Lebanon’s leaders are running out of time to disarm the militant group Hezbollah before they risk losing U.S. and Gulf Arab financial support, and even a renewed Israeli military campaign, the Trump administration warned ahead of a key cabinet meeting in Beirut on Friday.
The warning comes at what U.S. officials call a critical moment in Lebanon’s history, as the country’s cabinet considers a plan to force the decades-old Iran-backed group to surrender its weapons.
The United States, Israel and the Gulf Arab states are pressuring Lebanon’s government to act decisively and not be intimidated by Hezbollah threats to incite violence.
“This is a key moment of opportunity” for Lebanon, said Firas Maksad, an associate fellow at the Middle East Institute who meets regularly with senior Lebanese officials.
With its combustible mix of religious and ethnic tensions and sensitive border with Israel, Lebanon has confounded American presidents since Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed 14,000 American troops there to thwart a feared communist takeover. Ronald Reagan sent 1,200 U.S. Marines to Beirut as peacekeepers during the nation’s civil war, only to withdraw them after a Hezbollah suicide bombing in 1983 killed 241 service members.
The Trump administration’s involvement in Lebanon draws far less attention than its peacemaking efforts in places like Ukraine and Gaza. But with those other efforts stalled, Lebanon may offer a better opportunity for a breakthrough.
Such an outcome would make Lebanon more stable and give it a chance to rebuild its stunted economy. Sunni Muslim nations in the region have said they would reward decisive action against Shiite Hezbollah with billions in economic aid.
Disarming Hezbollah would also benefit Israel, which has faced years of cross-border attacks. Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas, the Gazan militant group, after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks the group led and the subsequent war in Gaza. Some 60,000 residents in northern Israel have been displaced.
The rocket attacks prompted Israel to launch a major military campaign in Lebanon that crippled Hezbollah, killing hundreds of its fighters and many of its top officials, including its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
But Hezbollah still has weapons, fighters and influence. A February report by International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution nonprofit, assessed that, despite its severe losses at the hands of Israel, Hezbollah was probably “badly bruised but not beaten.”
The United States, Israel and Gulf Arab states have pressed Lebanon’s government to act in Hezbollah’s moment of weakness and force its disarmament, which the United Nations first called for in a resolution nearly 20 years ago.
Last month, in what Mr. Maksad called “a momentous decision,” Lebanon’s government instructed its military to devise its first official plan to disarm the group.
The cabinet will consider the military’s plan on Friday, in what the Trump administration sees as a critical test of political will.
But administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, worry that Lebanon’s parliamentary government will flinch from a potential confrontation with Hezbollah.
One official warned that inaction or half measures could lead Congress to cut off America’s roughly $150 million in annual funding for the Lebanese Armed Forces.
President Trump’s annual budget request did not seek to renew that funding. But officials and experts say that Congress would probably reward a serious disarmament plan with significant amounts of money for equipment and salaries. (Lebanese soldiers “get paid peanuts,” Mr. Maksad noted.)
Further delay in Beirut could have the opposite effect, the Trump official warned. Some members of Congress have supported past legislation to bar U.S. dollars from funding a military whose inaction against Hezbollah to date makes it “complicit in empowering a terrorist organization whose primary mission is to destroy America and Israel,” as Representative Greg Steube, Republican of Florida, put it in a statement last fall.
Under the ever-looming shadow of Lebanon’s civil war, which ravaged the country from 1975 to 1990, Trump officials worry that Hezbollah’s talk of violence may spook Lebanese leaders into backing down.
But those U.S. officials said those fears were unfounded.
Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, is weakened after Israeli attacks this year, they noted. And after Syria’s pro-Iran dictator, Bashar Assad, was overthrown last year and replaced with a government hostile to Iran, Tehran’s traditional supply route to Hezbollah has been choked off.
A person who recently discussed the subject with a senior Saudi official involved in the diplomatic effort said that the Saudi shared the view that Hezbollah was unlikely to react to a disarmament effort with widespread violence. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation.
Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Turkey, Thomas Barrack, who has also been leading U.S. diplomacy with Lebanon, made that case during a visit to Beirut last week.
“Hezbollah, you can convince them in a non-adversary — my opinion — in a non-civil war environment, to join one Lebanese state,” he said. “This is my opinion.”
The greater risk to Lebanon from delay or half-measures, U.S. officials say, is that Israel will conclude it must “finish the job,” as one put it, through renewed military campaign that could incur major damage and casualties.
Israel has already established several military outposts in southern Lebanon in response to what it calls Hezbollah’s failure to observe the 2024 cease-fire. Some analysts believe Israel may establish a depopulated “security zone” in the country’s south, as it did in the mid-1980s.
Lebanese leaders complain that Israel has not made a credible commitment to withdraw in concert with a disarmament plan. That leaves them exposed to political charges that they are doing the bidding of a foreign occupier by acting against Hezbollah.
Edward Gabriel, president of the American Task Force on Lebanon, said that any plan’s success depends not only on a credible plan for disarming Hezbollah, but also “clear assurances of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory.” Mr. Gabriel added that “U.S. mediation will be indispensable” to achieving that balance.
Beirut’s distrust is compounded by a lack of communication between Israel and Lebanon, where it is a crime to interact with Israelis. One of the Trump officials called establishing contact between the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Israel Defense Forces a vital goal.
Mr. Barrack, a businessman and longtime friend of Mr. Trump’s, was joined in Beirut last week by Morgan Ortagus, Mr. Trump’s deputy special envoy to the Middle East and an adviser to the U.N. ambassador, Michael Waltz.
Ms. Ortagus will be back in Beirut this weekend for a meeting of international officials to review the status of the cease-fire that ended Israel’s military campaign in southern Lebanon in late 2024.
That cease-fire directed both Hezbollah and Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon. But Israel has continued regular airstrikes in the area, saying Hezbollah is trying to reconstitute. Several Israeli strikes have targeted heavy equipment such as excavators that Israel’s military said were being used to dig tunnels and re-establish the group’s infrastructure in the area.
The Trump team’s approach continues intensive diplomacy begun under the Biden administration last year, in a rare point of continuity between the two on foreign policy.
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.
The post Time Is Running Out for Lebanon to Disarm Hezbollah, U.S. Officials Warn appeared first on New York Times.
