Recent remarks by a senior U.S. diplomat suggest that Washington may be open to a more conciliatory approach to Hezbollah, the predominantly Shiite Lebanese movement that has been regarded by Washington as a terrorist proxy of Iran since it was blamed for the bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983.
During a visit to Beirut last week in which he pressed for Hezbollah’s disarmament, Tom Barrack, a successful real estate investor and personal friend of President Donald Trump who serves as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Türkiye and U.S. Special Envoy for Syria, described Hezbollah as a “political party … [that] also has an armed wing.”
“Hezbollah needs to see that there is a future for them, and that this path is not meant to be only against them, and that there is an intersection between peace and prosperity for them as well,” he added.
The remarks stirred criticism, notably from pro-Israel forces in Washington, who saw in them a deviation from the longstanding official U.S. position that the Shiite group is a terrorist organization in its entirety.
Barrack, who was recently chosen to replace the more hawkish Morgan Ortagus as U.S. envoy to Lebanon, visited Beirut to receive the official Lebanese government response to an American proposal to disarm Hezbollah. While the proposal’s details remain under wraps, it essentially called for the group to hand over its heavy weapons in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territories, pursuant to the U.S.-mediated ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon at the end of last November. According to various reports, a four-month timetable was set for implementation of the proposal.
Barrack struck an unusually upbeat tone on the response he received from the Lebanese side, noting that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) had already gathered much of Hezbollah’s arsenal in southern Lebanon. “I’m unbelievably satisfied with the response,” he declared, adding that what “the (Lebanese) government gave us was something spectacular in a very short period of time.”
The Lebanese government’s response has also not yet been made public, but Barrack’s emphasis after his meetings with top government officials on resolving the issue of Hezbollah’s arms through national dialogue involving the group itself without imposing time frames suggested his endorsement of the official Lebanese position.
Lebanon’s president Joseph Aoun has long maintained that disarming Hezbollah must take place through dialogue and that a more forceful approach risks plunging the country into civil war.
A Hezbollah official told RS that the Lebanese response set certain preconditions before any dialogue about disarmament could take place.
“The state officials emphasized that three steps must first be taken which are ending Israeli violations [of the November 2024 ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel], Israel’s withdrawal from all Lebanese occupied territories, and a return of Lebanese prisoners taken and held by Israel,” he said.
Barrack’s remarks stand in stark contrast to those made by Ortagus, who had described Hezbollah as a “cancer” that must be eliminated.
Unsurprisingly, Barrack’s upbeat tone provoked thinly veiled complaints from pro-Israel circles back in Washington. In an article entitled “Now Is Not the Time to Ease Up on Hezbollah – or Beirut,” David Schenker of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy criticized his failure to set a specific deadline for Hezbollah’s disarmament. And, referring to Barrack’s characterization of Hezbollah “as a political party with a militant aspect to it,” Schenker also accused Barrack of being “inexplicably conciliatory” towards the group.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain of the Foundation of the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington-based think tank generally aligned with Israel’s right-wing Likud party, complained that the U.S. envoy “reversed three decades of US policy by no longer labelling Hezbollah a terrorist organisation.”
These complaints may have moved the State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, whose boss, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has long cultivated political support from pro-Israel donors, to reaffirm Washington’s position that Hezbollah in its entirety is a terrorist organization. “Hezbollah is a designated terrorist organization, and we do not distinguish between its political or armed wings,” she said.
Nonetheless, Barrack reiterated the distinction to a group of journalists in New York, even going so far, when asked whether the U.S. could eventually take Hezbollah off its terrorism list, as to acknowledge that possibility.
“I’m not running away from the answer but I can’t answer it,” said Barrack in response to a question about whether such a measure could be taken, adding that it would require Hezbollah to eventually agree to hand over its heavy weapons — which pose a threat to Israel — to the Lebanese military.
Despite the controversy surrounding Barrack’s statements, a policy that deprioritizes animosity with Hezbollah would ultimately serve U.S. interests. While it was badly battered militarily during last fall’s war with Israel, the results of Lebanon’s municipal elections held in May demonstrated that Hezbollah — and its Shiite ally Amal — retain overwhelming support in the Shiite community, Lebanon’s largest religious denomination.
Indeed, opting for a more confrontational approach by pressuring the Lebanese state into disarming Hezbollah by force, as opposed to a dialogue, therefore runs a real risk of plunging the country into sectarian chaos, which would constitute a major policy failure for Washington.
“The United States has no positive interest in unending chaos in Lebanon,” explained former CIA veteran Middle East analyst and Quincy Institute non-resident fellow Paul Pillar in remarks to RS.
“Such instability is just a demonstration of the U.S.’s inability to bring peace to the region and as such is a stain on the reputation of the United States.”
A less confrontational stance towards Hezbollah makes even more sense given the recent conciliatory rhetoric of the group itself towards the U.S. In a speech in May, the group’s secretary-general, Sheikh Naim Qassem, made a clear distinction between the United States and Israel, asserting that President Trump has an “opportunity to invest in Lebanon and the region” if he frees himself from “Israel’s grip.”
The realization of Barrack’s outlined vision is of course far from guaranteed.
For starters, the ban imposed this week by the Lebanese Central Bank on the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Qard Al-Hassan financial institution will raise the group's suspicions regarding Washington’s true intentions, not least given that this step was hailed by Barrack himself.
Israel also continues its near daily attacks on Lebanon that have even escalated in recent days, with an airstrike on the Bekaa valley leading to the deaths of 12 people. The persistence of these attacks undermines efforts to launch the government’s dialogue with the Lebanese Shiite movement regarding its weapons arsenal. Hezbollah has vowed that such attacks — in addition to Israel’s occupation of Lebanese territory since last fall’s war — need to end before it would take part in such a dialogue.
Another, less prominent issue relates to Syria and its Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led government which Hezbollah and the wider Lebanese Shiite community perceive as a major and potentially existential threat.
This owes primarily to the Salafi-Jihadi anti-Shiite roots of HTS, and the sectarian massacres committed by HTS-affiliated forces in post-Assad Syria. The spiritual leader of Syria’s Druze community in Suwayda province recently accused government-affiliated forces of conducting indiscriminate attacks in the province. Against the backdrop of the developments in Suwayda, Israel conducted a massive air campaign in both the province itself and the capital Damascus. According to press reports, targets in Damascus included the Defense Ministry and Presidential Palace, with Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu stating that the purpose of the operations was to protect the Druze minority.
Some of Barrack’s recent statements have also fuelled concerns about a new era of Syrian hegemony over Lebanon.
In an interview with The National, an Emirati media outlet, after his Beirut visit, the U.S. envoy warned that Lebanon runs the risk of becoming “Bilad Al Sham” once again if it does not move to address the issue of Hezbollah’s disarmament.
Bilad Al Sham refers to the region once known as “Greater Syria” of which Lebanon was once part. While he later stated that his remarks were not meant as a threat to Lebanon, Barrack’s warning elevated Hezbollah’s already existing fears that Syria could regain an outsized role in Lebanon.
“These statements and the fact that Barrack was assigned the Lebanon file along with Syria raise suspicions that Washington intends to impose Syrian trusteeship over Lebanon akin to that which previously existed (during the Assad dynasty),” said the Hezbollah official.
This adds another dimension to the broader debate regarding Hezbollah’s arms and Washington’s Lebanon policy more broadly. If indeed U.S. officials are considering giving Syria major influence in Lebanon under an HTS-led government, this would likely not only undermine efforts to reach a disarmament agreement with Hezbollah, but could also potentially ignite sectarian violence of catastrophic proportions.
