{"id":221066,"date":"2026-07-24T12:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/221066\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T12:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T12:22:09","slug":"we-paid-3b-for-lebanons-army-to-make-excuses-for-hezbollah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/221066\/","title":{"rendered":"We paid $3B for Lebanon\u2019s army to make excuses for Hezbollah"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, the president of Lebanon<\/a> met at the White House with President Donald Trump<\/a> to discuss the June security framework intended to systematically address Hezbollah\u2019s military threat to Israel and ultimately demilitarize the group. It all depends on the willingness of the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Armed Forces to act. Having funded the LAF for decades, Congress<\/a> should leverage its assistance to incentivize rapid, verifiable implementation while maintaining a credible threat of punitive measures against Lebanese officials or entities obstructing Hezbollah\u2019s disarmament.<\/p>\n

The Israel<\/a>-Lebanon framework agreement\u2019s center of gravity is its \u201cpilot zone\u201d model. These zones consist of parcels of Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory that, under the agreement, will be transferred to LAF control. Within each zone, Lebanon must dismantle Hezbollah\u2019s<\/a> weapons and infrastructure, take legal action against armed personnel engaged in unauthorized activity, permit credible third-party verification, and deploy \u201chighly qualified\u201d LAF units to prevent Hezbollah\u2019s resurgence.<\/p>\n

These responsibilities are not new. LAF, assisted by the United Nations<\/a> Interim Force in Lebanon in an auxiliary role, should have been performing them for decades pursuant to Lebanon\u2019s existing obligations under international law, U.N. Security Council Resolutions, and bilateral agreements with Israel. Beirut has instead avoided confronting Hezbollah, citing the threat to domestic stability and civil war. Meanwhile, Washington has provided the LAF with more than $3 billion \u2014 currently averaging approximately $285 million annually \u2014 without producing meaningful progress toward Hezbollah\u2019s disarmament.<\/p>\n

The June 26 framework seeks to break this pattern by \u201cstrictly conditioning\u201d continued U.S. assistance to Lebanon \u201con verifiable milestones, full transparency, demonstrated results, and ongoing oversight.\u201d Yet Beirut is already signaling that it may retreat from its commitments under the deal.<\/p>\n

The LAF has repeatedly rejected confrontation with Hezbollah \u2014 including after the Lebanese government proscribed the group\u2019s military activity on March 2 and ordered the army to proceed with disarmament \u2014 citing domestic stability and unity. Beirut is now demanding an Israeli withdrawal before Lebanon even discusses its corresponding obligations, thus reversing the framework\u2019s agreed-upon sequencing. Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and President Joseph Aoun, have also sought to narrow the agreement\u2019s binding significance, describing it as a negotiating<\/a> guide rather than an agreement or treaty. They have also reframed its terms and minimized Lebanon\u2019s disarmament commitments. Salam and Aoun have cast disarmament as a process to be achieved through \u201cdomestic dialogue\u201d with an intransigent Hezbollah rather than coercion.<\/p>\n

Congress has previously considered sharply curtailing or eliminating LAF assistance. Congress has also restricted LAF assistance to counter-Hezbollah purposes and directed the Pentagon to establish performance benchmarks and identify options for suspending aid if the LAF proves unwilling to disarm the group. Under the June 26 framework, Lebanon has now explicitly accepted that continued assistance will depend on measurable performance.<\/p>\n

Congress should translate that principle into the structure of future assistance. Rather than continuing to allocate security aid broadly between the LAF and Internal Security Forces, it should direct funding to the LAF units implementing the pilot zones. That assistance could support operations against Hezbollah weapons caches, the demolition of tunnels and other military infrastructure, and the sustained deployment of Lebanese forces in cleared territory.<\/p>\n

Funding should be released gradually as the LAF verifiably meets defined benchmarks. Given Israeli claims that the LAF has coordinated with Hezbollah to present vacated sites as evidence of disarmament \u2014 strengthened by Lebanon\u2019s historical evasiveness regarding confronting the group \u2014 the United States should verify compliance in real time, rather than relying on LAF reports after the fact.<\/p>\n

Congress should treat any Lebanese failure or unreasonable delay as grounds for withholding funding and reassessing continued support. Congress can also push for sanctions against military or government officials under existing corruption and counterterrorism authorities.<\/p>\n

OPINION: THE REAL COST OF SAYING \u2018NO\u2019 TO HEZBOLLAH IN LEBANON<\/a><\/p>\n

Such proactively punitive measures would complement the executive branch\u2019s demonstrated willingness to sanction Lebanese officials for impeding Hezbollah\u2019s disarmament and, by extension, obstructing the U.S.-sponsored peace process that the June 26 agreement is intended to advance.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah will continue resisting implementation and disarmament, while its political allies seek to delay or dilute Lebanese action. Conditional assistance cannot alter Lebanon\u2019s internal dynamics or eliminate those obstacles. But Lebanon needs U.S. assistance to have an impact on Beirut\u2019s incentives. Conditioning aid can ensure that American taxpayers support demonstrable progress rather than further open-ended Lebanese promises of eventual action against Hezbollah that never materialize. The LAF should now be judged \u2014 and funded \u2014 according to whether it performs the mission assigned to it under the framework.<\/p>\n

Tyler Stapleton serves as senior director of government relations at FDD Action. <\/p>\n

David Daoud is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who focuses on Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon affairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week, the president of Lebanon met at the White House with President Donald Trump to discuss the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[32],"tags":[467,989,16210,100,37,93,179,545,36],"class_list":["post-221066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lebanon","tag-congress","tag-diplomacy","tag-foreign-aid","tag-hezbollah","tag-israel","tag-lebanon","tag-military","tag-terrorism","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116974934031423275","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}