What are we to make of the recent visit to Beirut by the U.S. envoy Tom Barrack, accompanied by the previous envoy who appears to still be an envoy, Morgan Ortagus, and by Senators Lindsey Graham and Jeanne Shaheen and Representative Joe Wilson?
When it came to form, this merry band made waves. Ortagus had her hair done by a prominent local stylist, with the video posted on social media. Barrack used the term “animalistic” to describe the Lebanese press corps, creating a minor furor. And Graham, after talking down to the Lebanese without restraint, added, “[D]on’t ask me any questions about what Israel is going to do until you disarm Hezbollah. If you disarm Hezbollah, we’ll have a good conversation. If you don’t, it’s a meaningless conversation.”
What could one conclude from this train wreck of a visit? That when Trump administration officials travel to Lebanon, aside from enjoying the entertainments they tend to disregard the country’s complexities, preferring to dictate rather than listen. On the real issues, however, the Americans brought nothing. Barrack was supposed to return from Israel having secured Israeli willingness to facilitate his plan to disarm Hezbollah, but instead the Israelis told him they would not reduce their attacks in Lebanon or withdraw from occupied portions of the south. And Graham’s comments only further emphasized that there would be no reciprocity between Lebanese and Israeli steps, which Barrack had implied earlier was doable: Lebanon had to disarm Hezbollah first and only then would Israel make concessions.
What were the takeaways here? First, that the Lebanon trip was a failure before it even began. It was little surprise that the Lebanese government now considers the Barrack plan, with its end-of-year timetable for Hezbollah’s disarmament, null and void, even if the government’s priority of imposing a state monopoly over weapons hasn’t changed. Second, that Barrack is no longer a valid interlocutor, as he enjoyed no administration backing that would have compelled Israel to compromise on his plan. Don’t be surprised if he soon steps down as interim Lebanon envoy, and Ortagus’ return to Beirut this week, without Barrack but with the newly appointed head of U.S. Central Command, suggests she may be back in the driver’s seat, with Israel’s full approval. Not surprisingly, her visit is supposed to be focused on security matters.
Would this be a surprise? While in Israel after his trip to Beirut, Graham pointed everyone in this direction by saying, “If we cannot reach a peaceful disarmament solution for Hezbollah, then we need to look at plan B. Plan B is disarming Hezbollah by military force. What’s nonnegotiable for me is their disarmament. I prefer to do it through the political process … but allowing Hezbollah to have heavy weapons is a nonstarter, no future for Lebanon, and the threats are too great to allow this to happen.”
The U.S. is shifting quickly toward favoring military action against Hezbollah. The army commander Rudolph Haykal certainly sensed this when he recently threatened to resign rather than be strong-armed into taking such a step. Given his closeness to President Joseph Aoun, it is doubtful that he and the president see matters differently. If the present and former army commander agree that a military solution would be catastrophic, they must know something the Americans don’t. But apparently nothing will dissuade the Trump administration , nor can it be expected to recognize that Israel’s refusal to buy into the Barrack plan may have been aimed at pushing the army into a violent confrontation with Hezbollah, from which Israel could benefit.
Hezbollah would definitely fight back against imposed disarmament and it would have a majority of Shiites on its side. All the signs from the past are that a military operation would quickly bog down. This is the lesson from two prior efforts by the Lebanese army to defeat militias—in 1983–1984, when it tried to disarm pro-Syrian militias with U.S. backing, and again in 1990, when it tried to defeat the Christian Lebanese Forces. In both cases the results were predictable. The army attacked, leading to a stalemate, and the army then surrounded mainly civilian areas and expanded its firepower to break the status quo. The result was that the country’s military found itself bombing its own citizens, devastating civilian infrastructure and generating tremendous resentment, while advancing very little. The results were disastrous and the army came out of these battles greatly weakened.
The current senior leadership of the Lebanese army, indeed Joseph Aoun himself, were young officers at the time, and understand what a folly it would be to repeat the mistakes of the past. The grinding battle for Nahr al-Bared in 2007 provides a more recent cautionary note. The military also knows that there is no guarantee the army would remain unified when facing such stresses, nor would it be able to manage the subsequent anger in the Shiite community, which could enter into a state of sustained insurrection.
Worse, if Israel were to intervene against Hezbollah what would the army do? Would it side with an enemy against its own countrymen? That’s very difficult to imagine, even if the Americans might dream of such a scenario. In fact, such a development would only bolster Hezbollah’s narrative that the army and party must join forces against Israel.
In all its dimensions, a resort to force would be the very worst option for Lebanon. It would not work, it would cause many deaths, particularly among civilians, and it would revive sectarian animosities. We can also be assured that once such an operation begins losing momentum, the Americans would abandon the Lebanese, as they did in 1984, and as they invariably do after pushing countries into inconclusive wars.
Yet Graham is not alone in his martial enthusiasm. Influential think-tankers are expressing similar sentiments. David Schenker of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who served as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs during the first Trump administration, recently wrote, “In the end, Lebanon may still miss another once-in-a-generation opportunity for state sovereignty, whether by flinching to avoid armed confrontation or proving inadequate to the military task despite years of U.S. training and funding. Even so, the Trump administration should persist with its pressure by leveraging U.S. funding for the [Lebanese armed forces], threatening sanctions against obstructionist politicians, and conditioning reconstruction on implementation of the disarmament plan.”
Schenker is not wrong when he says Lebanon may miss an opportunity, but he is mistaken in assuming that this would be the worst outcome. A U.S.-provoked civil war against Hezbollah that leads to a murderous deadlock is far more perilous than advancing slowly and eventually working out a modus vivendi with the party that avoids domestic conflict. There are those who are impatient for quick solutions, which is defensible as Hezbollah has been a scourge on Lebanon for many years. However, far too many times those in America advocating for war have seen their optimistic predictions grievously disproven, and no Lebanese today wants to pay the price for such irresponsible games.
It would also serve the Americans to know something else that is quite obvious in Lebanon. The Shiite community is more worried today about Syria than Israel. A Sunni Salafi regime, with not a few jihadis in it, has taken power in Damascus. This has helped to unite Shiites around a shared sense of sectarian anxiety. The Americans are too wedded to the Israeli position to give such fears a second thought, but they would do well to pay attention. Minority phobias have always been a main feature driving Lebanon’s dynamics, and there is no way the Shiite community, any more than Lebanon’s other communities, could fail to factor this into any decisions pertaining to its weapons.
Lebanon may indeed be in a tight spot, but things would be far more harmful for the country if its leaders were to listen to siren songs coming out of Washington. If the Trump administration is not even capable of compelling Israel to withdraw from a hill or two in southern Lebanon to advance its own envoy’s disarmament plan, let alone respect a ceasefire agreement with Israel that U.S. officials themselves negotiated, then how can anyone in Lebanon trust the United States? Lebanon is being treated like a country that lost a war, which is perhaps justified. However, embarking on a civil conflict to satisfy certain voices in Washington and Tel Aviv is political suicide. There is absolutely no reason for the Lebanese to destroy themselves in order to purportedly save themselves.
