Having failed to secure a ceasefire, President Joe Biden’s administration is signaling its support for Israeli operations against Iranian-backed Hezbollah and the group’s eventual withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
The hope is that a weakened Hezbollah — Tehran’s main proxy and Lebanon’s most powerful political party — will offer the Lebanese a chance to elect a new president and push the militants to the sidelines and away from Israel’s southern border for good.
“We see Israel as having the right to conduct these limited incursions to degrade Hezbollah’s capacity,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a briefing last week.
“We want these incursions to be limited, and ultimately we want to get back to the implementation of 1701, which means the government of Israel withdraws behind the border,” he added, referring to a United Nations resolution intended to end hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel with the establishment of a buffer zone.
The refocused U.S. diplomatic efforts face challenges on many fronts, including finding a way to implement the decades-old U.N. resolution, which has never been fully enforced.
Adopted by the United Nations in 2006 after the last major war between Israel and Hezbollah, 1701 was intended to pave the way for lasting peace.
With the goal of long-term security, the resolution would have completely withdrawn Israeli forces from Lebanon, which would have full sovereignty over the south. With Hezbollah excluded, the Lebanese army and thousands of peacekeepers from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) would have maintained an armed presence south of the Litany River in Lebanon.
Nearly 20 years later, the militant group has amassed more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, in addition to drones and anti-tank, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles. The country is also in political and economic crisis, with a vacant presidency since 2022 creating a leadership vacuum, while hyperinflation and a collapsed currency have caused widespread poverty.
Since Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas launched its terror attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 people and took about 240 hostages, according to officials in the country, Hezbollah has been firing rockets and other missiles into northern Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group. The Israeli offensive in Gaza has since killed more than 42,000 people, according to health officials in the enclave.
For months, as the two sides have fought back and forth, more than 60,000 people have been forced from their homes in northern Israel, according to government counts. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government cited this as the reason for launching its military campaign in southern Lebanon last month.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack, according to Lebanese officials, and an estimated 1.2 million have been displaced. Many of them fled their homes after Israel began a massive bombardment on Sept. 17, when Hezbollah pagers exploded across the country.
The Biden administration shares Israel’s frustration that the UNIFIL peacekeeping mission has failed to stop Hezbollah from hiding weapons in tunnels and homes along its border, a senior administration official said.
Retired Navy Admiral James Stavridis, a former NATO commander, pointed to UNIFIL’s failure to prevent Hezbollah from hiding weapons in tunnels and homes along the border.
“If the UN mission had done its job and ensured that there was a substantial demilitarized zone just north of the Israeli border, all the way to the Litani River, Israel would not have had to invade and conduct the military operations that they are conducting,” he said.
“And frankly, this mission is something that military analysts and observers like myself have been criticizing for a decade or more. They have simply not been effective in the task that they have been given.”
Now, the Biden administration hopes to strengthen Lebanon’s political system by pushing for new presidential elections and a strengthening of the Lebanese Armed Forces.
“The solution to this crisis is not a weaker Lebanon. It is a strong and truly sovereign Lebanon, protected by a legitimate security force, embodied in the Lebanese Armed Forces,” U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood said last week at a meeting of the UN Security Council. “And so that is where the international community should focus its efforts: helping to strengthen Lebanese state institutions so that they can exercise effective control over Lebanese territory.”
Over the past two years, Hezbollah has also blocked the election of a president not allied with the group — a leadership vacuum that has hampered the passage of new legislation and much-needed economic reforms.
Despite losing its majority in the 2022 elections, Hezbollah and the factions that support it retained 62 of the 128 seats in Lebanon’s parliament, maintaining its status as a major player. It also remains the main political outlet for the country’s Shiite Muslims, one of the largest sectarian blocs.
Jeffrey Feltman, who served as U.S. ambassador to Lebanon from 2004 to 2008, said a weakened Hezbollah could be beneficial for Lebanon, but he feared that Israel’s “limited, localized, targeted incursion will be anything but beneficial.”
“You have to hope that they don’t go too far in a way that will lead to Hezbollah 2.0,” he said in a phone call with NBC News on Monday.
Other risks Feltman cited include a passive Lebanese state that can’t handle the moment or a Hezbollah backlash so severe that it leads to the destruction of the Lebanese state.
In a series of talks in recent weeks, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has asked his Arab and European counterparts, as well as Lebanon’s leaders, to rally support for the diplomatic effort. But critics of the push have expressed concern about U.S. attempts to influence Lebanon’s political future.
“We hope that the Lebanese political system can break that impasse,” Miller said Friday. “And ultimately, we hope that Hezbollah is degraded enough that they are less influential in Lebanese politics and that they agree to withdraw above the Litani River so that 1701 can be implemented.”
In Lebanon, interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Friday that presidential elections were needed quickly, but that his country would formally ask the UN Security Council for a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal.
Such a resolution would be helpful, an Arab diplomat told NBC News, but warned that it was unlikely to weaken Hezbollah as long as it retained Iranian support.
Lebanese lawmaker Ghayath Yazbek accused Hezbollah and its Iranian supporters of holding the government hostage and said it would be impossible to implement Resolution 1701 unless the country’s military, not Hezbollah, was in control.
“Unless Hezbollah is defeated in the war, or unless Hezbollah has the wisdom to spare Lebanon and its people more destruction and martyrdom, and decides to stop the war, 1701 cannot be implemented,” he said.
Kassem Kisser, a writer and political analyst, agrees that it is impossible to implement 1701 and hold elections at this point, but blames Israel, the US and their allies for the problem, not Hezbollah.
“What is needed first is to stop the Israeli aggression on Lebanon, and there is no possibility of negotiations on any political issue, local or international, before the aggression stops,” he said. “What is needed before negotiations is to stop the aggression and to stop the attacks on the innocent civilians who are being killed.”