Michael Rubin, Middle East Forum director of policy analysis, spoke to a May 4 Middle East Forum podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
Peace between Lebanon, with its “significant Shia plurality,” and Israel will remain elusive as long as Hezbollah, their ideological enemy, exists. Grand plans between Jerusalem and Beirut to jointly develop offshore oil fields remain fallow and unrealized because of Hezbollah’s presence in Lebanon.
Peace between Lebanon, with its “significant Shia plurality,” and Israel will remain elusive as long as Hezbollah, their ideological enemy, exists.
In the 1980s, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon stated that the Islamic Republic of Iran opposed Israel’s presence in Lebanon and wanted to eradicate Israel. Israel had invaded southern Lebanon in 1978 to establish a buffer zone in order to prevent the Palestine Liberation Organization’s cross-border attacks and shelling of the Jewish state’s northern border communities. In lieu of deploying the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Lebanon to fight Israel, during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s Tehran transferred future Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon to Iran for training in weaponry and tactics. Iran reinserted these trained fighters into Southern Lebanon; years later they engaged in the Syrian civil war on behalf of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
In 2000, the U.N. acknowledged Israel’s complete withdrawal from Southern Lebanon. Although the borders between the two countries were not in dispute, Hezbollah, “fishing for grievances,” claimed its presence and arsenal served as resistance against Israel’s continued buffer zone that remained in place in the face of the growing Hezbollah threat. By framing Israel’s 1978 invasion of Southern Lebanon as an expansionist rather than a defensive measure against an enemy bent on destroying it, Hezbollah achieved a level of legitimacy in the international community.
In 2024, after Israel’s successful beeper and walkie-talkie operations effectively “neutered most of Hezbollah,” the Iranian proxy learned its lesson and returned to pre-2000 tactics using Kalashnikov weapons and plastic explosives to arm its cells. Those tactics, combined with money laundering operations from West Africa and South America, kept Hezbollah’s financial networks strong. Hezbollah is hoping that, with “premature declarations of victory” against it by the U.S., Europe, and the U.N., the terrorist organization can survive.
Hezbollah survives because Iran taught it how to make drones. Tehran’s drone program, highlighted in the current Iran war, exports both drones and the knowledge to manufacture them. This gives it “plausible deniability” when its exports of drone production exacerbate tensions between neighboring countries.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, a former Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) general and a Christian, “has no political party behind him,” despite his desire to oust Hezbollah and make peace with Israel. Simply ordering Hezbollah is unlikely to get results. Israel is targeting Hezbollah weapons depots and “allowed to do the dirty work” because Aoun “couldn’t necessarily trust the Lebanese armed forces” to do it.
Lebanon and Israel know who within the LAF is loyal to Beirut and who is loyal to Hezbollah. “The problem right now is less military and more political.”
There is a 1992 precedent when Lebanese Forces under the command of Christian militia leader Samir Geagea forced another Lebanese militia to “forfeit its heavy weaponry” and sell the weapons to Croatia. The same template can be used today whereby Hezbollah would surrender its heavy weaponry to the sovereign Lebanese government for resale to a third party like Ukraine. However, such a scenario cannot transpire while our own diplomats give the LAF a pass. Nonetheless, the U.S. has leverage over the LAF via America’s power of the purse that contributes $100 million to the LAF annually. “I do believe that we can give both carrots and sticks in order to push Lebanon forward.” If the U.S. took a firm and uncompromising line, it would empower allies.” Lebanon and Israel know who within the LAF is loyal to Beirut and who is loyal to Hezbollah. “The problem right now is less military and more political.”
Another political impediment is the gerrymandering of non-contiguous Lebanese parliamentary districts. Lebanese voting dictates that constituents vote in the district from which their paternal grandfather originated. By physically prohibiting people to go south to their home districts to vote, Hezbollah preserves its 28 seats. A proposal being forwarded to permit absentee voting, including those Lebanese citizens residing in the U.S., was blocked by Nabih Berri.
The U.S. administration needs to firmly address these political impediments. “We need to focus on the LAF, but we need to focus on their support structure as well.” The U.S. can work with Joseph Aoun, but Washington needs to show it is “willing to go all in.” The LAF resists the calls to act against Hezbollah for fear of triggering civil conflict, and the Lebanese people are war weary. They just want to survive, and unless the U.S. is willing to step up, the people are unlikely to “stick their neck[s] out.”
Damage from the Beirut port explosion several years ago has yet to be repaired. Hezbollah refuses to acknowledge responsibility for having unsafely stored the fertilizer and explosives that triggered the devastating blast. “Insurance companies will pay for an act of God, but they won’t pay out for an act of war.”
To leverage itself into position for any “future hot war,” Ankara is intent on placing itself on Israel’s northern border.
In addition to the woes plaguing Lebanon, Turkey is making overtures to Hezbollah despite their sectarian differences. To leverage itself into position for any “future hot war,” Ankara is intent on placing itself on Israel’s northern border. As they comprise Christian and Druze as well as Shia and Sunni Muslims, the Lebanese as a people despair that the world does not grasp that Hezbollah is an Iranian puppet and is considered illegitimate. “I’ve never seen a people more willing for peace with Israel than ordinary Lebanese.”
We need to recognize that Hezbollah has “no interest in Lebanese sovereignty, it has no interest in peace, and it is simply acting as a tool for Iran and other rejectionists, increasingly Turkey as well, to undermine peace and to be a lever against any sort of normalization in the region.” This is the reality “despite what the Lebanese government wants, despite what most of the Lebanese people want, and certainly despite what Israel wants.”
