WIREDGOV

Israel’s disarm of Hezbollah may delegitimise the Lebanese state faster than it degrades the militia, reproducing the conditions that have so far sustained Hezbollah.

The conditions for confronting Hezbollah have rarely looked more favourable – and that makes the current moment highly dangerous to mishandle.

Israel's campaigns of 2024 and spring 2026 have inflicted serious damage: most of Hezbollah's senior command killed, tunnel networks destroyed, the elite Radwan Force degraded and the limits of Hezbollah deterrence exposed. Its political standing among Lebanese Shia – never unconditional – has been shaken by the catastrophic costs its 'support front' strategy has imposed on communities in the south and the Beqaa that did not choose the war that has been ongoing since 8 October 2023.

Crucially, Hezbollah's role within Iran's regional architecture has itself changed: from an autonomous strategic deterrent capable of independent action, its role as support front was a downgrade, coordinating fire alongside direct Iranian missile strikes rather than acting as the primary shock absorber for Israeli retaliation against Iran. The strategic case for its heavy weapons has weakened accordingly.

Lebanon's new government, under President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, has declared an intent to extend the Lebanese Armed Forces' (LAF) monopoly over arms and restore full state sovereignty. The government formally banned Hezbollah's military activities on 2 March 2026 – the most assertive such declaration any Lebanese government has ever made. Beirut is, at least rhetorically, aligned with demands for disarmament. Britain, alongside nine other nations, signed a joint statement in March 2026 affirming support for exactly this agenda. This convergence is historically rare, and for a period after the 2024 ceasefire, it appeared to be producing tentative progress. Lebanese and Israeli officials held regular US-facilitated talks at a UN base in southern Lebanon over phased Hezbollah disarmament, while the Lebanese Army removed thousands of rockets and missiles from the south during the first phase of implementation. The UN’s Security Council mission report from December 2025 similarly described a “window of opportunity for political engagement.”

But it also creates a serious strategic risk. Any limited momentum behind gradual disarmament before last summer’s escalation between the US, Israel and Iran has now largely collapsed amid new conflict. Hezbollah can be degraded from the air and ground by the IDF, but can the Lebanese state inherit the political and security space Hezbollah loses? If it cannot, military pressure may preserve the very argument that has sustained the group since its founding: that the state is absent, weak or unable to protect its own citizens from external attack.

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