Disarming Hezbollah won’t be enough, on its own, to free Lebanon from the terrorist group’s grip, three Washington Institute for Near East Policy experts told federal lawmakers at a House Foreign Affairs Committee panel hearing Tuesday.
Members of the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee heard that Washington and its allies also need to fight corruption in Lebanon, restore its banking system and keep Hezbollah-aligned politicians out of the new legislature that will be elected this year.
“Economic and political reforms are urgently required to restore confidence,” David Schenker, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told the subcommittee.
“Reform shouldn’t be an afterthought,” he testified. “The state will not end Hezbollah’s chokehold in the country without reform.”
Hanin Ghaddar, another senior fellow at the institute, said that Lebanon’s banking system has collapsed, leaving an $18 billion cash economy in its place. And that provides the money Hezbollah needs to continue, she said.
“Cash is harder to trace, easier to launder and far more difficult to regulate,” she told the House panel.
The United States should insist that Lebanese companies are monitored to keep Hezbollah out, according to Ghaddar.
“Most international focus is on Hezbollah’s possession of weapons, but these assets are part of a wider ecosystem which allows the group to maintain power within state institutions, ensures the continuation of cash flow to its coffers and enables it to rebuild its broken military infrastructure,” she testified.
“This ecosystem is what keeps Hezbollah alive today, and any disturbance to the system’s flow could lead to its collapse,” she added. “Accordingly, if Hezbollah loses its cash flow and political influence within the state, it will not be able to sustain its arsenal.”
Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah during the recent war against Hamas, including killing the terror group’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, have severely weakened the group, which has acted as a state-within-a-state, with its own army used to attack Israel. Iran, Hezbollah’s patron, has also been weakened by Israeli and U.S. attacks.
“The terrorist militia’s military setback and loss of its longstanding leadership weakened the organization’s grip over Lebanese politics, allowing a window to stabilize a failing state that has long been a global outpost for crime and terrorism,” Schenker testified.
And the regime change in Syria has hindered Iran’s ability to smuggle weapons into Lebanon, said Dana Stroul, research director and a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and former deputy assistant U.S. secretary of defense for the Middle East.
The ouster of Bashar Assad meant Iran lost a “state partner in funneling cash, weapons and advisers to Hezbollah,” Stroul testified. “The ecosystem of strategic and operational support around Hezbollah is fundamentally changed, but other illicit networks and relationships persist.”
As a result, there is a unique opportunity to eliminate the threat on Israel’s northern border, strengthen Lebanon’s government and perhaps bring the country into the Abraham Accords, the panelists told the House subcommittee.
They gave high marks to the new leaders of Lebanon, President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who both took office about a year ago. But the United States needs to make sure the new leaders address the country’s corruption, the panelists said.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), chair of the subcommittee, began the hearing by saying that the current weakness of both Hezbollah and Iran has provided an “unprecedented opportunity” to shape a new Lebanon.
“Lebanon is at a crossroads,” he said.
He also talked about the need for reforms.
“More than ever, it is absolutely vital that Lebanon delivers on long-promised economic and structural reforms,” Lawler said. “Delivering on economic and structural reforms cannot just be an option. These are vital necessary conditions to set Lebanon on the right path.”
The upcoming legislative elections later this year provide an opportunity to shrink Hezbollah’s political clout.
“A more developed U.S. policy approach should proactively encourage continued reform, articulate the conditions under which it would provide non-security assistance to the long-suffering Lebanese people across different communities and engage other governments inclined to meddle in Lebanon’s messy politics ahead of the upcoming parliamentary election,” Stroul testified.
“It is also important to channel complementary efforts by regional leaders, Europeans and others into a comprehensive strategy that lends additional credibility to the current government,” she said. “In short, more investment and attention from Washington are needed in order to meet the opportunity of the moment.”
But the focus also remains on disarming Hezbollah, whose attacks on Israel in support of Hamas during the war led to widespread destruction in Lebanon.
The Lebanese armed forces have moved to rid the terrorist group of its weapons, but they have done so hesitantly, panelists said. Those are the troops being killed by the terrorists as they move to implement the ceasefire agreement with Israel.
Schenker said Lebanon had plenty of troops to do the job, but not the will. For example, Hezbollah still operates south of the Litani River despite the presence of Lebanese troops in the area, he said.
“This is not a matter of capacity,” he told the House panel. “They have weapons. They have individuals. What they’re lacking is, to a large degree, the political will.”
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has retreated into what Ghaddar called “survival mode,” which she described as “avoiding retaliation against Israeli strikes, for now, while focusing on the buildup of its financial and political infrastructure, hoping the Iranian regime survives and resumes its financial and military support.”
Washington must demand a plan with deadlines, conditioning support for Lebanon on making progress, she said.
“The message should be the United States has expectations,” Stroul said. “Continued assistance is not assured without performance.”
