- 10:25
Lebanon has tasted the nightmare Israel faced on October 7, 2023. Iran’s Islamist regime and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are irrational actors who cannot be trusted with a single bullet, let alone entire arsenals, regardless of the paper promises they sign.
Israel recognized this existential threat and has since been taking preemptive military action to crush it. Lebanon, meanwhile, has dithered. Even as Hezbollah drags the country into another devastating war with Israel, Beirut clings to the fiction that the militia has separate political and military wings, a distinction Hezbollah itself mocks.
The Lebanese government on Monday moved only against Hezbollah’s “military wing,” while pretending its “political” one is “part of the Lebanese fabric.” It should not be. Lebanon must eradicate Hezbollah, militarily and politically, just as postwar Germany rid itself of the Nazi Party and its ideology.
The Lebanese government belatedly declared all Hezbollah military and security operations illegal, demanded their immediate halt, insisted on total disarmament, and ordered the militia’s entire arsenal surrendered to the state. Under these terms, Hezbollah would be relegated to purely political activity strictly within constitutional bounds.
Security forces were ordered to enforce this immediately to prevent any further Hezbollah rocket or drone launches and other provocations. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) were tasked with executing their February 16, 2026 plan to purge Hezbollah’s weapons north of the Litani River. This comes after the presumed disarmament of the group along the southern border area, at least according to the LAF.
These half-hearted measures should have been enacted last August. Instead, President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and Speaker Nabih Berri squandered precious months scapegoating Israel, thereby bolstering Hezbollah’s toxic “resistance” myth. They feigned that the militia was disarmed, or at least contained, and that its weapons were safely mothballed, its fighters restrained, and its threats neutralized.
Instead, every one of these assumptions by Lebanon’s state leaders collapsed spectacularly. Hezbollah’s so-called rationality and solemn vows proved false. By the time the country’s top trio realized the deception, the militia had already unleashed rockets on Israel, reigniting full-scale war. Israel will now press its campaign relentlessly until Hezbollah is disarmed and shattered.
Lebanon squandered a golden window in November 2024, when Speaker Berri himself pledged to disarm the group in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Rather than seize the moment, the country descended into petty political intrigues, endless gossip, and self-deception.
Today, Israel is performing the ruthless surgery that Lebanon refused to carry out in the fifteen months since the last ceasefire. The stakes now tower far beyond that missed deadline, and mere disarmament will not be enough. With Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei eliminated and Tehran’s Islamist elite decimated, the Iranian regime now teeters on collapse. Its doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih, the twisted ideology demanding that Shia worldwide swear fealty to Iran’s supreme leader, must be uprooted and destroyed in Lebanon, Iraq, and every other country it poisons.
Lebanon’s Shia community appears tragically blind to its own vital interests. Last Sunday morning, many took to the streets in grief over Khamenei’s death. By early Monday, the same people sat trapped in choking traffic jams, desperately fleeing their homes after Hezbollah fired six rockets into Israel. This humiliation could not be farther from the dignity Hezbollah promised them.
True dignity does not mean midnight evacuations to nowhere, gridlock at 4 a.m., and pleading with wary non-Shia neighbors to rent empty apartments. All the while, those neighbors rightly fear that any Shia tenant could harbor Hezbollah operatives, inviting Israeli strikes that might obliterate entire buildings.
Islamist Iran’s poisonous model has proven catastrophic for Iran, the Middle East, and the world. It is now crumbling in Tehran itself. Lebanon must consign it to the ash heap of history. If Lebanese Shia lack the will or vision to reject it, the state must act decisively on their behalf, dismantling Hezbollah, severing Iranian strings, and shattering the cult of perpetual “resistance.”
One day, perhaps, the Lebanese Shia will awaken from their power trip and recognize that their true interests lie not in an armed sect waging endless war. True security comes from genuine peace, guaranteed by a sovereign state they help elect and share equally with fellow Lebanese.
If the above has not yet made it crystal clear, the only realistic, liberating path forward for Lebanon’s Shia and the nation as a whole is immediate peace with Israel. Only then can reconstruction begin in earnest: rebuilding devastated Shia neighborhoods, reviving a shattered economy, investing in education and opportunity, and forging a future free from the shadow of rockets and ruin.
Anything less condemns Lebanon to more cycles of suffering, more lost generations, and more graves. De‑Hezbollahfication is Lebanon’s only path to survival. The Lebanese state should lead this effort, while Lebanese Shia should follow.
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