Lebanon today faces the existential question of whether it can emerge from decades of war and destruction, or whether it will again be consumed by civil conflict and terrorist domination. Its chance to return to “normalcy” is because of Israel’s strikes against Iran and its Middle Eastern terrorist proxies, following Hamas’s barbaric October 7 attack.

Hezbollah had dominated Lebanon for decades. They have effectively ruled from the shadows by brute military force without visibly occupying the most important constitutional public offices.  While many Shia citizens support Hezbollah, its real power comes from support supplied by Tehran, without which the terror group might never have come into being.  

Qasem Soleimani and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force amalgamated a number of local terrorist groups and guided the 1983 attacks on America’s Beirut embassy. This marked the opening shots of worldwide terrorist war by radical Islamists. Israel’s post-October 7 attacks, combined with US participation in destroying much of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, has forever altered that landscape.

Unfortunately, however, unacceptable threats persist. Although Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership, inflicted substantial casualties on its fighters, and destroyed much of its ballistic-missile arsenal and other weapons, Hezbollah retains significant military capabilities. Israel has scotched the snake, not killed it. The same is true of Hamas in Gaza, and to a much lesser extent of Yemen’s Houthi rebels and various Shia militias in Iraq.

Now, Lebanon’s struggling government is attempting to finish what Israel started, in yet another of seemingly endless efforts to disarm Hezbollah and make it act like a political party instead of an army-cum-terrorist organisation.  In 2006, for example, following Israel’s retaliatory actions after being attacked from Gaza and Lebanon, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1701.  

This resolution sought to resolve Lebanon’s internal agony by disarming Hezbollah, committing it to act only through the political process, forbidding the importation of new weapons except for the legitimate Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), and providing enhanced authority for UN peacekeepers to help restore internal security.

This effort was doomed from the start. Iran and Hezbollah had no intention of admitting defeat and participating in normal politics. They counted on Western indifference once “peace” was restored and Israeli forces were withdrawn from southern Lebanon. And also on indifference in Israel itself, which had resiled from its initial objective of destroying Hezbollah. Iran and Hezbollah proved correct in their assessments, providing one of the sources of encouragement to Tehran and its terrorist allies that ultimately led to October 7.

This history explains why what should be a noncontroversial effort to restore whatever is left of Lebanese civil society is so fraught with danger and contentiousness.  In reality, Hezbollah shows no signs of giving up.  And, for well or ill, the UN’s longstanding Lebanon peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, has such a tarnished reputation for ineffectiveness that its mandate will be ended at the end of 2026.

Lebanon’s government thus faces an arduous task to end Hezbollah’s military capabilities and prevent Iran’s continuing financial and other support. That task is likely impossible without outside help.  

That means Western countries, having discarded the well-intentioned but ineffective UNIFIL, must now find bilateral ways to help strengthen the LAF and civil Lebanese authorities. Moreover, however painful it may be, Lebanon must continue close cooperation with Israel, both to secure Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and to disarm Hezbollah.

So far, Washington’s efforts to support Lebanese government efforts to “civilianise” Hezbollah have been inept and likely ineffective. The truth, as in 2006, is that once again neither Tehran nor Hezbollah intend to surrender weapons.  The recent visit of Ali Larijani, a long-time senior Iranian official, proves the point. There is some good news in Syria, where the post-Assad regime not only rejected a visit by Larijani, but barred him from transiting its airspace to travel to Lebanon. Unfortunately, while a staunch enemy of Tehran, Damascus’s new government has not yet shed the reputation for itself being terrorist.

Seeing Lebanon reborn with a peaceful, democratic government, free from both Iran and Hezbollah, would be a substantial step towards a truly stable, sustained Middle Eastern peace. But if Beirut and its international supporters shrink from disarming Hezbollah, we will simply end up in due course exactly where we were on October 7. That cannot be permitted.