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What can leaders do about a transnational organization that is a militia, a political party, a social services network, and a smuggling operation at the same time — and one that has resisted various dialogues and survived repeated attacks?
American, Lebanese, and other leaders should recognize Hizballah’s hybrid, transnational nature and grapple with the unique challenges the organization creates. Otherwise, they will fail to resolve the Hizballah predicament while creating conditions for ineffective agreements, new wars, and squandered opportunities in the Levant.
Meeting openly for the first time in decades, Lebanese and Israeli representatives have negotiated on security and political tracks while extending various truces. In June 2026, they entered a U.S.-sponsored trilateral framework to “ensure the sovereignty and security of both countries” and have also maintained a conditional ceasefire agreement requiring a “complete cessation” of hostilities between Israel and Hizballah. Even so, Hizballah leaders have rejected the framework, ceasefire, and negotiations. In turn, the Israeli prime minister has repeatedly undermined these agreements with declarations in the press and policies on the ground. Moreover, Israeli forces and Hizballah have since continued to clash, despite a tentative U.S.-Iran agreement and Beirut’s commitment to continue negotiations in Washington.
As part of wider wars since Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli and Hizballah forces have repeatedly fought. While Hizballah has launched so-called solidarity campaigns to support Hamas (2023) and the Iranian regime (2026), Israeli forces have killed Hizballah fighters and destroyed much of the organization’s arsenal and infrastructure.
And yet, despite promising “total victory,” Israeli leaders have not erased or even disarmed Hizballah. While battered in battle, Hizballah has reorganized and rearmed. Indeed, the organization has even reengaged Israeli forces and used new tactics and technology to kill key officers.
Other regional and local approaches aimed at disarming and defanging Hizballah have been ineffective, too. In 2024, U.S. leaders facilitated, and Lebanese leaders agreed to a ceasefire based partly on local “disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon” and the return of official security forces as the “only armed groups” in Israel-Lebanon borderlands. Then, U.S., Arab, and other leaders left the Lebanese to disarm the organization — while expecting them to do the job in mere months. Even as Lebanese leaders made progress, partners withheld assistance, postponed conferences, and refused to establish new or to expand existing initiatives to support the Lebanese army.
Leaping to another extreme, American and other leaders have behaved as if eliminating or weakening the Iranian regime would inevitably bring about the organization’s fall or loss of purpose. But, during the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, Hizballah has rebooted military operations, increased diaspora activities, and reclaimed resistance as an idea among core constituents.
Neither solely regional nor local so-called solutions have been sufficient in challenging Hizballah. And they won’t be in the future. Hizballah presents integrated problems. Thus, Lebanese leaders and their partners should adopt integrated solutions. Above all, they should build state institutions and assert sovereignty in Lebanon while constraining Hizballah’s financial, military, and other outlets in the region.
Hizballah has long been a hybrid, transnational organization. The organization transcends distinctions between foreign and domestic entities; political, military, and social wings; and Iranian, Lebanese, and global decision-making structures, combat teams, and other enterprises. Operating a political party in Lebanon, Hizballah has never been just a Lebanese political party. Serving as an Iranian regime proxy, Hizballah has never just been a foreign militia in its areas of operations. Hizballah is flexible and adaptive because it operates at all of these levels and in all of these areas of activity.
As a result, Hizballah will not soon diminish due purely to an external change (such as decapitation warfare against the Iranian regime) or due to an internal process (such as isolated disarmament campaigns in Lebanon). Hizballah will — as it long has — resist regional campaigns that others launch without cooperating with Lebanese leaders and reject local policies that Lebanese leaders adopt without necessary regional conditions.
Despite challenges and flaws, new Lebanese leaders made progress on several fronts after entering office in January 2025. They created a more cohesive cabinet, which Hizballah has not been able to paralyze or topple. They issued a cabinet policy statement to reassert state primacy, removing legal cover for Hizballah as a recognized resistance on par with official security forces. Lebanese leaders also redeployed military and police throughout Lebanon for the first time in 50 years. And, making the once unimaginable possible, they even began to disarm the self-styled Party of God. Although the president and premier punted the problem to the already-strained Lebanese Armed Forces, officers launched the process in August 2025, declared “operational control” of southern Lebanon by January 2026, and — on the eve of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran in February 2026 — prepared for subsequent disarmament phases.
While the Lebanese government took those steps, it struggled with a devastating pattern of policy. On the one hand, American, European, and Arab leaders delayed donor conferences and withheld large-scale assistance needed to boost security forces and to improve abysmal socioeconomic conditions. On the other hand, the Iranian regime and Hizballah only doubled down. Long providing Hizballah with hundreds of millions of dollars per year, Iran reportedly pumped more than $1 billion dollars into the organization in 2025 alone. Hizballah and its enablers also used infrastructure and institutions in other states — including Gulf Arab states, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria — to move money, personnel, and weapons into Lebanon in the year between wars.
On the ground, feeling pressure and uncertain of support, Lebanese leaders tried to disarm Hizballah in southern Lebanon before they were able to begin other necessary processes: craft a comprehensive border security strategy; consolidate control and improve operations in borderlands and around critical infrastructure; and partner with Syrian and Jordanian counterparts on joint planning and operations across the Levant. Israeli forces also complicated progress on disarmament, which U.S. officials had praised repeatedly, by continuing to occupy and attack southern Lebanon almost daily and committing thousands of overall violations of the 2024 ceasefire and U.N. Security Council Resolutions.
As it has long done, Hizballah again played for time, adjusted to new geopolitical realities, rejected disarmament altogether, and claimed — contrary to the Lebanese Constitution — that the president and premier lack authority to negotiate on behalf of the republic. Indeed, the organization has attacked Lebanese leaders repeatedly, threatened the president, and attempted to topple their government.
Just as Hizballah’s fate does not depend solely on Lebanese leaders, it is not wholly tied to Tehran. While the organization would suffer if the Iranian regime were to collapse or weaken, it would not necessarily disappear or disarm. Isolated in Lebanon and attacked by an existential enemy, the organization — one that has waged wars, assassinated leaders, suppressed peaceful protests, and clashed with security forces and factions alike — will not necessarily stop existing or resisting if its main patron were to struggle or fall.
Hizballah leaders, auxiliaries, and enablers still operate in Lebanon and the worldwide Lebanese diaspora. Already raking in hundreds of millions of dollars per year outside of Lebanon, including in Europe and South America, they generate significant revenue through various activities within the republic. For instance, they run parallel import-export services to evade regulations, fees, and taxes. They also smuggle weapons, narcotics, subsidized goods, and dual-use items. In all such activities, the organization makes money, gains leverage over other factions, and deprives the state of revenue. Hizballah will likely increase — not decrease, nor stop — such activities if it loses its Iranian sponsors or current levels of support.
Fusing the material and the mystical, the organization has cultivated true believers, opportunists, pragmatists, and dependents alike. Despite losing hundreds of leaders, Hizballah’s new leaders have also promised to keep walking “the revolutionary Islamic path.” Despite losing thousands of fighters since 2023, the organization has deployed elite forces in the current war with Israel and may still call on thousands of other fighters to join the fray. Unable to reconstruct areas around Beirut, in the Bekaa Valley, and across southern Lebanon, Hizballah and its partners continue to capture hundreds of thousands of people by providing salaries, stipends, benefits, amends, and services. Above all, Hizballah has persuaded constituents that their survival depends on the organization — and on armed assertion.
For all these obstacles, American, Lebanese, and other leaders have the best opportunity in years to effectively challenge Hizballah’s projection of power in Lebanon and across the region. To do so, they should work at every level and in every area the organization has spent decades developing.
Lebanese leaders should resume their long quest to rebuild the state, overcome acute crises, and manage structural challenges. They should combine assertive political policies, creative negotiations, and police action to grapple with the Hizballah predicament. In the meantime, they should craft a border security strategy; assert control and improve operations at crossing points, seaports, and airports; and reorganize security institutions, including in southern Lebanon, the central Bekaa Valley, and at Beirut Port (as they already have done at Rafic Hariri International Airport). Resetting relations after decades adrift, the Lebanese should reassert their sovereignty — even diplomatically, as they have done with Iran and Israel alike — and reengage other states through Levant planning initiatives, response committees, and coordination cells.
Regional leaders should step up, too. Gulf Arab leaders should counter Hizballah’s activities in their states, including by enforcing restrictive measures (as some have recently done), and exercise leverage so that others, including in Iraq and Turkey, do the same. They should also provide the Lebanese government with support once the guns fall silent. While security forces need sustained support, the state also needs help to cope with fiscal, monetary, financial, and economic crises. President Joseph Aoun and Premier Nawaf Salam also need support to deliver the benefits of their policies, including asserting sovereignty at home and resetting relations in the region. Meanwhile, as it consolidates control, a new Syrian administration should manage its own borderlands more effectively. Leaders in Damascus should also crack down on enablers in the state, connected cliques, and postwar militia and smuggling networks.
American leaders can help at every level. Washington should start by pushing Israeli leaders to cease hostilities and end the occupation of Lebanon. With parliamentary elections approaching, incumbent and prospective Israeli leaders realize that they have strained the one relationship they still see as indispensable to pursue a messy policy of perpetual conflict. Already publicly clashing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his cabinet, American leaders can use these next months to promote longer-range interests by limiting counterproductive campaigns. While Israeli forces have degraded adversaries abroad, they have also acted as agents of instability and wanton destruction and undermined the Lebanese politically. Understanding this reality, U.S. leaders should push Israeli leaders to reverse course and hand territory back to Lebanese security forces — including by implementing proposed “pilot zones” around the Litani River.
Beyond that, U.S. leaders should support the Lebanese government while they craft their border security strategy and improve borderland operations. Meanwhile, they may increase general security assistance as part of a long-range program while coordinating support from other partners. Creating Levant working groups and commissions on cross-border challenges, they should support Lebanese, Syrian, and Jordanian ministers, staff, and officers — including those that Americans may train — who improve security and assert sovereignty on the ground. While engaging the Iranian regime to find an end to the war, moreover, U.S. officials should seek to obtain commitments to stop rearming Hizballah — and could withhold, make contingent, and monitor fund releases or sanctions relief on that basis.
Though flawed and frayed, the Republic of Lebanon — not Hizballah — remains the best hope for its people. Leaders should work to realise that hope, so the people who have struggled to keep it alive may finally live with dignity and in peace.
Anthony Elghossain advises organizations on geopolitics and the rule of law. He has led Levant initiatives at the U.S. Institute of Peace, other think tanks, and various agencies. Based in Beirut and Washington, DC, Anthony also contributes a column at L’Orient Today.
Grace Wermenbol, Ph.D., is a senior visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a senior fellow at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She also leads the geopolitical advisory Boussole Mondiale in Paris. She previously served in a number of Middle East-focused national security and foreign policy roles across the U.S. government. Dr. Wermenbol is the author of A Tale of Two Narratives, a book on Israeli and Palestinian societies in the post-Oslo era.
Image: Nadim Kobeissi via Wikimedia Commons
