Lebanon: Hezbollah vs the State

Lebanon's cabinet decision to disarm Hezbollah creates new security risks, including Syrian intervention in Lebanon.

On 5 August, 2025, the Lebanese cabinet agreed to disarm Hezbollah by the end of 2025, and gave the Lebanese Army until the end of August to develop a plan to that effect. Hezbollah and its Shi’a ally/rival AMAL, rejected this out of hand. After a follow up on 7 August, which confirmed the initial decision, they withdrew from the cabinet.

The cabinet’s decision was driven by American, Saudi Arabian, and Israeli pressure, including Israel threats to relaunch the war against Hezbollah and, this time, the Lebanese state, to compel Hezbollah to disarm.

Israel and Hezbollah

Israel launched a series of airstrikes during the night of 6/7 August to complement this pressure and ensure Lebanon’s compliance. Israel is still occupying Lebanese territories since the November 2024 ceasefire. It is also launching regular airstrikes against Hezbollah leaders, warehouses, underground bases, and other infrastructure. The repeated strikes on the same underground bases suggest that the strikes are not effective, requiring a ground intervention, which would be too costly in terms of likely deaths of Israeli soldiers.

Lebanon: Normalisation or war?

Israel, however, has clearly demonstrated that, in a renewed war scenario, it can identify Hezbollah’s missile launchers and disable a large segment of them before they fire. Moreover, Hezbollah has yet to shut down Israel’s ability to collect intelligence on it, through spies or technological means. The US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia are trying to break this stalemate politically, by getting the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah.

Other Considerations

• For Hezbollah, full disarmament is a non-starter, given first its ideology, and second the fear of Syrian jihadis entering Lebanon. Lebanese from minority groups are increasingly fearful of the new Syrian authorities and their extremist tendencies.

• Hezbollah still outguns the Lebanese Army and can fight the jihadi militias in Syria, which prop up the Syrian state, effectively. However, it cannot handle both domestic conflict and Israeli airstrikes, which is its main fear, nor can it make concessions to any of these sides, given its fears.

• The Lebanese Army knows that it is not up to an all-out confrontation. The Army may well fragment if the cabinet pushed it into a conflict with Hezbollah, with Shi’a personnel, who are at least a third of the total force, deciding to stay home or even side with Hezbollah and AMAL. The key factor preventing defections from the Army to Hezbollah is Hezbollah’s own funding shortage.

• The Americans are heavily invested in the cabinet’s decision, and will ensure that Lebanon’s financial collapse resumes if the cabinet reverses itself. Given the extent of American involvement in forming this cabinet, a reversal is very unlikely.

  

  PM Nawaf Salam, who drove the decree to disarm Hezbollah.

Commercial Implications

• The first response of the Shi’a parties is likely to be to resign from the cabinet, rather than just withdraw as they have already done, and to force the one Shi’a minister who is not their partisan to resign. They will then claim that the cabinet no longer qualifies as a consociational cabinet as it excludes the Shi’a. They will attempt to use this to impose institutional paralysis, and claim that all government decrees are unconstitutional.