Hezbollah faces a historical dilemma it cannot overcome. Armed organizations that built their identity on the ruins of the authority of the state constantly need to identify a foreign adversary to maintain domestic legitimacy. The weaknesses and vacuums of states allow such groups to fill the gap, eventually leaving little left of the state after its erosion, ultimately leading to fragmentation once the organization reaches the point of obliterating civil peace and the very concept of nationhood.
Hezbollah emerged and developed amid Israeli occupation, feeding off of its aggression and using it as ideological fodder for its slogans and mobilization. This equation has limits, however. Its base of support eventually grows weary, especially when it suffers the consequences of a war it had never been consulted about.
The party’s dilemma is not a question of its declining popularity, doubts over legitimacy, or even the defeats it has suffered, including the assassination of key leaders and the penetration of its cells and networks. Rather, its main challenge is improving its image in the eyes of fellow Lebanese citizens and its own social base, whose suffering and sacrifice are unlike anything it has experienced since the party’s founding.
There is a structural contradiction that cannot be ignored. Hezbollah MPs stress that Lebanon’s democracy is consensual and that major decisions about the country’s future cannot be made by simple majority, while the party had unilaterally dragged Lebanon into a war without consulting anyone. It clings to the rhetoric of consensus when it seeks to obstruct, but abandons this commitment entirely when it seeks to impose its will in matters of war, peace, and negotiation. The depth of this contradiction is underscored by repeated public statements by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, who has openly said that Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into war without consulting anyone.
Lebanon is undergoing its worst economic crisis. Its collapse is peaking, though its roots predate the war by several years. Moreover, the displacement of more than a million Lebanese - most of them sympathizers of the party - within weeks cannot be justified. They are paying the price for a war that they had had no say in. Hundreds of thousands remain unable to return to their villages, while Israel occupies more than five percent of the country in the south. Now, doubt is beginning to grow among the party’s supporters, prompting them to embrace the logic of the state.
The party is seeking to deflect these doubts by pursuing a tried and tested tactic: harnessing sectarian loyalties to produce alternative legitimacy. It invests in security and economic crises, leveraging them to apply pressure, fuel divisions, and effectively turn its supporters into hostages of the institutional and service networks it has built. Without building national resistance that transcends sectarian calculations, however. Lebanon’s real dilemma remains a domestic question around the state’s capacity to rally the people around it, develop a new public discourse, and restore national cohesion, regardless of the scale of external support.
The logic of statehood seemed like a lifeline when the Lebanese government boldly banned the party’s military activities and when President Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam pursued direct talks with Israel, taking a step that would have been unimaginable just months ago. The party is opposed to this effort, but it cannot stand in their way, which is perhaps the clearest indicator of just how much things have changed...
Still, the party retains the capacity for intimidation. Some of its members compare President Aoun to Anwar Sadat, making an insinuation that needs no explanation. These kinds of threats are themselves a reflection of the depth of its crisis: attempts at intimidation are often a sign that persuasion seems impossible. The sweeping conditions it has set for its disarmament, such as full liberation of territory, comprehensive reconstruction, and an agreed national defense strategy, seem more like a defensive wall than a viable program.
Lebanon is a model of what happens to a country where an ideological project tied to Tehran is pursued. The same project was exported to Iraq, Yemen, and Syria before being abandoned. In every one of these cases, the militias have the same modus operandi: undermining the state and hijacking its will.
Today, it falls to moderate states, foremost among them Saudi Arabia, to encourage approaches that defuse the risk of implosion threatening what remains of Lebanon. This includes applying pressure on Israel to prevent it from being used as a perpetual justification and source of legitimacy for the party after every war it loses and claims to have won.
Hezbollah today faces a form of resistance that it does not have the tools to confront: growing fatigue among its supporters before its opponents. In this battle, missiles, speeches, and foreign enemies are of no use.
