Slowly but surely, more than a year since the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel came into effect, Lebanon is taking baby steps toward normality. That is despite the war having not completely ended yet.

Slowly, the new president, Joseph Aoun, and the government of Prime Minister Nawaf Salam are trying to claw back control of the state. For the past 30 or more years, Lebanon has been kidnapped by a state within the state, whereby every political, economic or social decision had to be calibrated with the many interests of the dominant Hezbollah militia, supported by Syria until the fall of Assad regime and Iran.

Slowly too, the Lebanese are permitting themselves to hope. This is reflected in a greater positivity about the future among the battered Lebanese, who are still hoping to claim back some peace, stability and semblance of a functioning state, so that reforms, a consistent power supply and basic services return to the broken country.

“Slowly” is the safest word with which to describe the achievements of President Aoun after a year in office, as he took the reins on Jan. 9, 2025, just as the Israeli drones and fighter jets were completing a two-month operation targeting Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.

Aoun, in an interview to mark his first year in power, accentuated the need for Lebanon to remove all weapons from the hands of groups that operate outside the legal parameters of the state. He insisted that the use of force should be, like in any normal setting, monopolized by the organs of the national armed forces and state security.

He explained that the existence of weapons in the hands of Hezbollah, without referring to the group by name, had become a burden for the country’s stability and security as a whole. Aoun added that it was also a burden on the communities supporting the militia, particularly in the south and east of Lebanon, claiming that the weapons no longer had a deterrent role and saying that the time had now come to let the power of reason prevail over the logic of force.

Aoun’s message, one would hope, will be digested slowly by the Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia and ultimately mean the end of the road for whatever struggles it has decided to unilaterally adopt as its casus belli. It must also stop using domestic and foreign posturing as a means to extract dividends for the Iranian regime, which is itself under pressure to abandon the perpetual revolution that has impoverished Iran and destabilized many countries in the region.

The Lebanese president reminded everyone in his interview that there is an alternative path toward a stable and prosperous Lebanon, since the geopolitical dynamics in the Middle East and the wider world are changing. This could be achieved if Beirut were to reembrace neutrality and refuse to allow its territory to be used as a platform to threaten the stability of other countries — as it has been for the past 50 years.

If there is anything that everyone — or let us say at least 80 percent of Lebanese people — agree on, it is the disarming of militias and disengagement from conflict, as they do not want war. Aoun, in his interview, alluded to the government’s efforts to avert war at all costs and give diplomacy a chance, since war has been tried and has yielded no positive results. If anything, what this president has to show for his first year in office is the fact that the specter of total war with Israel has receded — for now.

This is not to say that the deployment of the Lebanese army south of the Litani River following the two-month war between Israel and Hezbollah, which ended with a ceasefire agreement in November 2024, has achieved all its targets. Yes, the first phase of weapons collection has been accomplished, according to the army, and Israel admits that those efforts have been encouraging, if “far from sufficient.”

With limited means and a complex mission, the Lebanese army has reinforced its positions both south and north of the Litani and is slowly carrying out missions to confiscate weapons, interrupting the smuggling operations that Israel claims are ongoing. Hezbollah has made no secret of its efforts to rearm.

Against such a backdrop, one ought to mark as positive the efforts of Aoun and his country, as they are caught in the middle of the wrath of an unhinged Israel and an unyielding Hezbollah. The former appears ready, since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, to unleash a level of force unsanctioned by any international humanitarian law or superpower. The latter has been battered and weakened but remains unwilling to surrender, even though its leadership has been decapitated, its forces disseminated and, above all, its direct lines of support from Iran through Iraq and Syria lost since the demise of the Assad regime, also more than a year ago.

One year is too little to judge the achievements of Aoun and the government, as the list of priorities is extremely long and the limitations are equally daunting. Ring-fencing the cessation of war is one thing but resuscitating the inept and fragmented institutions of the state, many of which have been victims of division, corruption and foreign control, is another adversity that will need time.

The country’s leadership has not yet even scraped the surface of the work needed to carry out the political, economic and social reforms that could deliver even the minimum results for the people. In a precarious and volatile Lebanon, its leaders are always handicapped by the fragmented identities and loyalties of its various religious sects and ethnic groups, which are always competing for a larger slice of a very limited cake.

It is hoped that Hezbollah and, in fact, everyone in Lebanon will heed Aoun’s call to allow the power of reason to prevail over the logic of force by removing the obstructions along the path toward peace and change. Only then can the quest for a stable Lebanon be successful.

The early indicators look promising. In his interview, the president explained that corruption has been reduced, though not eradicated. Growth figures, even preliminary ones, are hovering at about 5 percent for 2025, treasury revenues are about 25 percent higher than expected and foreign currency reserves are on the rise too, with $2 billion added in the past year.