Why has Iran fought so fiercely for Hezbollah, even to the point of risking its agreement with the United States and making a ceasefire in Lebanon a precondition for the Switzerland talks? Is this insistence tied only to Lebanon's domestic situation, or does it also reflect Iran's broader regional role?
It is only natural that Iran would do everything in its power to preserve its principal ally, Hezbollah, which has gone beyond being merely an ally of Tehran to reveal itself as fundamentally Iranian.
There is, however, a more significant reason: Tehran's effort to reverse the outcomes of the war Israel waged in Lebanon following the "support war." Foremost among those outcomes was the reduction of Iran's influence in Lebanon through the elimination of Hezbollah's first- and second-tier leaders, most notably its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah; the weakening of its military and organizational capabilities; the decline of its political influence within Lebanon; and the mounting domestic pressure over its weapons and the role of the state, particularly after the emergence of a new authority in Syria and the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime.
That Israeli war enjoyed American backing, first demonstrated by former President Joe Biden's visit to Israel on October 18, 2023, an unprecedented act of political and security support by a sitting American president during a war involving Israel. At the same time, however, the Biden administration pursued a political track centered on establishing a demilitarized Palestinian state backed by security guarantees for Israel, as part of a broader vision to reshape the region and advance Arab-Israeli normalization, thereby reducing Iran's ability to exploit the Palestinian cause in its regional strategy. This American push for a lasting settlement formed part of a broader vision for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one that sought to move the region from an era dominated by non-state organizations, most of them Iranian proxies, to one in which the nation-state reclaims its role as the sole authority entitled to monopolize the legitimate use of force.
With Donald Trump's return to the White House, the momentum behind the establishment of a Palestinian state receded. The focus shifted from a direct political path toward a two-state solution to an approach centered on postwar arrangements in Gaza and the reshaping of the regional security environment, while the idea of a Palestinian state remained present in Arab and international initiatives.
But the American-Israeli management of the war against Iran after June 2025 eroded much of their military gains because of the absence of a clear American political vision and the loss of a defined objective. After a war that inflicted heavy losses on Tehran's leadership and its nuclear and military infrastructure, the memorandum of understanding effectively restored Iran as a party holding the card of global energy security and the world economy through its control of the Strait of Hormuz, while also recognizing it as a source of regional instability. Iran, despite its military losses, succeeded in preventing those losses from being translated into political defeat, securing a position of parity at the negotiating table in Switzerland.
In Lebanon, the greatest paradox lies in reconciling the important agreement signed last Friday between Lebanon and Israel with a memorandum that effectively returns the country to square one. It entrenched Iran's continuing influence over the Lebanese arena by treating Tehran as a key actor in maintaining security stability. It also halted Hezbollah's rapid decline, granting it valuable time to reposition itself and shift into a defensive phase aimed at restoring its political and institutional influence and preventing the consolidation of a new domestic equation based on the state's exclusive monopoly over arms.
As for Trump's proposal to enlist Syria in eliminating Hezbollah, it is inconsistent with Washington's stated objective of strengthening the Lebanese state and consolidating its monopoly over arms. It also presents a striking political paradox: negotiating with Iran while simultaneously seeking to eliminate its most prominent proxy in the region.
On the Palestinian front, the complete absence of Gaza and the Palestinian cause from the memorandum reveals that the issue which served as the direct spark for the regional transformations that followed is no longer part of the proposed settlement. Instead of the war restoring the Palestinian cause to the heart of the new regional order, priority shifted to regulating relations with Iran, while the future of the Palestinians was left outside the framework of the understanding itself.
The memorandum of understanding has also reinforced the fears of Washington's allies that it may have transformed Iran's military losses into political gains by cementing its role as a partner in regional security and re-legitimizing its influence and armed proxies across the region, particularly in Lebanon, dealing a severe blow to the very idea of the nation-state.
The upshot is that the problem with the memorandum lies less in its specific provisions than in the message it conveys. After years of talk about building a Middle East in which nation-states hold an exclusive monopoly over security and military decision-making, Iran has once again come to be treated as a partner in shaping the region's balance of power. Lebanon in particular, and the countries of the Iranian axis more broadly, once again find themselves caught between the project of the state and the logic of militias, while anxiety over the future of regional security continues to grow.
