Lebanon has become a front in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. On March 1, Naim Qassem, the leader of Hezbollah—the Lebanese militia backed and armed by Tehran—pledged retaliation for Israel’s assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, a day earlier. Hezbollah then entered the fray, launching rockets and drones across the border into Israel. The Israel Defense Forces responded with widespread airstrikes across the country.

By joining the battle, Hezbollah inextricably tied Lebanon’s fate to the larger war. But it is also clear that Israel is using the war and Hezbollah’s provocations to justify a much larger—and potentially devastating—assault on Lebanon itself. Over the past month, Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces have exchanged fire nearly daily. Hezbollah has launched between 1,000 and 1,800 rockets into Israel, as well as drones; Israel, in turn, has conducted hundreds of devastating airstrikes across Lebanon—not only in the south but also in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, the country’s most fertile farming region. On March 16, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that the IDF was launching a “targeted ground operation” into southern Lebanon that would prevent hundreds of thousands of fleeing Shiite civilians from returning home—and which he directly compared to the extensive Israeli campaign in Gaza.

This latest war got underway as Lebanon was confronting a cascading series of political, humanitarian, and economic crises. Lebanese society was already deeply divided over the role of Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran. Israel, having already destroyed critical infrastructure and displaced more than a million people, is now threatening to occupy southern Lebanon; some government officials are calling to move the border between the two countries nearly ten miles into Lebanese territory. These far-reaching shocks are exacerbating social and political divides and could undermine Lebanon—yielding chaos and perhaps even state collapse. Such an outcome must be prevented, because it would be catastrophic not only for the country but for the region, too.

REFORM UNDER FIRE

Lebanon had already been ravaged by war. A day after Hamas launched its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Hezbollah unleashed its own war with the Israelis. Just under a year after that, Israel conducted far-reaching attacks on the Hezbollah leadership, including the assassination of its secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, and then invaded Lebanon. Although a cease-fire was formally reached two months later, Israel maintained its occupation of five strategic high points and kept up its attacks on Hezbollah personnel and infrastructure. A U.S. side letter at the time of the cease-fire granted Israel this latitude.

All of this took place in a country struggling to overcome an epochal financial and economic meltdown that began in 2019, when a banking crisis led to a 90 percent collapse in the value of the currency and a sovereign debt default. That was followed, a year later, by a devastating explosion at Beirut’s port. The blast killed more than 200 people, caused (according to World Bank estimates) over $8 billion in damage, and raised urgent questions about government mismanagement and corruption. In the years since, the pressing need to address these and other problems has been thwarted by vested interests and political gridlock among Lebanon’s sectarian leadership.

In February 2025, a new government took office, raising cautious hopes that its leaders might be able to chart a path forward. The new administration, headed by President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, privileged technocratic expertise over political partisanship in ministerial appointments. The government promised to address the required reforms related to the financial crisis, undertake judicial reforms, and initiate a reconstruction program to address the estimated $11 billion in losses incurred in the 2023–4 war with Israel. It also vowed to finally implement UN Resolution 1701, which had been passed in August 2006 to end a monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah but was never fully enacted. Its unaccomplished provisions included a call for the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Carrying out such a reform program would have been challenging under normal circumstances. Now, however, this already fragile administration is mired in war. Lebanon faces a humanitarian crisis of rapidly growing proportions. In early March, the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for more than 100 towns and villages in south Lebanon, encompassing some ten percent of Lebanese territory. Additional evacuation orders have since been issued for new areas in the south all the way to the Zahrani River, some 25 miles into Lebanese territory, as well as the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs. Out of a total Lebanese population of 5.6 million, more than a million people have been displaced, the overwhelming majority of whom are Shiites.

The widespread and intentional destruction (including the dynamiting of predominantly Shiite villages) means that many will be unable to return home. And recently, Israeli leaders have begun to signal that they want to mount a more extensive invasion, which could lead to the prolonged occupation or even annexation of southern Lebanon. Whether or not Israel decides to follow through on its threats of military expansionism, the global and regional economic fallout of the Iran war means that Gulf countries and the international community will be less likely to offer Lebanon urgently needed funding for recovery and reconstruction.

HEZBOLLAH DEFIANT

Yet even as the death and destruction mount, Hezbollah shows no sign of giving up. It has no intent either to surrender or to return to the 2024 cease-fire agreement that allowed Israel operational latitude to continue targeting its members. (Around 350 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in such targeted attacks since the cease-fire, as well as 127 civilians.) During this period, Israel razed over 25 villages and towns along the border. Residents were unable to return to a further 62 towns within areas depopulated by Israel.

Despite the catastrophic repercussions for Lebanon and for its own support base, Hezbollah’s leadership has recommitted to its refusal to disarm and is now portraying the war as an existential communal struggle. Israeli actions in Lebanon are enabling this narrative. The group also sees this moment as an opportunity to rebuild domestic power lost over the past two years and deflect criticism from within its own base. Iran continues to support it financially and with military training and coordination.

Lebanon’s leaders badly want to end what Salam has described as “a devastating war that we did not seek and did not choose.” Over the past year, the political elite has ramped up its efforts to disarm Hezbollah, counter Iranian influence, and negotiate peace with Israel. On March 2, the Lebanese government made the historic decision to ban Hezbollah’s military activities, expel from the country all members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and cancel visa-free agreements with Iran. This followed two equally consequential measures taken last year: on August 5, the government asserted the state’s right to full control over all weapons in Lebanese territory, and on September 5, it tasked the Lebanese army with developing a plan to implement that policy.

In parallel, the government has made significant efforts to cut off arms smuggling routes and financial flows to Hezbollah and to dismantle the group’s military presence south of the Litani River. This effort has had some success. Many of the rockets initially fired at Israel were launched from north of the Litani. (These areas were supposed to be addressed in Phase II of the disarmament process.) This past week, Lebanon withdrew the Iranian ambassador’s diplomatic status and recalled its own ambassador from Tehran for consultations. Yet the ambassador remains in Lebanon, his departure blocked by the country’s two leading Shiite parties, signaling the depth of divisions within the Lebanese state. Political polarization is also deepening. Hezbollah has stepped up a public campaign against the government, accusing the prime minister and cabinet members of treason.

Lebanon’s president has called for direct negotiations with Israel to end the ongoing conflict, breaking a decades-old taboo. But by acting outside state institutions and making Lebanon part of Iran’s battle, Hezbollah has hampered the Lebanese government’s ability to negotiate a cessation of hostilities.

THE ISRAELI WILD CARD

Israel’s agenda in Lebanon remains murky. The Israeli government says it wants to destroy Hezbollah and create a so-called buffer zone along the border atop the rubble of Lebanese villages; in time, it will likely force a peace agreement on its terms. But the shape of its current campaign suggests that its goal is also to foment internal chaos and fragmentation and facilitate the illegal occupation of Lebanese territories.

Israel began planning its military operation in Lebanon months ago. Alongside its aerial bombardments, Israel has made clear preparations for a full-scale invasion, calling up 450,000 reservists. Its demolition of towns beyond the border and evacuation notices have stoked fears that it intends to permanently seize Lebanese territory south of the Litani. Indeed, members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have stated that this is their goal: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called on the IDF to reduce parts of south Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs to rubble and said that the Litani should be Israel’s new border, effectively proposing the annexation of southern Lebanon. All of the Litani’s main bridge crossings have now been bombed in a bid to disconnect the area from the rest of the country. And Israel’s minister of energy has called for the cancellation of a historic maritime agreement, signed in 2022 between Lebanon and Israel, that ended a dispute over the two countries’ sea boundaries.

If Israel’s aim was really to just destroy Hezbollah and bring about peace, its current campaign will achieve the opposite. Hezbollah emerged in response to Israel’s 1982 invasion and subsequent two-decade occupation of parts of southern Lebanon. Extensive bombings, expansionist talk, and preparations for a full-scale invasion only lend credence to Hezbollah’s narrative that armed resistance against Israel is necessary. Local populations who flee the conflict may face perpetual displacement, like Gazans or the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were never allowed to return to their homes after the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel and the 1967 Six-Day War. Some residents who fear this scenario are opting to stay in place despite the danger to their lives. Washington’s seeming endorsement of Israel’s military campaign in south Lebanon is worrying, too. Statements by the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon that the United States had asked Israel to spare the country’s Christian villages suggest an implicit acceptance of Israel’s intention to cleanse southern Lebanon of its Shiite population.

LEBANON IN PERIL

Some Israelis may believe that the fragmentation of Lebanon is a desirable outcome—not unlike the collapse of Syria during its civil war, which weakened and ultimately doomed a Baathist regime that was a sworn enemy. But a Lebanon plunged into abject chaos benefits nobody, and Lebanon’s new government is not equivalent to Assad’s regime. By adopting a maximalist position and refusing to respond positively to the Lebanese government’s work to enforce the state’s monopoly over arms, Israel is reinforcing Hezbollah’s narrative that only armed resistance can liberate Lebanese territory. Meanwhile, by connecting reconstruction funding to Hezbollah’s disarmament and refusing to hold planned conferences meant to solicit financial and technical support for the Lebanese army and reconstruction, international actors—particularly the United States— crippled the government’s capacity to offer relief to devastated civilian populations.

Israel’s military campaign is deepening existing societal and political fissures in Lebanon and creating conditions for a renewed civil conflict. Israeli actions within Lebanon are already stoking sectarian tensions. Its mass destruction of predominantly Shiite residential areas amounts to collective punishment of an entire identity group. Targeted assassinations of Hezbollah and IRGC members in residential buildings, hotels, and population centers outside Hezbollah’s zones of influence are fueling widespread paranoia. Local authorities have begun to vet internally displaced people seeking shelter; in some areas, they are declining to take in the displaced for fear that they may be Israeli targets. A more permanent displacement of Shiite populations from south Lebanon and the destruction of Beirut’s southern suburbs would dramatically alter the demographic balance within Lebanese cities and neighborhoods. In mid-March, Reuters reported that the United States was encouraging Syria (whose government is now dominated by Sunnis) to act against Hezbollah in the Bekaa Valley, further aggravating tensions between Sunnis and Shiites.

Now is the moment to support Lebanon’s new government, not undermine it. Disarming Hezbollah is not just a military exercise; it is a political one. Over the past five decades, the group has become a state within a state, transforming itself into a preeminent representative of Lebanese Shiites. Only a sovereign and strong central state in Beirut can undo the damage that has been done to the country’s cohesion.

The United States, European powers, and regional states must urgently rein in Israel’s military expansionism and either delink Lebanon from the war on Iran—after all, conflating the two countries is part of Iran’s strategy—or insist on concessions in Lebanon by Israel and Iran in any negotiations to end the Iran war. A prolonged conflict in Lebanon will further weaken state institutions and potentially lead to the collapse of central authority or even civil war. Washington must step up its diplomatic efforts toward a cease-fire and peace negotiations in Lebanon and intensify its support for the current Lebanese government and its president. These Lebanese leaders are in a better position to embrace a far-reaching settlement than almost any of their predecessors. This would include efforts to strengthen state institutions, provide humanitarian aid for displaced populations, and assist decommissioning efforts by the Lebanese army. The aim should be to safeguard Lebanon’s sovereignty and prevent another decades-long occupation.

Lebanon has long been a venue for regional rivalries (above all, between Israel and Iran, but also between Iran and Saudi Arabia). This dynamic has only led to the degradation of Lebanese institutions and untold civilian suffering. The country must not become the most recent regional war’s collateral damage. In fact, there is now a window of opportunity to work with Lebanon’s leaders—who are especially eager to rebuild the state and tame Hezbollah in the process but who need help to do so. But this window will soon close if Israel stays its aggressive course.

Loading…