In Beirut and throughout Lebanon, the ongoing clashes along the southern border with Israel have reignited a heated debate over Hezbollah’s role in shaping the country’s fate. A senior Lebanese official, speaking out in a televised interview this week, placed responsibility for Lebanon’s mounting ruin squarely on the militant group and its Iranian backers, calling for Hezbollah’s dismantlement as an essential step toward national recovery.
The comments come at a time of sustained conflict along the Israeli-Lebanese border. Since October 2023, when Hamas launched a massacre against Israeli civilians, an event recognized as the deadliest antisemitic assault since the Holocaust, Lebanese territory has become a second front in Tehran’s ongoing campaign against Israel. Operating in close coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah has launched daily rocket and drone attacks saturating northern Israel, drawing heavy retaliation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
This warfare has exacted a heavy toll on Lebanon’s civilian population, especially across the country’s south. United Nations humanitarian agencies estimate that more than 100,000 residents have been displaced in southern Lebanon, as homes and essential infrastructure have been destroyed amid relentless hostilities. Dozens of civilians have lost their lives, while thousands more remain caught in the crossfire between Hezbollah’s entrenched fighters and Israeli military responses targeting the embedded militia’s assets.
The official’s criticism spotlighted the longstanding issue of Hezbollah’s dual power in Lebanon. Supported logistically, financially, and ideologically by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hezbollah has long acted as a state within a state—wielding its own armed forces, running parallel governance structures, and exerting significant influence over crucial ministries. Western and Arab diplomats alike have frequently expressed alarm that Lebanon’s sovereignty has been deeply compromised by the presence of a heavily armed militia acting on behalf of a foreign government.
Central to the official’s argument was the charge that Iranian strategy—not Israeli action—is primarily to blame for the devastation now suffered by Lebanese communities. The south, where Hezbollah has established a network of command centers, rocket launchers, and storage facilities intertwined with civilian areas, has borne the brunt of Israeli strikes seeking to degrade the group’s military potential. Bereft of effective protection and often with little warning, ordinary Lebanese families have become collateral damage in the wider regional war pitting Iran’s proxies against Israel’s military.
Some Lebanese political factions continue to warn that forcibly dismantling Hezbollah could spark a new round of civil strife—a fear deeply rooted in Lebanon’s traumatic experience between 1975 and 1990, when internecine battles devastated the country. Yet, as recent public discourse demonstrates, a growing segment of Lebanon’s population rejects this argument as a justification for inaction. The official likened the presence of Hezbollah to a deadly cancer, asserting that the only option is swift and complete removal, despite potential risks.
This position reflects a broader transformation in Lebanese and regional attitudes since October 2023. Israel’s war against Iran’s network of militias—encompassing Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and various paramilitaries in Syria and Iraq—has thrown into stark relief the costs for those states unwilling or unable to rein in these groups. For ordinary Lebanese, the ongoing hostilities have meant economic catastrophe, mass displacement, and the further erosion of an already fragile state.
Hezbollah’s entrenchment has stymied Lebanese efforts at economic and political reform, undermined prospects for foreign investment and reconstruction, and triggered a wave of international sanctions. Human Rights organizations have documented the group’s involvement in political intimidation, the suppression of dissent, and the obstruction of humanitarian relief operations. Meanwhile, repeated attempts to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, mandating the disarmament of all militias south of the Litani River, have failed in the face of Hezbollah’s refusal to comply.
The Iran-backed terror network coordinates closely with Hamas and other proxy organizations to mount multi-front pressure on Israel. Israeli officials warn that any expansion of hostilities risks escalation into full-scale war, with catastrophic consequences for Lebanon. They hold the Lebanese government and population hostage to decisions made in Tehran, emphasizing the distinction between Israel’s right to self-defense and the manufactured crises exploited by Hezbollah for its own strategic gain.
The impact on southern Lebanon’s population is immediate and severe. Local reports, corroborated by international monitoring missions, detail widespread destruction of homes, loss of vital agricultural livelihoods, and the flight of entire villages seeking safety farther north. IDF spokespersons have repeatedly stressed that precision targeting of Hezbollah infrastructure is intended to minimize civilian casualties, but the group’s policy of positioning strategic assets amidst non-combatants has dramatically increased the risk to day-to-day life.
In the Lebanese capital, political debate is increasingly polarized. Reformist parliamentarians and civil society leaders have rallied around calls to reclaim sovereignty and restore functioning state institutions, arguing that perpetual fear of civil war cannot serve as a sustainable rationale for tolerating an armed group that answers to a foreign power. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s leadership under Hassan Nasrallah portrays the conflict as a defensive jihad essential to protecting Lebanon’s dignity, yet faces growing criticism even within the Shia community for prioritizing Iranian and militant interests over the welfare of the Lebanese people.
Israel’s position has remained unequivocal: it holds Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran solely responsible for the escalation and vows to continue military operations until the existential threat posed by Iranian-backed forces is neutralized. Israeli intelligence agencies have publicly detailed Hezbollah’s effort to smuggle advanced weaponry into southern Lebanon, build cross-border assault tunnels, and recruit operatives for attacks far beyond the frontier—all in defiance of Lebanese sovereignty and international law.
Despite international calls for de-escalation, the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate. Humanitarian agencies are warning that key supplies, especially medicine, are running low, and food insecurity is on the rise throughout the region. The Lebanese Armed Forces, weakened by years of economic crisis and political stalemate, are increasingly unable to fulfill their national mandate. There is a growing recognition, both among Lebanon’s elite and general public, that fundamental national reconstruction will remain impossible so long as an Iranian-backed militia retains de facto control over war and peace.
The current crisis thus exposes the broader reality: Lebanon’s sovereignty, stability, and future are held hostage by external actors and their armed proxies. As international observers and Lebanese reformers alike are making clear, dismantling Hezbollah is not merely a security requirement amid hostilities with Israel, but an existential necessity for the survival of the Lebanese state. The price of further delay is continued ruin for a people long caught between the ambitions of Tehran and the defensive reprisals of Jerusalem.
For Israel, northern hostilities are inseparable from the larger campaign to defeat Iran’s regional military apparatus and restore deterrence. For Lebanon, the task ahead is just as clear: liberation from Hezbollah’s grip marks the only credible pathway to peace, reconstruction, and the reestablishment of national independence.
