When Palestinian forces left Beirut in 1982, forced out by the Israelis, they flashed victory signs on the trucks carrying them to the city’s port. This later led the Palestine Liberation Organization official Issam Sartawi to remark that, with more victories like the one in Lebanon, the PLO would soon find itself in the Fiji islands.
That memory came to mind while I examined the front page of the pro-Hezbollah daily Al-Akhbar on the day the ceasefire in Lebanon took hold. The paper’s headline read, “Steadfast, Victorious.” Even assuming that one is unthinkingly devoted to a Hezbollah view of the world, to believe that the party’s thirteen-month war with Israel constitutes in any way a victory is so delusional that it must actually be reassuring to Hezbollah’s foes. Only a party deeply anxious about the potential domestic backlash against the senseless conflict it provoked would be capable of passing off a historical cataclysm as a success.
As the ceasefire in Lebanon kicked in, many paused to examine its potential shortcomings. Certainly, there are many minefields, but there is also a reality that cannot be ignored. The conditions of the ceasefire agreement effectively laid out what was not far from a surrender for Hezbollah, but the party and Iran accepted it, more or less showing that they were willing to live with its implications. This tells us something.
The major issue of contention was Israel’s demand that it be allowed to intervene militarily inside Lebanon if Hezbollah violated the ceasefire agreement. The Lebanese were blindsided by a U.S.-Israeli side letter that granted Israel the freedom to engage in such military action, regardless of what Lebanon, Hezbollah, or Iran preferred. Indeed, when the French reportedly recommended to the Lebanese that they reject this brazen undermining of their sovereignty, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken explained to French President Emmanuel Macron that the French position was jeopardizing the ceasefire deal.
The person who understood what was going down was Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri. One can say many things about Berri, but not that he’s a fool. The speaker must have quickly grasped that the systematic destruction of the Shia community was a threat to his own political survival. That’s why he went out on a limb in early October, along with caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati and the Druze leader Walid Joumblatt, to support a ceasefire agreement and commit to “implementing Security Council Resolution 1701 and to deploying the army south of the Litani River.” This decision earned Berri a disapproving visit from Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqji, who reportedly was unhappy with Berri’s acceptance of Resolution 1701. This prompted a sour Joumblatt to state a few days later, “A certain visitor to Lebanon wants to give us lessons in resistance. We are the ones who can give him those lessons, not the other way around. We have a rich history in this field.”
What this points to is that, from the start, Berri sought an accord with the U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, whatever the price. When he saw that the Americans and Israelis had concluded their side agreement, he added a formulation to the ceasefire deal that essentially accepted what this side agreement sought to impose. Berri suggested that the ceasefire plan grant both sides a right to self-defense, which is how the Israelis view their freedom of action in Lebanon. What did the Lebanese gain from this? First, they saved face, allowing Berri to relativize accusations that the ceasefire proposal infringed Lebanese sovereignty. Second, he bought Hezbollah a potential right of response to Israeli actions, also under the rubric of self-defense.
Such details aside, why did Hezbollah and Iran agree to a Hochstein proposal that was to their disadvantage? Up to the eve of the ceasefire, Hezbollah was facing an increasingly difficult situation, which the party’s launching of over 200 rockets against Israel on November 24 sought to conceal. The party was about to lose Khiyam in the eastern sector of border area, where Israeli forces were said to have reached the Litani River, and it was facing an Israeli push in Bayada in the western sector, which potentially could have opened up the road to Tyre. While Hezbollah was resisting, there seemed to be no coordinated opposition on its part, so it was only a matter of time before the Israelis would envelop its combatants south of the Litani. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country, Shiite society had been thoroughly dislocated as the Israelis expanded their bombings of major towns and population centers.
The future holds many uncertainties. Hezbollah will likely refuse to disarm and there are no signs Iran will force the party to do so. Even Sheikh Naim Qassem’s speech last week that Hezbollah would be placing itself “under the roof of the Taif Agreement” did not promise anything specific. The party cannot do much against Israel in the foreseeable future, at least nothing that would not lead to massive Israeli retaliation, but that is not where its efforts will be exerted in the coming years anyway. Its priority will be to revive its community, rebuild decimated Shiite areas, and find an acceptable relationship with the Lebanese state and the other religious communities, while preserving as much of its power as possible.
More importantly, Hezbollah is now facing a Lebanese society far less willing to accept its hegemony than ever before. Relations between the country’s sects and the party have deteriorated in the past five years, consequently this internal struggle could lead to further stalemate and tensions, or it may lead to some sort of dialogue with the party on everything from surrendering it weapons to doing so in exchange for obtaining a greater share of political power in the state. But we seem to have reached the limits of the formulation Hezbollah imposed on successive governments, namely the triptych of the Army, the People, and the Resistance. Henceforth, many non-Shiite political representatives will refuse to include the resistance in that equation.
Hezbollah’s efforts to spin its latest communal calamity as a victory is a sign of things to come. The party will not give anything up if it can help it, but that means ignoring the context in which it finds itself. The Lebanese army can be expected to implement its mandate in an expansive way, now that it enjoys both popular and political cover. For Hezbollah to try to return to what it had prior to October 2023 would require it to enter into a confrontation with the Lebanese state, army, and most political parties in the country, isolating it further. With Israel just over the horizon waiting to intercede militarily against any effort by Hezbollah to return its heavy weapons to the south, Hezbollah could well find itself caught up again in a new war in which it stands alone against all. This may be the stuff of heroic narratives, but it is also a path toward communal debilitation.
The key point is what Iran will decide. While one interpretation suggests that Tehran will seek to restore Hezbollah to its former status, the more real question is what purpose would this serve? The so-called “unity of the arenas” strategy has led to a monumental debacle in which Tehran has seen the neutralization of its two most potent allies fighting Israel, probably for decades. Any reinvestment in Hezbollah would first necessitate rebuilding and restoring what the Shiite community has lost, which could cost billions of dollars the ailing Iranian economy cannot spare, especially if the Trump administration imposes new sanctions.
In other words, Tehran would need to spend and sacrifice a great deal in order to revive a failed strategy. This comes at a time when the Iranian leadership structure is preparing a transition away from the aging Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which will generate higher expectations in Iran, therefore may translate into instability if his successor promises more of the same. Faced with choices on Hezbollah that might cause domestic discontent and endanger this transition, therefore the regime’s survival, it’s not at all evident the Iranian leadership will be in a position to resuscitate what it had in Lebanon.
So, the claims of victory we are hearing from some Lebanese are, ultimately, pitiful. In the end, Lebanon is and will alas remain a nation of pawns, of gambling chips, in a wider regional and international power game. Today, many in the country’s south, the Beqaa, and Beirut’s southern suburbs have lost everything, but for what purpose? To be Iranian sandbags against Israel so that Iran itself can be protected? To see the Americans and Israelis make backchannel arrangements at their expense? Where can one see any victory here?
