The crisis of disarming Hezbollah: Lebanon on the edge
The Lebanese government’s plan to disarm Hezbollah by year’s end is less a policy than a provocation. If pursued, it risks pushing Lebanon toward the very abyss it claims to avoid: civil war.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has instructed the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) to prepare a timetable for dismantling all non-state militias—including Hezbollah. The United States, long intent on curbing Hezbollah’s reach, is backing the effort with promises of reconstruction aid and normalised ties. Yet Hezbollah and its allies have rejected the plan outright. Ministers loyal to the movement have boycotted cabinet meetings, while Hezbollah itself has vowed to treat the proposal “as if it does not exist.”
Washington, Tel Aviv, and Tehran
To Washington, Hezbollah is not simply a militia but the principal obstacle to Lebanon’s stability. Enter Tom Barrack, the US envoy tasked with both Lebanon and Syria—a dual mandate that to Hezbollah reeks of overreach. Barrack carried a six-page roadmap into Beirut: Hezbollah disarms by year’s end, Israel halts operations in the south, and international reconstruction aid is unlocked.
What Washington presents as diplomacy, Hezbollah brands as coercion. The group dismissed Barrack’s initiative as “intimidation and threats,” a prelude to foreign trusteeship masked as assistance. His dual assignment only deepens suspicion that Washington seeks to redraw the Levant at Lebanon’s expense.
Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, left no room for misinterpretation: “Anyone calling today for the surrender of weapons, whether internally or externally, on the Arab or the international stage, is serving the Israeli project.” For Hezbollah, its arsenal is not negotiable. It is the shield that deters Israel, the guarantor of Lebanese sovereignty. Calls for disarmament while Israeli troops still occupy Lebanese land are, in Qassem’s words, a demand for surrender.
Israel’s stance is equally uncompromising. Former defence minister Yoav Gallant declared, “There will be no calm in Beirut, no order or stability in Lebanon without security for the State of Israel. Agreements must be respected, and if you don’t do what you require, we will continue to act—and with great force.” His warning leaves little to parse: disarm, or face war.
Tehran, for its part, has moved quickly to stiffen Hezbollah’s resolve. Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, flew to Beirut with a careful message: Iran does not “meddle” in Lebanese affairs, yet it stands firmly behind Hezbollah. With its influence diminished in Syria, Iran now leans even more heavily on its Lebanese ally to project power across the Arab world.
A wider US agenda
Lebanon is not the only arena where Washington has pressed for the dismantling of Iranian-backed forces. In Iraq, the US has leaned on successive governments to rein in the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a sprawling coalition of militias born in the fight against ISIS but long aligned with Tehran. To Hezbollah, the parallel is obvious: what begins in Baghdad echoes in Beirut. In both cases, Washington seeks to chip away at Iran’s regional network, even at the risk of destabilising fragile states.
A plan built on sand
A fatal flaw cripples the disarmament initiative: it demands that Hezbollah give up its arsenal while Israel still occupies five strategic Lebanese sites. For Hezbollah, whose identity is forged in resistance, such a concession is inconceivable.
Worse still, the plan assumes that the Lebanese Army can succeed where even Israel has struggled: neutralising a seasoned, heavily armed movement with deep communal roots. A deadly explosion in southern Lebanon last month, which killed six soldiers dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure, underscored this imbalance. The LAF is neither trained nor equipped for a direct showdown with Hezbollah’s fighters. Pretending otherwise is wishful thinking of the most dangerous kind.
READ: Hezbollah vows not to surrender weapons while Israel exists, warns Lebanese government
The civil war shadow
Lebanon’s leaders know the stakes. President Joseph Aoun has called for national dialogue. Yet US and Israeli impatience pushes toward coercion rather than compromise. That path is a formula for calamity. Hezbollah still commands the loyalty of much of Lebanon’s Shi’a population. Stripping it of arms by force would invite bloodshed, almost certainly along sectarian lines. Already, demonstrations and armed posturing in Beirut have heightened tensions. Push harder, and Lebanon risks sliding into the abyss once more. The shadow of 1975 looms large. Forty years on, the country cannot afford to stumble into another war that no one can win.
The way forward
Hezbollah will not disarm so long as Israeli troops remain on Lebanese soil. That reality cannot be wished away. Unless Washington can compel Israel to withdraw, a prospect that remains remote, the disarmament proposal is doomed before it begins.
Lebanon has little margin for reckless gambles. A rushed attempt to dismantle Hezbollah by force would not secure the state; it would shatter it. The alternative is arduous but unavoidable: sustained dialogue, regional diplomacy, and recognition that stability cannot be imposed at gunpoint.
Lebanon stands once more at a crossroads. The choice is between repeating the bloodshed of the past or pausing, recalibrating, and seeking the political compromise that alone can avert catastrophe.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.