October 2, 2026
American policy towards Lebanon raises dimensions that go beyond the issue of disarming “Hezbollah” to include reducing its influence within state institutions and its public administration, according to what writer Elie Al-Qasifi reports in an article published by the Saudi “Al-Majalla” magazine. The analysis suggests a possible path that combines Israeli military pressure and the neutralization of the party’s political and human networks, with the aim of ending its role as a “ruling party” and reshaping internal balances.
The article points out that this trend comes in light of the faltering path of the Lebanese-Israeli negotiation under American auspices, and the principle of “step by step” remaining without tangible results, which left Lebanon in a state of neither war nor peace. In this context, the American priority seeks to prevent Israeli targeting from turning into a comprehensive war, while allowing Israel to continue striking the party’s military structure and expand the scope of its operations in the south without incurring the cost of a large-scale war.
Al-Qusaifi does not see a complete correspondence between the expansionist ambitions of the Israeli right, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s call to annex southern areas up to the Litani, and the American position, despite the existence of practical complementarity between Israeli military pressure and the political and institutional pressure exerted by Washington to push the Lebanese state to limit the party’s influence.
The writer recalls the experience of uprooting the “Baath” Party in Iraq after 2003, while emphasizing the difference in the two contexts, explaining that what is meant is not to eradicate the party from Lebanese society or dissolve it organizationally, but rather to strip it of the tools of power that allow it to dominate the state’s decisions, and to keep it a participating party within the existing sectarian quota formula.
This approach falls within a broader shift in the US regional strategy based on reducing direct military commitments in favor of political, economic and security pressures, in parallel with ensuring freedom of military movement for Israel in Lebanon and Syria to achieve its goals without being drawn into a comprehensive war.
This path remains governed by multiple possibilities, including the possibility of reaching a regional settlement that includes Iran and includes rearranging the balances in Lebanon, in light of the party’s Secretary-General Naim Qassem and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ refusal to accept this equation and their adherence to the party’s continued role.
The article concludes that Lebanon represents a testing ground for the American ability to reduce Iranian influence through pressure rather than direct war, so the question remains pending about the possibility of ending the party’s control over the joints of the state while keeping it part of power, or whether Lebanon remains a prisoner of the regional conflict between Washington and Tehran.
