U.S. envoy Tom Barrack said on Monday in Beirut that Iran’s Lebanese terror proxy, Hezbollah, “needs to see that there’s a future for them.”
Speaking to reporters, Washington’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria said, after meeting Lebanese President Joseph Aoun that “Hezbollah is a political party. It also has a militant aspect to it. Hezbollah needs to see that there’s a future for them, that the road is not harnessed solely against them, and that there’s an intersection of peace and prosperity for them also,” quoting Agence France-Presse.
Hezbollah is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. State Department.
A State Department official told JNS on Tuesday that “our position has not changed—[Hezbollah] is a designated terrorist organization, and we do not distinguish between its political or armed wings.”
“As Ambassador Barrack said while in Beirut, Lebanon must utilize this moment to make progress, and that includes progress on disarming” the terrorist group, the official added.
Barrack’s comments were made in the context of a roadmap for Hezbollah’s disarmament, which he delivered to the Lebanese government on behalf of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“I’m unbelievably satisfied with the response,” Barrack said at the press conference following his meeting with Aoun. “It’s thoughtful, it’s considered. We’re creating a go-forward plan. To create that, we need dialogue. What the government gave us was something spectacular in a very short period of time.”
Barrack also met on Monday with Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, leader of the Amal Movement.
Barrack said on Saturday that Lebanon now had a historic opportunity to move beyond sectarian divisions and realize its potential as “one country, one people, one army.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told JNS on Monday that while he hadn’t heard Barrack’s specific comments, “Hezbollah has to disarm. That is the position of President Trump’s administration and, in my estimation, his people.
“If Hezbollah wants to be a civil body without arms or anything and to be a part of the State of Lebanon, I don’t interfere with Lebanon and how it wants to run itself. There’s a democracy there. [But] Hezbollah won’t have weapons. Period. No chance,” Smotrich said.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem on Sunday rejected the possibility of disarmament, citing “Israeli threats” and warning of a “confrontation” in response.
Hezbollah has delayed its response to government representatives, as well as to its ally in parliament, Berri, Lebanon’s L’Orient Today reported on Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, Aoun, Salam and Berri have declared their commitment to bringing all arms under state control.
Aoun said during a meeting in Beirut on Saturday with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy that “the number of soldiers in Southern Lebanon will reach 10,000, and there will be no armed force there except the legitimate forces of the Lebanese army and UNIFIL.”
On Nov. 26, 2024, Jerusalem and Beirut signed a ceasefire deal aimed at ending more than a year of cross-border clashes between the IDF and Hezbollah. The Iranian-backed group began attacking the Jewish state in support of Hamas in the aftermath of the Gaza-based terror group’s attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Since the truce, Jerusalem has carried out frequent operations aimed at preventing Hezbollah from reestablishing its capabilities in Southern Lebanon in violation of the truce.
In April, Hezbollah declared its readiness to conduct talks with Beirut on a “national defense strategy” following the fighting with Israel, with experts warning that the terror group would leverage its remaining power to integrate its terrorists into the Lebanese state apparatus.
“Hezbollah is a terror organization that lies and deceives as a way of life,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid told JNS on Monday at the Knesset. “The fact that they’re saying something to Western cameras doesn’t mean that they’re actually doing it.”
He explained that Jerusalem is ensuring the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon “is fully activated,” and emphasized that “there will be no return of armed forces to our border.”
“It is first and foremost the business of the Lebanese government to enforce the agreement” and the removal of weapons from the hands of Hezbollah, Lapid stressed.
At Monday’s press conference in Beirut, Barrack warned, “The rest of the region is moving at Mach speed, and you will be left behind,” noting that “dialogue has started between Syria and Israel, just as the dialogue needs to be reinvented by Lebanon.”
