Former Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt's call for dialogue with Hezbollah on bringing all weapons under state control has reignited a long-running debate in Lebanon over whether another round of talks can resolve an issue that has defied successive national dialogue initiatives.
The divide is familiar: Supporters see dialogue as a way to avert confrontation, while critics argue it merely buys Hezbollah time. But the stakes have shifted, with the debate moving beyond the decades-old question of a "defense strategy" to government decisions asserting the state's exclusive authority over weapons.
The dispute dates back to the March 2006 national dialogue convened by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, when Hezbollah's arsenal became part of discussions over a national defense strategy. The July war interrupted those talks.
The issue resurfaced after the May 2008 clashes, when Hezbollah turned its weapons against domestic opponents. The subsequent Doha Agreement paved the way for the election of a president and a national unity government in which the opposition secured 11 of 30 cabinet seats, giving it the power to block decisions requiring a two-thirds majority.
The agreement included a pledge not to use weapons for political gains but stopped short of securing Hezbollah's disarmament.
Talks resumed under then-President Michel Suleiman, culminating in the June 2012 Baabda Declaration, which called for keeping Lebanon out of regional conflicts but left the weapons dispute unresolved.
In 2014, Hezbollah and the Future Movement launched bilateral talks in Ain al-Tineh to defuse sectarian tensions. Disagreements over the Baabda Declaration persisted through a meeting in Baabda in 2020.
The issue took a new turn in August 2025, when the government tasked the army with drafting a plan to bring weapons under exclusive state control. In March 2026, it banned Hezbollah's military and security activities and demanded that the group surrender its weapons.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said on Oct. 6 that the group was ready to cooperate on bringing weapons under state control, provided the process followed the constitution and laws and was free of foreign dictates. He stressed that an Israeli withdrawal remained the priority.
Dialogue Entrenched the Imbalance of Power
Former lawmaker Fares Souaid argued that Lebanon's national dialogue initiatives had consistently worked in Hezbollah's favor, helping the group consolidate its arsenal and tighten its grip on political decision-making.
He said another round of domestic talks would be futile because the real decision-making power lay in Iran.
Any serious dialogue, he argued, should be with Tehran rather than Hezbollah as a Lebanese political actor.
Souaid told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Lebanese national dialogue that followed roughly 15 years of civil war and 150,000 deaths had produced constitutional changes and a new political and social compact embodied in the Taif Agreement.
Any subsequent dialogue, he said, should have focused on implementing Taif rather than undermining the foundations of Lebanon's postwar political system.
Souaid accused Hezbollah of exploiting regional and international power dynamics after May 7, 2008, when he said the group forcibly seized control of Lebanese political decision-making, to replace the Taif Agreement with the Doha Agreement.
While Taif rested on Muslim-Christian coexistence, he said, Doha entrenched the opposition's blocking third and veto power in the cabinet, allowing one political camp to obstruct government decisions.
He also criticized the national dialogue sessions held under then-President Michel Suleiman, saying they had become a vehicle for legitimizing an arrangement that contradicted both the constitution and Taif: allowing one Lebanese faction to retain its weapons under the banner of defending Lebanon against Israel.
Arab parties that had been expected to participate in those talks ultimately did not attend, he added.
Souaid dismissed subsequent initiatives, including the Baabda Declaration, as largely symbolic exercises that neither altered the balance of power nor restored sovereign decision-making to state institutions.
He offered a more specific explanation for the bilateral talks between Hezbollah and the Future Movement in Ain al-Tineh.
Their purpose, he said, was to shield Lebanon from escalating Sunni-Shi'ite tensions as sectarian divisions threatened to engulf the region.
The aim was to prevent that turmoil from spilling into Lebanon.
But Souaid argued that dialogue between Hezbollah and other Lebanese factions, including the Lebanese Forces, the Progressive Socialist Party, the Amal Movement and the Future Movement, had ultimately favored the armed group.
He maintained that any talks between the Lebanese state and Hezbollah today should, in reality, be conducted between Lebanon and Iran.
Repeating the domestic dialogue formula, he said, would be pointless because Hezbollah lacked the freedom to make its own decision on whether to negotiate.
That decision, he argued, rested with Tehran.
From 'Defense Strategy' to Executive Action
Political researcher and academic Hayat Hariri said the long-running debate over a national defense strategy had become an exercise in indecision, buying time and postponing decisive state action.
The fundamental mistake, she argued, was placing a question of national security in the hands of political party leaders and sectarian figures rather than the institutions responsible for defending the state.
"The Lebanese state and its institutions, not political parties, are responsible for formulating the defense strategy," Hariri told Asharq Al-Awsat.
She said that responsibility belonged to the constitutional authorities, the Defense Ministry and the army command.
Turning national security into a debate among political factions, she argued, had allowed those responsible to evade decisions and buy time.
Hariri said Hezbollah had never been troubled by discussions over its weapons. Far from resisting dialogue, the group had encouraged it, advancing proposals that made its arsenal a central pillar of any defense strategy and envisaged the state's military and security apparatus coordinating with Hezbollah on terms aligned with its interests.
The resulting documents, she argued, helped Hezbollah portray itself as open to cooperation with the state.
As long as opposition to its weapons remained verbal, dialogue posed little threat to the group.
Hariri said successive government policy statements had also provided Hezbollah with political cover for its arsenal under the banner of "resistance".
But she drew a distinction between those earlier debates and the decisions taken by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam's government.
The government, she said, had crossed a red line in its relationship with Hezbollah by moving from political discussion to executive decisions.
The decisions had yet to be implemented, she acknowledged, but their significance should not be confused with the state's ability to enforce them.
Hariri linked that shift to Hezbollah's increasingly fierce attacks on the government and accusations that its opponents were collaborating with Israel.
She said the group was seeking the reversal of the Aug. 5 and Aug. 7 decisions on exclusive state control over weapons, along with the ban on its military activities, as a precondition for renewed dialogue.
Accepting those demands, she warned, would send Lebanon back into lengthy discussions over a defense strategy without producing tangible results.
She also criticized proposals framed around "restricting", "freezing" or "containing" weapons unless they were backed by concrete steps.
For Hariri, the central dispute is not simply whether Hezbollah's arsenal can be incorporated into the state's defense structure, but who would control it.
She argued that Hezbollah wanted its weapons integrated into the state's system while retaining the authority to control them and decide when to use them, rather than surrendering exclusive military decision-making power to Lebanese state institutions.
