Lebanon Bans Hezbollah's Military
In a stunning move, Lebanon's new Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has banned all military and security activities by Hezbollah. The decision is the most direct challenge to the Iran-backed group's power in years and is meant to prevent Lebanon from being dragged further into the spiraling conflict with Israel.
The decision comes after more than a year of devastating cross-border conflict that, according to the World Bank, inflicted at least $8.5 billion in damages and economic losses on Lebanon. The fighting, which began on October 8, 2023, has killed more than 3,800 people in Lebanon and displaced over a million. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, a former president of the International Court of Justice, took office in early 2025 after a two-year political deadlock. His appointment was seen as a setback for Hezbollah and its allies, who did not endorse him, and signaled a potential shift towards political reform. For decades, Hezbollah has operated as a "state within a state," considered the world's most powerful non-state actor. Its military wing is widely seen as stronger than the official Lebanese Armed Forces, with its leader boasting in 2021 of 100,000 trained fighters and an arsenal estimated to include over 150,000 rockets and missiles. The ban attempts to enforce long-ignored international mandates. United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1701, passed in 2004 and 2006 respectively, call for the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon and for the Lebanese state to have sole authority over its territory. This latest crisis was triggered when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader in a joint US-Israeli operation. That attack shattered a fragile ceasefire that had been in place since November 2024, following a major Israeli ground invasion of Southern Lebanon and the assassination of then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
