The group is one of the most powerful and shadowy arms of Iran’s military, and it has long been on the front line of a shadow conflict with Israel.

For Israel, the objective was to degrade Iran’s nuclear capabilities and demonstrate unequivocally that any threat to its existence would be met with overwhelming force. For Iran, retaliation served not only as a defence of national pride but also as a signal to regional allies and adversaries alike that it remains capable of responding to aggression.

In the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict, Israel has killed several high-ranking Iranian officials, including Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri and IRGC Commander Hossein Salami. View on euronews

Israel decimated the group’s leadership last fall and degraded its military capabilities. Can the same strategy work against a far more powerful foe?

The most frightening scenario, considering the strategy Israel has employed in Lebanon, would be a series of attacks targeting lower-level figures, which could escalate to higher-level figures depending on the response or lack thereof, creating an even more frightening scenario than the current one.

For quite some time now, Iran has pledged to destroy Israel while it supported regional groups that have declared Israel their enemy. Israel, on its part, views Iran as an existential threat and has vowed to prevent it from building a nuclear bomb.

What was the context for these attacks? What kind of damage has been inflicted? How has Iran responded? How has the world responded, and what happens next?

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was long considered Iran’s first line of defense in case of a war with Israel

Israeli forces seal entrances of several cities and villages in occupied Palestinian territory amid conflict with Iran.