From Smuggling to Self-Sufficiency: The Hamas Paradigm in Military Industrialization

The 2013 coup in Egypt that brought Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power marked a pivotal strategic moment for non-state actors in the region. With Gaza besieged from the south by the Egyptian military, a critical arms corridor was severed. In response, the head of Iran's Quds Force, General Qasem Soleimani, convened a meeting in Tehran with representatives from Hezbollah, Ansarallah, and allied Iraqi groups. He presented a stark lesson: "If the arms corridor from Egypt to Gaza can be lost in just one day, the same can happen to the Syrian corridor if Syria falls." At a time when the Syrian government's control was precarious, Soleimani argued for the strategic necessity of mass local arms manufacturing, explicitly pointing to Hamas in Gaza as a positive example of self-reliance, rather than perpetual dependence on Iranian supply lines.

The model developed by Hamas in the Gaza Strip constitutes a unique and instructive case study in the emergence of a local military industry. Forged and refined under the intense pressure of a comprehensive blockade, it provides fundamental lessons in organizational resilience and tactical adaptation.

The Hamas Industrial Paradigm: Decentralization and Ingenuity

Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, achieved a notable degree of industrial independence despite the stringent security blockade. This was not achieved through a centralized arsenal, but through a distributed network of local workshops and factories, many situated underground. A key to this success was the development of a systematic capability to convert dual-use materials—ostensibly civilian—for military purposes.

Prominent examples of this ingenuity include the repurposing of steel water pipes to fabricate rocket bodies and the use of simple chemical compounds, such as sugar and potassium nitrate (a common fertilizer), to create solid rocket fuel. While this indigenous arms industry was built with initial Iranian funding and guidance, it is critical to note that Hamas’s armament program was effectively constructed from within the civilian economy, blurring the lines between civilian infrastructure and military logistics.

A further critical component of this model is the systematic harvesting of unexploded Israeli ordnance. According to estimates, between 10% and 15% of the ammunition fired by the Israeli forces does not detonate. Hamas established specialized technical teams to locate, collect, and safely dismantle these duds, thereby extracting high-quality military explosives and salvageable components, thus turning the enemy's own weapons into a resource.

The Tunnel Network: A Subterranean Industrial Base

Gaza’s extensive tunnel network, the ‘Gaza Metro,’ functions as more than a military asset; it serves as a dispersed, concealed, and resilient industrial base. These tunnels house workshops for weapons production and assembly, secure storage depots, and command centers. This demonstrates the strategic principle of embedding industrial capability within a subterranean and decentralized infrastructure, making its complete eradication a profoundly difficult and lengthy task. For instance, an assessment by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz from October 2025 suggested that approximately 60% of the tunnel system remained intact after the war.

This decentralization is not merely an industrial tactic but a core operational doctrine. Mirroring Hamas’s decentralized command structure, its production base is deliberately scattered across a network of small, hidden workshops. The system’s resilience is inherent—the destruction of any single node does not neutralize the network's overall production capability.

Strategic Implications: Lessons for Hezbollah and the Iranian Doctrine

Although Hezbollah sits at the top of Iran's arms supply "food chain," it can look toward the Gaza Strip and draw relevant lessons for hardening its own production infrastructure to withstand a future, sustained Israeli air campaign. This transition towards self-production, however, would not be possible without a parallel strategic shift in Iran’s doctrine of supporting its allies.

It appears that Tehran has gradually moved from being solely a primary supplier of complete weapons systems to adopting the more sophisticated role of a broker of military-industrial knowledge. This shift began in the era of Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari's leadership of the Revolutionary Guards (2007-2019), who famously stated regarding Hamas: "We give them parts, we give them tech, which is as good as giving them complete weapons." This philosophy is the fundamental enabler of the indigenous production model.

The evolution of Iranian support is traceable. The period between 2013 and 2015 was characterized by attempts to directly transfer ready-made weapons systems via Syria to Hezbollah, most of which were thwarted. In response, by 2016, Iran and Hezbollah initiated a project to convert existing unguided rockets in Lebanon into precision missiles. This involved producing rockets in Syria and smuggling precision components separately to conversion sites across Lebanon, including in Beirut.

When this program also failed to yield desired results, a more ambitious program was launched from 2019 to manufacture precision missiles directly on Lebanese soil. These sites were designed to produce missile engines, fins, navigation and control systems, and warheads. Reports from September 2019 by the Israeli military already cited a suspected precision missile manufacturing site in Nabi Chit in the Beqaa region. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards played a critical role in this knowledge transfer through specialized technological units such as Unit 340 and Division 8000.

This doctrinal shift, which began prior to the Tufan al-Aqsa war, offers multiple strategic advantages. Local manufacturing reduces exposure points in the supply chain, blurs Iran's fingerprints—allowing for plausible deniability—and significantly reduces the cost and logistical complexity of supporting its allied network.

The Future Battlefield: UAV Swarms and Hybrid Munitions

Hezbollah’s dedicated aerial unit, Unit 127, is responsible for developing and assembling the organization’s diverse array of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The organization's strategic aspiration, informed by observing the 'Russian model' in Ukraine, is to evolve from tactical strikes by individual UAVs to launching coordinated “swarms” in large quantities, designed to saturate and overwhelm Israeli air defense systems. A key objective will be to rehabilitate and secure serial UAV production capability within Lebanon.

Parallel to these high-tech aspirations, Hezbollah may adopt Hamas's lesson on the strategic value of mass-producing simple rockets and heavy mortar bombs, as seen with the “Burkan” rocket. While less sophisticated, these weapons are essential for sustaining continuous, large-scale fire against troop concentrations and civilian communities near the border. The lessons from Hamas on using readily available materials are directly applicable here, potentially pushing Hezbollah to build a deep ‘magazine’ of ammunition for a prolonged conflict of attrition.

Conclusion: The Rise of a Hybrid Warfare Doctrine

The future military doctrine of Hezbollah appears to be a synthesis of two distinct models. On one hand, the organization will strive to adopt the resilience, decentralization, and mass-production capabilities for simple munitions demonstrated by Hamas. On the other hand, it will continue to develop and attempt to produce strategic, precision-guided weapons systems capable of threatening critical national infrastructure.

This hybrid military-industrial doctrine is likely to be embedded in the Lebanese underground, which reportedly already includes strategic internal smuggling tunnels engineered to be far more hardened than those in Gaza.

• This article is written by Abu Dhar al-Bosni (lokiloptr154668 on X) and does not necessarily reflect the views of A.E.P. (the owner of the website), nor does it necessarily represent an agreement with these perspectives.