Washington Is Backing the Wrong Lebanon Strategy

If the United States wants peace on Israel’s northern border, it should stop treating Lebanese state-building and Hezbollah disarmament as competing agendas. They are the same agenda. A durable ceasefire will not come from giving Israel a freer hand in Lebanon, nor from demanding that the Lebanese army do under bombardment what no state army has ever done successfully: forcibly disarm a deeply embedded armed movement in the middle of an external war. It will come through a political process that strengthens the Lebanese state, restores a monitored cease-fire, and gradually brings Hezbollah arms under official authority. The United States already has the outline of such a framework. It should return to it and display more strategic patience.

What Is the End Game?

The historical record is clear. There were only two long periods when the Israel-Lebanon border was relatively quiet. The first followed the 1949 Israel-Lebanon General Armistice Agreement, which established a formal state-to-state security framework and tied the armistice line to the international boundary. This lasted until the late 1960s when growing Palestinian guerrilla activity from Lebanon, and Israel’s reprisals against Lebanese territory, undermined the armistice order. The second followed the 2006 war, when an uneasy but effective deterrence held between Israel and Hezbollah until Oct. 8, 2023. Everything else Israel tried in Lebanon—occupation, buffer zones, proxy arrangements, or coercive attempts to reorder Lebanese politics—failed to produce durable stability.

Neither Israeli nor Lebanese officials want to go back to the pre-October 2023 status quo which left border security dependent on Hezbollah. But their proposed path to stability differs.

Beirut is seeking a return to a state-centered security arrangement rooted in the logic of the 1949 armistice, combined with the monitoring and de-escalation machinery created by the November 2024 ceasefire. That cease-fire, brokered by Washington and Paris, required a halt to hostilities, Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory, and deployment of the Lebanese army in the south, while creating an expanded monitoring mechanism that included the United States and France alongside the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). This approach allowed the Lebanese state to gradually reassert its presence in the south with the army announcing in January 2026 that it had achieved operational control of the territory south of the Litani River. But efforts to disarm Hezbollah elsewhere in the country stalled, as the group refused further steps while Israel continued its airstrikes and other cease-fire violations. For the Lebanese authorities, the end goal remains Hezbollah’s full disarmament, but they had hoped to pursue it gradually, with backing from key international and regional powers that would also press Israel to meet its obligations under the cease-fire, thereby giving Beirut greater leverage and momentum with Hezbollah.

Israel, by contrast, is prioritizing military domination over negotiation with the Lebanese state. Similar to what we have seen in Syria, its military strategy is to degrade the adversary and manage its security through buffer zones and the fragmentation of neighboring countries. It continued its war on Hezbollah despite the 2024 ceasefire: UNIFIL recorded more than 10,000 Israeli air and ground violations of the cessation of hostilities in one year. And in recent weeks, Israel has shifted to using overwhelming military pressure to reshape Lebanon’s internal balance, by displacing nearly 20 percent of the population, preparing to carve out a new buffer zone in the south, and pushing Beirut to confront Hezbollah more forcefully under threat of destroying more civilian infrastructure. Call it the yellow-line doctrine: a Gaza-style theory of coercion applied to Lebanon, in which destruction is presented as strategy. Rather than creating the conditions for long-term stability, it is a recipe for further erosion of the Lebanese state. Israel’s calculation is that it can manage such instability by shielding behind its buffer zones and relying on its air supremacy to protect its interests.

Despite having helped broker the cease-fire, the United States has increasingly aligned itself with this Israeli approach. Instead of consolidating the cease-fire framework it helped create by ensuring that all parties respected their obligations, Washington has grown impatient with the slower Lebanese state-building track and has largely tolerated Israel’s attempt to impose a military solution, even if such a military outcome is not tied to a durable political outcome or leads to an implosion of Lebanon. France has put forward counter-proposals centered on restoring the cease-fire and reopening a political process, but Washington has been lukewarm and has effectively allowed Israel to handle Lebanon as it sees fit.

Pursuing a Chimera: Disarming Hezbollah During the War

The U.S. posture rests on a dangerous premise: that time and further attacks on Lebanon will make Hezbollah’s disarmament more likely. In reality, every extra day of Israeli bombardment works against the only actor that could eventually make disarmament possible – the Lebanese state. Continued attacks weaken Hezbollah, but they also weaken state institutions, humiliate a government that wants to restore its sovereignty, and deepen social tension in a country already living through financial collapse and mass displacement. A new Israeli buffer zone in southern Lebanon would also make it easier for Hezbollah to argue that, so long as Lebanese territory remains under direct Israeli control, its arms remain necessary. So even if Hezbollah emerges dramatically weakened by Israel, the current approach means that it can probably rearm faster than the Lebanese state can reassert itself.

A central flaw in the U.S. approach is the assumption that with enough pressure and pain exerted on Lebanese society, the Lebanese army can be used as an instrument to coercively disarm Hezbollah. Politically, that is impossible. The army will not move to disarm a major domestic actor while the country is under Israeli attack and occupation, especially given that the attacks are no longer confined to clearly identifiable Hezbollah military targets.

Operationally, the demand is even less realistic. The Lebanese army remains underfunded, heavily dependent on outside support, and deeply constrained by Lebanon’s financial collapse. Even after years of foreign assistance, including a $230 million package from the United States as recently as October 2025, this is not an army designed or equipped to wage and win a domestic war against a powerful non-state armed group embedded in society. It is an army that could implement a political process; not substitute for one.

The United States, Israel, and even segments of Lebanon may be frustrated by this, but to expect a different result is to misunderstand Lebanese history, where the army has generally avoided situations that can lead it to use its weapons against fellow Lebanese in order to preserve its cohesion and avoid the kind of internal fragmentation that has repeatedly haunted state institutions in Lebanon. It also ignores broader lessons on how to successfully disarm well-entrenched armed groups. In Northern Ireland, IRA decommissioning followed the Good Friday Agreement and began only in 2001. In Colombia, FARC disarmament took place after the 2016 peace accord under U.N. verification. In Nepal, Maoist arms were monitored and managed only after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The broader “Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration” (DDR) literature reaches the same conclusion: durable disarmament is typically sequenced after a ceasefire or political settlement, not imposed as a stand-alone wartime military task. World Bank and U.N. guidance also treat DDR as part of a wider peacebuilding and security-sector reform process, not as a stand-alone military act. Washington is therefore demanding from the Lebanese army what comparative experience says armed forces cannot deliver: the coercive disarmament of a major armed actor without a credible political settlement.

Returning to a Political Process

The tragic irony is that there was a process underway. The 2024 cease-fire created a path—imperfect, fragile, but real—toward greater Lebanese state control in the south. The Lebanese army had begun to deploy and confiscate some arms caches, Hezbollah to withdraw from the border area, and the monitoring mechanism to verify ongoing violations.

In May 2025, Deputy U.S. Envoy to the Middle East Morgan Ortagus recognized the progress by stating that the Lebanese authorities “have done more in the last six months than they probably have in the last 15 years,” but also noted that “there’s a lot more to go.”  In a visit two months later, in July 2025, U.S. envoy Thomas Barrack echoed a similar sentiment saying that he was “unbelievably satisfied” with Lebanon’s response to disarming Hezbollah while noting that “much remains to be done.”  But by November, the United States appeared to change its tune and began accusing the army and the government of not moving fast enough in disarming Hezbollah. The U.S. authorities even cancelled at the last minute a key visit to Washington DC by the Lebanese army commander scheduled for Nov. 18 because the army had issued a statement two days earlier denouncing Israeli attacks on Lebanon. The statement, which had been issued after a United Nations peacekeeping patrol (UNIFIL) came under Israeli fire in south Lebanon, noted, “The Israeli enemy persists in its violations of Lebanese sovereignty, causing instability in Lebanon and hindering the completion of the army’s deployment in the south.”

The problem with the U.S. approach and its hardening position towards Lebanon is their refusal to recognize that the process was steadily undermined by continued Israeli attacks. What Lebanese officials could do by decree, they did: they banned Hezbollah’s military activities, reaffirmed that only the state can decide war and peace, and charged the army with building a state monopoly over weapons. These are important decisions that should not be taken for granted.

But actual disarmament is not an event. It is a process, especially when dealing with a group as entrenched as Hezbollah. It requires sequencing, time, and reciprocity. For Lebanon to move faster, Israel must also respect its side of the bargain. Hostilities must stop, and Israeli forces must withdraw so the Lebanese state can re-establish its authority in the south and in other areas where Hezbollah has long exercised influence. Only then does a meaningful internal political bargain become plausible—one that can lead to Hezbollah’s full disarmament as its supporters come to see that their interests are better served by a state monopoly over arms.

The security of both Israel and Lebanon will need to be guaranteed during this transition, which makes international guarantors essential. A clear timetable for reciprocal steps is reasonable. Within such a framework, the Lebanese army is well placed to implement disarmament. It still retains the institutional legitimacy, national character, and international backing to deploy, monitor, verify, and progressively extend state authority into areas long dominated by Hezbollah and other non-state actors, including Palestinian armed factions. But it can do so effectively only once the external war has ended and as part of a broader political process. Even France, one of Washington’s closest partners on Lebanon, has said openly that it is unreasonable to expect Beirut to disarm Hezbollah while the country is under attack, and that only negotiation can resolve the crisis.

Towards a Different U.S. Policy

A different U.S. policy is still possible. It would begin by accepting a basic reality: stability on Israel’s northern border lies in a stronger Lebanese state, not in the indefinite cycles of military domination and destruction that Israel regularly inflicts on Lebanon. That means returning to and consolidating the existing cease-fire mechanism, insisting on Israeli as well as Lebanese compliance, and using the U.S.-French role in the monitoring body to reinforce de-escalation rather than merely document its collapse. Additional outside actors, notably from Arab countries, could support the process as part of a broader regional effort to reduce confrontations.

It also means being clear about what kind of regional order Washington should reject. Israel may decide, at least for now, that pushing Lebanon toward chaos is acceptable, just as it may push for wider regional instability if it believes buffer zones, remote firepower, and surveillance can contain the consequences. That should not be the American position. Chaos in Lebanon, and in the Middle East more broadly, rarely stays internal. It spills across borders through displacement, energy shocks, disrupted trade, humanitarian collapse, and renewed transnational militancy. Recent Iranian retaliation against Gulf energy infrastructure, the resulting shock to global gas markets, and U.N. warnings that the wider war is straining aid operations far beyond the immediate battlefield are reminders that disorder in this region tends to explode outward, not implode neatly at home.

Nor should Washington assume that reconstruction can be postponed indefinitely while coercion does its work. Without a credible postwar horizon – one that includes rebuilding, reform, and the restoration of sovereign institutions – the political center in Lebanon will keep eroding. Hezbollah thrives not only on arms, but on the repeated demonstration that the state cannot defend, rebuild, or provide. A U.S. policy that weakens the state in the present while demanding that it monopolize force in the future is not strategy. It is a contradiction.

The choice should not be difficult. If the United States truly cares about peace and stability between Israel and Lebanon, it should reverse course. It should resume support for the Lebanese official track, reinforce the cease-fire mechanism it helped create, and work toward a state-centered security framework that updates the logic of the 1949 armistice for a very different regional landscape. Aligning fully behind Israel’s deadly approach is not realism. It is a formula for a weaker Lebanese state, a case for Hezbollah’s continued arms, and a future of recurring wars.

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