The increasingly pressing question of Hezbollah’s armed status is now formally on the agenda of Lebanon’s Council of Ministers, after US and Israeli pressure finally led the country’s new president and prime minister to come up with a plan. Yet this goes far beyond a response to international or domestic demands. The inability to date to disarm Hezbollah, which has steadily built an arsenal since the 1980s, exposes the deep failure of the Lebanese state project.
Hezbollah’s weaponry, much of it supplied by Iran, has at times been justified as a means of resisting Israeli occupation in southern Lebanon, but in practice it has also functioned as a forward deterrent in defence of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, with units supposedly capable of crossing into the Galilee should Iran come under Israeli attack. Above all, Hezbollah’s missiles and armed units have been used to impose a political trajectory aligned with the agenda of Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’ stretching from Beirut to Tehran via Damascus and Baghdad, with a satellite branch in Yemen.
Working in tandem
When the Israel-Hezbollah war ended on 24 November 2024, Israel had destroyed much of Hezbollah’s communications systems, combat capabilities, missile force, and leadership (both political and military), but the outcome was still not seen as a resounding defeat warranting any reassessment. Instead, Hezbollah conceded only that the fighting had ended, as it sought to shore up its political influence.
Fast forward to today, and despite some tactical differences between Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, its sole remaining political partner, led by Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, the two Shiite groups still work in tandem, forming a political Shiite bloc not dissimilar to Iraq’s Coordination Framework.
Both Amal and Hezbollah categorically reject the idea of forced disarmament or submitting to American demands and refuse to recognise the expanded obligations embedded in the latest ceasefire agreement, which imposes constraints beyond those outlined in UN Resolution 1701, which called for the withdrawal of all armed groups from Lebanese territory south of the Litani River and, further, for their full disarmament.
