And the West and its Arab partners should agree. Lebanon is actually Important enough. There is a way forward, and we outline it here.
Few in the West are eager for another opportunity to get involved in the Middle East. After Iraq and Afghanistan, and given the unpopular war with Iran, the instinct to run for the hills is strong. That’s understandable but possibly unwise. Sometimes, in geopolitics as in life, the refusal to act carries greater risks. Lebanon, oddly, may be such a situation.
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For four decades, the most powerful military force in Lebanon has been Hezbollah, a fanatical militia that is an extension of Iran and obsessively dedicated to war with Israel, without regard to consequences for the Lebanese. War with Israel is exactly what they got, more than once.
The latest misdventure began when — the day after Hamas invaded Israel from Gaza, massacring over 1,000 and sparking a catastrophic war — Hezbollah piled on and began bombarding Israel. After about a year of this, with almost 100,000 people displaced in the Galilee, Israel struck back.
It enjoyed significant successes in its fall 2024 campaign against Hezbollah: it disabled thousands of militants in the exploding beepers operation, killed charismatic leader Hassan Nasrallah, eliminated many of the group’s rocket launchers, and drove it north. As Hezbollah had been an important ally of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, its weakening emboldened his enemies, who were able to overthrow him in Dec. 2024. That, in turn, ended the use of Syria as a transit route for weapons for Hezbollah. Rare good news in the Middle East.
The past year and a half, since the fighting halted, at first brought more good news: The new Lebanese government under President Joseph Aoun openly wanted to get rid of and disarm Hezbollah; they’d grown a spine, at least enough to make statements. But then came the bad news: it’s clear they cannot do it.
The militia is simply still more powerful than Lebanon’s army. Also, the military has too many Shiites, from the very community Hezbollah claims to represent, complicating things. And memories of the country’s ruinous civil war, from 1975 to 1990, are still strong; the Lebanese, divided (mostly) between Christians, Sunnis, Shiites and Druze, reasonably fear a repeat. That probably goes double for Aoun, a Maronite Christian who at 62 can remember when his community – many of whom were driven out by the war – was still numerically dominant in the country.
So here we are, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran’s regime, with Israel once more absorbing thousands of missiles from Hezbollah, which is also gradually trying to return to the border area. Utterly fed up, Israel is now considering another full invasion and seizing a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
The context in which this must be understood – in addition to, yes, Benjamin Netanyahu being an inveterate schemer now addicted to force – is that there is no credible Lebanese authority capable of stopping terrorists attacking Israel. The idea of a buffer zone is basically a crude but logical response.
Israel’s last “security zone” in southern Lebanon, from 1982 to 2000, stands as a cautionary tale: what began as a limited security measure metastasized into a prolonged and costly entanglement with dozens of losses a year. It was such a trauma that when PM Ehud Barak decided to pull out in 2000, he just did so overnight, without any sort of arrangement in place. Hezbollah took ovber the border, and the result has been repeated conflicts. That’s what Hezbollah does.
Since Israel does not want to repeat of its past experience, it is concluding that it cannot leave the Shiite population in place, giving Hezbollah cover. That too sounds logical – but it means the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people. Logical? Maybe. Acceptable? Not so much. Moreover, it’s reasonable for Israel’s critics to fear that such a move might become at least semi-permanent.
So, paraphrasing Karl Marx, this looks like a farce repeating itself as a tragedy — at a time when Israel’s standing in the world is at shockingly low levels already. Reasonable Israelis know all this and want neither to get stuck in Lebanon again nor tolerate Hezbollah on their border.
So Israel must make completely clear that its reason for any action at all in Lebanon is purely a function of Hezbollah’s existence as a militia, and that it would end completely the second Hezbollah is gone – in line with Lebanon’s own wishes. This must be stated clearly, publicly and believably. Various mechanisms of guarantee can be established.
Everything should be predictaed on clarity: Hezbollah is the problem, Lebanon knows it, and Lebanon needs help. There is a mechanism for acting on such understandings, and Lebanon needs to trigger it. Here’s how.
If Lebanon were to formally seek help dismantling Hezbollah, it would likely begin with a sovereign request framed around restoring state monopoly over force, rather than targeting a specific faction by name. The government could issue an official appeal through diplomatic channels, coordinated by the presidency and cabinet, requesting international assistance to implement its obligations under existing UN resolutions.
This would involve submitting a letter to the United Nations Security Council asking for support in enforcing the disarmament of non-state militias under the framework of Resolution 1701. The request would be carefully worded to emphasize stabilization, territorial sovereignty, and protection of civilians, thereby making it more palatable to a broad range of international actors and avoiding the appearance of inviting foreign intervention in internal politics.
In parallel, Lebanon could pursue a Security Council resolution that provides political and legal backing, even if enforcement remains indirect. Such a resolution need not be limited to expanding the mandate of the existing and rather farcical outfit known as UNIFIL, which has a record of impotence. It could help unlock funding, intelligence-sharing, and logistical support from member states, even if the actual operational work is carried out elsewhere.
At that point Lebanon could then engage more directly with Western partners, including outreach to NATO, either for capacity-building and advisory support, or for actual combat assistance. A request for the latter would almost certainly shift away from the UN and toward explicit bilateral or coalition-based invitations. The Lebanese government could formally invite specific states — most plausibly the United States, France, and selected Arab partners — to deploy forces under a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), providing legal cover for foreign troops to operate inside Lebanon alongside the Lebanese Armed Forces. This would be framed not as occupation, but as a “joint stabilization and disarmament mission” requested by a sovereign government.
The Arab states, operating through the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council, are critical. Their involvement would rob critics of the ability to claim neo-colonialism and make clear that there is something approaching a Muslim world consensus. Moreover, Gulf countries should make clear that with Hezbollah gone, massive aid and investment would be coming to Lebanon, which needs it after years of strife, Hezbollah-caused (and Iran-engineered) instability, and dealing with several million refugees from the Syrian civil war.
Precedents for hosting foreign troops under a Status of Forces Agreement suggest a range of models to draw from, each signaling a different level of sovereignty, duration, and external involvement. Long-standing arrangements like the US–Japan SOFA reflect deep strategic alignment and permanent basing, while the NATO framework in Europe standardizes multinational deployments across allied states.
More relevant for a crisis scenario are time-bound, sovereignty-sensitive agreements such as the US–Iraq SOFA, which combined an explicit invitation with defined limits on foreign operations and a pathway to withdrawal, or NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, which emphasized training and support while still enabling a significant troop presence. Hybrid models like the US–Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement show how rotational deployments can provide flexibility without permanent basing.
Might this become a quagmire? After all, the Middle East record is not great. But Lebanon is not Iraq — it is small and containable. Hezbollah is hated by most Lebanese — different from the complex situation with the Taliban. It is surrounded, and It no longer able to depend on Syria and shorn of its powerful backer in Iran. This one is winnable, and it must be won. Overoptimism is dangerous, yes, but defeatism is not realism. It is defeatism.
Israel should be willing to help in any way that is requested. But it is far better for this to be more than just Israel’s problem, and for Israel’s role to be minimal. What Israel should be offered is a hand outstretched in peace — once there is a peaceful neighbor to the north. The countries, in theory, could be friendly and complementary in ways that create prosperity (including — though this may seem fantastical now — as a joint tourism destination).
The standard Israeli hotheads will insist that Israel can rely only on itself. This is foolish. Israel’s decades of us-against-the-world mentality have not landed it in a very good place. And the best chance of breaking through is occurring right now, precisely because Israel is fighting Iran alongside the United States. That it: not relying only on itself. Indeed, non-clueless Israelis know they depend on the US.
So right now, this is where we are: Israel should know when to get out of the way, and Lebanon should know it needs help urgently and seek it. The world should care, because Middle East wars have ripple effects, as the Iran conflict has demonstrated yet again.
So an optimist might hope that Israel’s threat of a new buffer zone enables focuses the minds of Lebanon’s leaders and enables them to think clearly. Lebanon is a nation falling apart. It will not be well served, in this context and at this time, by “national pride.” Swallow it, and ask for help. Help will come
