel and Lebanon” — the border monitored by U.N. peacekeepers — “the Radwan unit keeps a close watch on northern Israel, and are always collecting information,” the IDF says.
The unit was formed in 2006 as the Intervention Force. It was renamed in 2008 to honor senior Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyah, who was killed that year in a joint Mossad-CIA operation. Mughniyah fought under the nom de guerre “Radwan,” the Islamic angel who guards the heavens.
What makes the unit elite?
The Radwan force gained prominence for its performance in brutal fighting to wrest territory in Lebanon and Syria back from the Islamic State.
Hezbollah dispatched fighters to Syria to help prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Assad and his regime are part of what Iran terms its “axis of resistance” — governments and military groups whose interests align with those of Iran and that oppose Israel. It also includes Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq.
Many Radwan fighters are battle-hardened. “Most of them fought in Syria,” according to the official close to the group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. “They fought in hard conditions: desert, mountains, snow,” he said. As a result, “their training is of a higher [caliber]; their expertise is better.”
The official said the group is seen as having proved its fighting ability against the Islamic State in several places in Syria: in Qusayr, near the Lebanese border; in the central ancient city of Palmyra, as a key ally in helping Assad recapture the area; and in Bukamal, an eastern area bordering Iraq.
Why are we hearing about it now?
Since Oct. 7, Israeli military leaders have sought to raise awareness of the Radwan force. In its video, the IDF identifies its leader as Haytham Ali Tabatabai. The State Department has said Tabatabai “commanded the group’s special forces in both Syria and Yemen” and works as “part of a larger Hizballah effort to provide training, materiel, and personnel in support of its destabilizing regional activities.”
Highly trained and heavily armed, the Radwan Unit—Hezbollah’s elite special forces—pose an imminent threat toward Israel’s northern border. pic.twitter.com/Cem12Li4IS
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) January 17, 2024
The State Department added Tabatabai to its list of specially designated global terrorists in 2016 and has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information on him.
The killing in early January of a Radwan commander, Wissam al-Tawil, attracted more attention to the group. It was the first death of a commander announced by Hezbollah since Oct. 7.
The killing was unusual in that Israel publicly claimed credit. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a televised interview that his country had killed Tawil as “part of the war.” Israel rarely announces or even confirms involvement in targeted killings abroad. A week earlier, senior Hamas official Saleh Arouri and six other people were killed in a precisely targeted attack in a crowded residential neighborhood just outside Beirut. Hezbollah and Hamas blamed Israel; Israel has not acknowledged a role in the attack.
Tawil is far from the only member of the Radwan force to have been killed since Oct. 7 on the Lebanese-Israeli border, where Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging fire daily.
Nearly 50 Radwan fighters have been killed since Oct. 7, according to the official close to the group. They include Abbas Raad, the son of Mohammed Raad, a Hezbollah member in the Lebanese parliament. A Post count of Hezbollah death announcements indicates that 172 Hezbollah members have been killed in Syria and Lebanon during that time.
What is the Radwan force’s significance?
The existence of the unit, “with its reported independent chain of command and its own brigades and battalions, points to how sophisticated Hezbollah has become militarily, beyond its advancement in weapons,” said Amal Saad, a lecturer in politics and international relations at Cardiff University who researches Hezbollah.
Rarely do irregular armed forces or non-state actors have such sophisticated special operators, she said. The unit is one reason Hezbollah’s military force is viewed as a hybrid actor, an irregular force that’s becoming increasingly conventional.
Israel seems to share that view. “They have tools that they did not have in 2006,” Lt. Col. Shlomi Binder told Haaretz in 2022, “chief among them a plan and the ability to attack in our territory.” Binder, then commander of Israel’s Division 91, said Hezbollah had improved its defense abilities and increased the array of weapons targeting Israeli positions.
“One of the clear signs of the transition from guerrillas to an army is the development of broad offensive formations, and not just a specific or defensive attack,” Binder said. “This is not necessarily bad for us. The more they become an army and produce regular patterns, the more they create targets for us to attack. An army needs to move, gather forces. It leaves traces.”
Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.