Leading Hezbollah officials decided to escalate their rhetoric against the Lebanese government, threatening to take new political approaches after the war, even as its fighters battle Israeli troops on the ground.
The Iran-backed party has decided to effectively open a new battle in Lebanon, this time against the government and the political authority.
Mahmoud Qamati, deputy head of Hezbollah's political council, said last week: “A confrontation with the political authority is inevitable after the war.”
“Hezbollah is capable of turning the country and government upside down. The party’s patience has limits, and the traitors will pay for their betrayal,” he declared.
The government has slammed Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon to a new war with Israel and banned the group’s military operations. It has also expressed readiness for Lebanon to engage with negotiations with Israel to end the war.
Hezbollah political council member Wafiq Safa echoed Qamati’s remarks, saying the party will force the government to retract its decision to ban its military operations, “regardless of the way it will do so.”
At the moment, the party will not topple the government in the streets, but it has a “new agenda” that it will implement after the war, including street action, he said.
Hezbollah opponents dismissed the threats, saying the party was resorting to such rhetoric to rally its supporters after witnessing their displacement from the war, as well as the destruction of their homes and the mounting death toll.
Change MP Mark Daou told Asharq Al-Awsat: “Hezbollah is in the heart of the battle. It will try to escalate its positions to rally its supporters given their humanitarian plight and the party’s own failure in offering the displaced any real assistance.”
The Hezbollah leadership instructed its officials to “stir debates that are fodder for the media that would portray the party as coming under attack and so as the garner the public’s support,” he explained.
“Hezbollah is suffering from successive setbacks. The decisions taken by the government since 2024 until now are mounting against it,” he remarked.
“The party’s weapons are no longer legal and its allies have distanced themselves from it,” he added. It has also lost its ally, the Syrian regime, and its main backer Iran is under attack by the US and Israel.
“Hezbollah therefore has to protect itself by resorting to stoking sectarian tensions inside Lebanon,” Daou noted.
As for the post-war phase, that is up to the state to manage, such as reconstruction, protecting the people and addressing the affairs of the displaced, said the MP.
“The state will decide what will happen after the war. The Lebanese army also has a major responsibility to secure the situation in Lebanon and stop Hezbollah’s military operations so that the state can have control over decisions of war and peace,” he remarked.
Jad Al-Akhaoui, a Shiite opponent to Hezbollah and head of the Lebanese Democratic Coalition, said the party’s escalating rhetoric against the government “reflects changes in its political and military environment.”
“The blows it has suffered on various levels forced it to stoke tensions to compensate for its relative losses on the ground,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.
He noted that there have been rising calls within the Shiite community, which is the party’s main support base, demanding that the state impose monopoly over arms and that Hezbollah be held responsible for dragging Lebanon to war.
Hezbollah has reacted to these calls by adopting a sharper rhetoric in an attempt to intimidate its internal opponents and prevent a new political movement that works against it from emerging, he explained.
On Safa’s statements, Al-Akhaoui said Hezbollah is sensing that there will be official or international efforts to curb the party’s activities after the war.
“So, it is acting preemptively by drawing red lines as if to say that any decision about his weapons will be confronted, perhaps through means that go beyond traditional politics,” he remarked.
Al-Akhaoui ruled out that Hezbollah would succeed in having full control over post-war Lebanon as it did before the conflict. “It will still hold major sway and have the ability to obstruct or impose conditions, but not have total control,” he added.
