For the sake of Lebanon’s future, the country can and must exit the Iran-led regional axis and force Hezbollah to disarm, three former high-ranking Lebanese security officers told Jusoor News. Their joint message amounts to an implicit rebuke of Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) commander Rudolph Haykal, who stands accused of failing to take needed action to implement the Lebanese government’s new position — issued in early March — that all Hezbollah military activities are “banned.”
“Separating the Lebanese and Iranian conflicts from each other is in the interest of the Lebanese state and the Lebanese people,” retired general Adel Mashmoushi told Jusoor, and Iran’s practice of building proxy forces inside Arab countries is “unacceptable.” Retired military judge Peter Germanos told the outlet that Hezbollah’s growing marginalization is part of a broader regional realignment, away from Iran and toward the U.S. “What matters to the Americans is that Iranian control of Lebanon ends, just as Iranian influence ended in Syria,” he said, adding that it also matters to Lebanese: “With a friend like Iran, who needs enemies?”
Despite growing public calls for disarmament, Hezbollah remains intransigent. Its leader, Naim Qassem, said in a speech in late May that “disarmament … is a prelude to extermination.” But even members of the country’s Shi’ite community say Hezbollah’s stubbornness only proves that it no longer has a constructive role to play. “They can’t be trusted to safeguard their own community; they’ve betrayed them,” Shi’ite activist Hadi Murad told Jusoor. “Hezbollah still hasn’t realized that the current war is destroying the Shi’ite community in Lebanon.” Nancy Lakkis, a Lebanese Shi’ite poet and journalist, told Jusoor that beyond disarming the terror group, Shi’ites “want a peace treaty with Israel.” Only peace will enable Shi’ites and others who fled southern Lebanon amid the ongoing war to return home, she explained.
While most Lebanese view the country’s armed forces as too weak to disarm Hezbollah on their own, some see a possible synergy between Israeli and Lebanese efforts, with Israel driving Hezbollah fighters out of their southern strongholds while the LAF stems their capabilities in the Sunni- and Christian-majority areas to which Shi’ites have fled. “Hezbollah thrives in the gap between Lebanese weakness and the limits of Israeli action,” observed Ahed al-Hendi, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Peace Communications. “Closing that gap requires coordination between the two countries.”
Carnegie Institute analyst Michael Young also sees greater potential for the LAF to push back against Hezbollah. The group’s dwindling popularity will inhibit it from initiating clashes with the army, he argues, making it easier for the LAF to deploy south of Beirut but north of the current line of Israeli advance. In this way, he suggests, the army could “establish an area in which the state alone has the right to hold weapons, even if this risks localized clashes if Hezbollah pushes back.”
Hezbollah leaders are holding on for now, apparently hoping for an imminent U.S.-Iran peace deal to stop further Israeli military action and free the armed group to use force to regain dominance of the country’s politics. The group’s Lebanese opponents, for their part, hope a U.S-mediated security coordination with Israel will save the country from such an outcome by improving conditions for the LAF to act.