The world is watching Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. But it should also be watching Lebanon, where a quieter but potentially historic movement towards peace is underway. Its success could decide whether the Lebanese state can finally begin to pry itself free from Hezbollah’s grip.
That opening began during Operation Epic Fury, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio quietly invited the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to a private, off-the-record meeting on April 14.
The meeting drew little notice. Six additional face-to-face meetings have followed. The Lebanese and Israelis now are meeting closer to home in Rome. The next round is scheduled for September.
If these talks adopt its current trajectory, they could do more than reduce tensions on Israel’s northern border. They could weaken — and perhaps eventually dismantle the Hezbollah terror group — Iran’s most dangerous armed proxy in the Middle East.
Hezbollah, which recently possessed as many as 150,000 missiles, has long been regarded as Iran’s mightiest regional proxy. The Council on Foreign Relations calls Hezbollah, “the most powerful non-state armed group in the Middle East.”
The truth about the terror Hezbollah inflicts on its own Shiite people is well known. A prominent Lebanese Shiite scholar on Thursday said that Iran “brainwashed” people into supporting the terrorist organization.
In an N12 News interview on Thursday Sheikh Muhammad al-Fu’ani, who lives in exile, said that the group “has brought destruction to Lebanon, and made us the object of hatred and disgust.”
Since the inaugural meeting in April, there have been changes that might end Hezbollah’s dominance of southern Lebanon. Approved by both Israel and Lebanese negotiators, the talks have produced an experimental program on the ground designed to oust Hezbollah’s occupation from the country.
On July 20, Israel, the United States, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) agreed to a security “pilot program” in southern Lebanon. As part of the initiative, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) began withdrawing from three Lebanese villages and transferring security responsibility to the LAF.
The effort hasn’t been easy. Recently Hezbollah launched suicide drones at the IDF, seriously injuring three including a commander. Israeli immediately retaliated and IDF forces are ready to launch more attacks on the terror group. There may be more military escalation over the next few weeks.
But the pilot program is a real test for a different Lebanese future. As Israeli forces push Hezbollah out of parts of southern Lebanon, President Joseph Aoun’s Lebanese government has a rare chance to extend its central authority into territory Hezbollah.
There are other signs of diplomatic momentum. Significantly, Israeli and Lebanese negotiators have reportedly agreed that Britain, Italy, Switzerland, and Indonesia could provide military forces to verify Hezbollah’s disarmament.
These are not routine diplomatic gestures. They are signs that Lebanon may finally be approaching the central question it has avoided for decades: will one sovereign state govern Lebanon, or will Hezbollah continue to operate as an armed “state within a state?”
Yesterday, the Trump administration tightened its own sanctions against Hezbollah, part of President Trump’s economic stranglehold against Tehran which his administration is calling its “D-Day.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in announcing the new sanctions, “This is going to be the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world, and we are going to them and saying, ‘You are either with us or against us. You want this murderous regime to end.’”
As it turns out, Lebanon’s President Aoun may be unusually well positioned to answer to liberate his country from Hezbollah. He is regarded as a neutral, non-corrupt figure. He previously served as a respected commander of the LAF.
The day after the pilot program began, Aoun met with President Trump in the Oval Office. Importantly, Washington’s official position is that Hezbollah’s military in Lebanon must disarm.
During Aoun’s visit, Secretary Rubio said he “commended the courage of the government of Lebanon, under President Aoun’s leadership, for their determined effort to reclaim Lebanon’s sovereignty, disarm Hezbollah and dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, and move towards peace.”
He said, “as long as the Hezbollah problem persists, Lebanon will never know true peace.”
That is the point. These quiet agreements could produce one of the Middle East’s most consequential changes: the weakening of Iran’s largest proxy and the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty in the south.
It would be a sharp break from the past. For decades, the world has treated Lebanon as a sideshow, even as Hezbollah entrenched itself in the country’s south, intimidated the state, and turned Lebanese territory into a platform for Iran’s proxy wars.
That neglect has deep roots reaching back to the 1970s. After Jordan’s King Hussein expelled the Palestine Liberation Organization and its Black September terror group from his country, much of the world looked away as Palestinian terrorists flooded into southern Lebanon.
By the 1980s, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps created Hezbollah and armed it to the teeth, sending Shiite troops into in Lebanon. The IRGC gave Tehran a permanent armed instrument on the Mediterranean and along Israel’s border.
In fact, before the 1970’s Lebanon was a Christian-majority country, the only one in the entire Middle East. Today, that population is a distinct minority, while Lebanon’s Muslim population has grown to about 60 percent.
The violence waged by the PLO and Hezbollah exacted a devastating human cost. At least 120,000 Lebanese were killed and 300,000 were wounded, while about 1.2 million people — mainly Christians and Druze — were forced from their homes.
And still, the world mostly shrugged.
From Iran’s perspective, southern Lebanon was a strategic asset because it borders Israel. That made Hezbollah’s presence there central to Tehran’s regional terror campaign.
On October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas massacred 1,200 people in southern Israel and took hundreds of hostages, Hezbollah opened its own front against Israel. It eventually launched more than 7,000 missiles at the Jewish state, forcing the evacuation of nearly 80,000 Israeli civilians from northern portions of the country.
Doron Spielman, an Israeli spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in an August 17 interview with JNS TV that the seven negotiation sessions could mark an historic change if Hezbollah is removed from southern Lebanon.
Referring to the pilot program, Spielman said, “The whole agreement is premised on the idea that this new future can exist only on one condition: Hezbollah must be out of the picture,” he said.
Spielman cautioned that success depends on whether Lebanon’s army can actually dislodge Hezbollah. “This is a pilot project,” he said. “The jury is still out. As of right now, we’re waiting for the Lebanese army to show that it is able to dislodge Hezbollah. This is not an easy thing to do. We’re rooting for them.”
Skepticism is warranted. But the opportunity is real. That’s precisely why this moment cannot be ignored.
For the first time in a very long time, Lebanon is not merely enduring Hezbollah’s dominance. It may be beginning to challenge the group’s armed presence directly.
If that effort succeeds, it will not only change Lebanon. It will strike at the heart of Iran’s terror strategy.