Talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington on Friday, May 29, put Hezbollah’s disarmament back at the centre of Lebanon’s political equation, as the US administration presses Beirut to move on one of the country’s most explosive issues: the arsenal of the Iran-backed movement.
The talks come as Israel steps up its strikes against Hezbollah despite a ceasefire reached in mid-April. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel had killed around 2,500 Hezbollah fighters since hostilities resumed and vowed to “crush” the movement.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem also raised the stakes on Sunday, May 24, warning the Lebanese state that the party-militia would “confront with all its strength anyone who confronts it”. He said the authorities had no right to “act as they please” and that people could take to the streets to “bring down” the government.
Long portrayed as Lebanon’s shield against Israel, the arsenal of the Shiite movement founded by Iran after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon is now at the heart of a struggle involving Hezbollah, the Lebanese state, Israel and the United States.
Why the debate is now unavoidable
Pressure on Hezbollah has intensified since March 2, when the movement once again took responsibility for a military escalation linked to the war in Iran, despite the move being deeply unpopular across much of Lebanon.
Since then, Israeli strikes have killed more than 3,200 people in Lebanon, including more than 600 women, children and rescue workers, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
For much of Lebanon’s political class, the episode confirmed that Hezbollah continues to make unilateral decisions of war that drag the entire country into conflict.
Once almost impossible to raise, the question of disarmament is now being forced onto the agenda at a moment of unprecedented vulnerability for a party more isolated than ever.
An exception that became permanent
At the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990, which entrenched Syrian tutelage over the country, the Taif Agreement called for the disarmament of militias. Hezbollah, however, was granted an exception in the name of the fight against Israel.
Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, followed by the 2006 war, strengthened the movement’s standing. For many Lebanese and much of the Arab world, Hezbollah appeared to be the only force capable of standing up to Israel.
In the years that followed, the arrangement was never consensual, but it was broadly tolerated. For Hezbollah’s supporters, the Lebanese army lacked the means and capacity to deter Israel. Hezbollah was seen less as a rival to the state than as a force complementing it.
But the exception also created a lasting anomaly: a political party retained an armed force independent of, and stronger than, the state.
As Lebanon’s political crises piled up, the once-tolerant view of the party-militia and its weapons gradually eroded.
Hariri’s assassination and the end of Syria’s presence
The 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, a close ally of Paris and Riyadh, marked the first major rupture. Syria’s withdrawal opened a battle between the sovereignist camp, which demanded that the state alone control weapons, and Hezbollah, which defended its arsenal.
In the Hariri case, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon later convicted several Hezbollah members in absentia, without establishing the direct responsibility of the party’s leadership, which refused to hand them over to justice.
Between 2005 and 2021, successive waves of assassinations targeting Lebanese figures opposed to the Syrian regime, Hezbollah’s ally, further fuelled political tensions and accusations against the Damascus-Tehran axis.
The May 7, 2008 show of force
The second turning point came on May 7, 2008. The government moved against Hezbollah’s telecommunications network. The party’s fighters seized control of districts in mostly Sunni west Beirut before fighting spread to several Druze areas in the mountains. At least 70 people were killed.
For many Lebanese, the episode marked a decisive shift: Hezbollah’s weapons were no longer seen only through the lens of confrontation with Israel. They had become a tool in Lebanon’s internal power struggle, in a country built on fragile sectarian balances.
The same pattern later resurfaced in other forms: repeated political paralysis, pressure over the investigation into the Beirut port explosion and threats against judge Tarek Bitar, whom Hezbollah accused of being “politicised”.
In October 2021, a protest by Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal against the judge descended into armed clashes on the edge of Shiite and Christian neighbourhoods in Beirut. Seven people were killed, reviving memories of the civil war.
October 7, Nasrallah and Assad’s fall
The war triggered after October 7, 2023, abruptly changed the equation. By opening a front against Israel from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah said it was supporting Gaza and maintaining military pressure. But the decision also exposed Lebanon to a war beyond the state’s control.
Over the following months, Israel dealt the movement heavy blows. Part of its military command was eliminated, several pieces of infrastructure were hit and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated. His death was a political earthquake, marking the end of an era. For more than three decades, he had embodied Hezbollah’s power, continuity and confidence.
The party’s weakening also affected the survival of the Assad regime, which Hezbollah had supported from 2013 by sending thousands of fighters to Syria. But, consumed by its war with Israel, the party no longer had the same capacity to prop up its ally when the regime collapsed in December 2024.
Assad’s fall then turned against the Shiite movement. With his disappearance and the emergence of a hostile Sunni Islamist regime, Hezbollah lost the strategic depth through which weapons from Tehran had long passed, just as it emerged weakened from its confrontation with Israel.
For the first time since its creation, Hezbollah must contend at once with the loss of its historic leader, the weakening of its military apparatus, the disappearance of a regional ally and growing opposition to its arsenal inside Lebanon.
A shifting public mood
This shift is also visible in public opinion. According to a Gallup survey published in late 2025, 79% of Lebanese now believe that only the army should possess weapons.
The figure, however, masks a deep sectarian divide. Support for the army’s monopoly on weapons is overwhelming among Christians, Sunnis and Druze, backed by 92% of Christians, 89% of Druze and 87% of Sunnis. Among Shiites, by contrast, only 27% support the idea, while 69% oppose it.
Hezbollah therefore retains a solid popular base and remains one of the country’s main political forces. But the national consensus that once surrounded the “resistance” has largely eroded.
The state’s dilemma
The task remains extremely delicate for the Lebanese state. The army, which includes many Shiite soldiers, can hardly disarm Hezbollah while Israel continues to strike it.
Such an operation could be seen by part of the Shiite population as being carried out in Israel’s interest, risking internal clashes and, in the worst-case scenario, civil war.
That is the core of the current deadlock. Israeli strikes make disarmament seem more urgent to Hezbollah’s opponents, but harder to carry out on the ground, because any action by the Lebanese army against the party could be perceived as indirect support for Israel.
The debate is therefore no longer only about the principle of disarmament, but about how to achieve it without triggering an internal crisis.
Far from shielding Lebanon from war, Hezbollah’s arsenal now leaves the country exposed to conflicts the state neither chooses nor can stop. For Hezbollah, its arsenal remains a guarantee of survival. For its opponents, it prevents the Lebanese state from fully restoring its sovereignty and deciding alone on matters of war and peace.
That is the equation the May 29 talks in Washington are trying to loosen, by opening a direct channel between Israel and Lebanon focused on disarmament.