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Israel has battered the Lebanese militia Hezbollah over two years of fighting. Many Lebanese are turning against the militant group. And there is growing consensus in Beirut that Hezbollah must finally be forced to give up its weapons.
But American, Israeli and Lebanese officials are finding there are no easy options to disarm a U.S.-designated terrorist group that is embedded in society and bound to its cause with religious zeal.
Complicating matters is Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and its continuing occupation of swaths of the country’s south, creating a point of tension with Beirut just when the two countries’ leaders are aligned on disarming Hezbollah.
The dilemma has opened the way for once-unthinkable ideas.
U.S., Israeli and Lebanese officials are pushing ahead with a plan to train and vet elite units of the Lebanese Armed Forces. While the Lebanese military takes over the country’s south town by town in coordination with Israel, vetted Lebanese military units would later work toward disarming Hezbollah, using force if necessary. Operations began Monday to clear the way for the Lebanese military to regain control of three southern villages, according to the U.S. State Department.President Trump has floated the idea that the new Syrian government under Ahmed al-Sharaa—a former al Qaeda jihadist whom the president has praised—could take on Hezbollah and choke off the group’s vital supply lines.A final option is the Israeli military, a powerful force whose political leaders have vowed to disarm Hezbollah and eliminate it as a threat.
Proponents say fresh ideas are needed to finally disarm a group that the U.S. and Israel say destabilizes the Middle East. Critics warn that each path carries fatal flaws.
Vetting Lebanese soldiers
A plan steadily taking shape puts the weak and underfunded Lebanese army on the front line of dismantling Hezbollah. Israeli soldiers occupying Lebanon would gradually hand off responsibility to Lebanese troops. The two sides agreed on a structure for the handover process during direct talks in Rome last week. Early implementation began this week. A comprehensive timeline for Israeli withdrawal remains unclear.
The handover has already been tense. The Lebanese military said Tuesday that while its units were deployed in a town designated for transfer of control, Israeli troops opened fire near them. The Israeli military said Lebanese troops were operating in an area outside the handover zone and that Israeli soldiers fired warning shots to have them leave the area.
The Trump administration is trying to address the Lebanese military’s weaknesses by training, equipping and vetting individual units to go after Hezbollah.
“The ideal outcome here would be one in which you wouldn’t need an Israeli presence,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in April in a Fox News interview.
Proponents of the idea say it would allow the Lebanese state to preserve its sovereignty and build legitimacy by doing the work itself. But Rubio acknowledged it was a tall order for the country’s untested military.
Lebanese soldiers don’t want to be perceived as doing Israel’s dirty work, and many don’t have the will to fight their countrymen. The military also harbors Hezbollah sympathizers. The U.S. Treasury said in May that Hezbollah gets intelligence tips from officials within Lebanon’s state security organizations, including the military.
Critics of the plan question the U.S.’s ability to vet Lebanese soldiers and fear that it could fracture the Lebanese army along sectarian or political lines. Successive Lebanese governments have generally avoided confronting Hezbollah militarily due to fears of civil conflict. Hezbollah has made clear how it would react if U.S.-backed forces moved against it.
“We will fight [them] just as we fight the Israeli army,” said Hassan Fadlallah, who represents Hezbollah’s political wing in Lebanon’s parliament.
Looking to Damascus
Trump has repeatedly suggested that Syria could help tackle Hezbollah, and that Sharaa has made commitments to do so.
“He would like to come in and do something with Hezbollah,” Trump said of Sharaa on Tuesday from the White House, where Trump was meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. “He’s been fighting Hezbollah for a long time. I think it’d be very effective.”
Iran has long smuggled weapons and supplies to Hezbollah through Syria. U.S. officials say Syria could play a larger role in securing its porous border with Lebanon.
“I think that’s something Trump could buy into—Syria putting more muscle into cutting off these smuggling networks that continue to operate across the border,” said Randa Slim, Middle East program director at the Stimson Center think tank.
But direct Syrian military involvement in Lebanon is unpopular across Lebanese society. Lebanon remains haunted by periods of Syrian dominance and military occupation from 1976 to 2005.
“Plans that are being floated to involve the Syrians in an armed engagement with Hezbollah bring back bad memories,” said Ghassan Hasbani, a former deputy prime minister and now a member of a Lebanese parliament opposed to Hezbollah.
Syria’s new military includes radical Sunni Islamists accused of killing Syrian minorities en masse, raising fears of a cycle of atrocities and revenge killings, analysts say.
Beyond that, Syrian troops are spread thin on their own turf, where power continues to be centralized under the government from various armed factions born out of the civil war.
Sharaa, who took power in December 2024 after leading a coalition that toppled President Bashar al-Assad, has worked to stay out of the regional fray, establish stability within his own borders and build ties with the West. A military campaign in Lebanon risks derailing those gains.
“Sharaa kept Syria out of the Iran war by treating every external pressure as a reason to consolidate at home,” said Nanar Hawach, a senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank. “The result is a country that emerged from a regional war more relevant than it entered it.”
Limits of Israel’s military
Israel has devastated Hezbollah’s senior leadership, depleted its missile stockpile and thoroughly infiltrated the militant group. Now many Israeli leaders have called on the country’s military to press on and destroy Hezbollah itself if no one else will.
Israel could intensify its military campaign and push Hezbollah farther north. Skeptics point to Israel’s multiyear campaign in Gaza, which caused widespread destruction but left the enclave’s rulers, Hamas, still armed and in control of territory, albeit largely defanged.
“We are talking about a group that for 42 years has been rooted and embedded in the majority of the Shia population in Lebanon,” said Khalil Helou, a former general in Lebanon’s military who is opposed to Hezbollah. “Israel, the strongest army in the region, is recognizing that disarmament of Hezbollah will take years and could involve invading all of Lebanon.”
Israel has passed intelligence to Lebanon about Hezbollah and needs Lebanese help to achieve Hezbollah disarmament, Israeli security officials say.
“Israel doesn’t have the option to disarm Hezbollah,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House in London. “It can keep fighting Hezbollah and erode its capabilities, but disarming is part of a much bigger process.”
Write to Omar Abdel-Baqui at [email protected]