A top Iranian security official met with Lebanese leaders on Wednesday as pressure mounted for its most powerful regional ally, Hezbollah, to disarm.
Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s top security body, was the most senior Iranian official to visit Beirut since the Lebanese government last week endorsed a U.S.-backed road map to disarm Hezbollah by the end of the year. Hezbollah has rejected the plan, which followed weeks of shuttle diplomacy by Washington aimed at implementing a cease-fire deal signed last year with Israel that ended Lebanon’s deadliest conflict in decades.
Hezbollah’s arsenal has long underpinned both its self-declared role as Lebanon’s defender against Israel and its political prowess at home. But after emerging from the war severely weakened, the group’s future is now in question.
In recent months, Lebanon’s new government has faced mounting pressure from the United States and Gulf states to complete the group’s disarmament, a key step mandated by the cease-fire agreement reached in November. Neutralizing Hezbollah as a fighting force is seen as essential to unlocking billions in foreign aid needed to rebuild a country ravaged by war and economic crisis.
For Lebanon, it is delicate balancing act with the highest of stakes.
After months of trading cross-border fire with Hezbollah, Israel invaded last October and its forces still hold a handful of positions in Lebanon and carry out near daily strikes there. Lebanese officials and Western diplomats say that if the government delays in disarming Hezbollah, Israel could escalate its military campaign. Yet any move by Lebanon to dismantle the group’s arsenal without parallel concessions from Israel risks inflaming sectarian tensions and triggering civil unrest.
During the visit by Mr. Larijani on Wednesday, President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon said that no group in Lebanon was permitted to bear arms or depend on foreign backing — a thinly veiled reference to Iran’s longstanding support for Hezbollah.
“We reject any interference in our internal affairs,” Mr. Aoun said in a statement issued by his office after his meeting with Mr. Larijani.
For his part, Mr. Larijani cast his visit as an expression of solidarity with Lebanon and denied that Tehran was meddling in its affairs. Speaking at a news conference in Beirut, he instead accused the United States of “ordering” the Lebanese government to carry out what he called a foreign-imposed plan for Hezbollah’s disarmament, and defended the group’s arsenal as part of Lebanon’s “resistance” to Israel.
Hezbollah, formed in the 1980s with Iranian sponsorship, has long been the crown jewel in Tehran’s network of regional proxy groups. For decades, it has operated as both a militia and a political party with wide popular support. It has amassed an arsenal with Iran’s help that made it more powerful than Lebanon’s own military, enabling it to exert enormous influence over the tiny Mediterranean nation.
But that grip on power unraveled dramatically last year. Israel launched a sweeping military campaign against Hezbollah, killing many of its leaders, destroying much of its arsenal and leaving swaths of Lebanon in ruins. The conflict began in the wake of the Hamas-led attacks from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in support of its Palestinian ally, which is also backed by Tehran.
Days after the cease-fire in Lebanon, a lightning rebel offensive overthrew the Iran-aligned Assad regime in Syria, cutting the land corridor that had long allowed Hezbollah and Tehran to move fighters and weapons between them with ease. The collapse further isolated the Lebanese militant group, a strategic blow to Iran’s regional network.
Iran itself was jolted by Israel’s attacks in June against Iranian nuclear facilities — which the United States later joined in — and top Iranian military commanders.
Analysts said Mr. Larijani’s visit to Lebanon, following a stop in Iraq, was an effort by Tehran to signal that it still wields influence across the region. That show of support came as Hezbollah’s leaders, facing mounting pressure at home and abroad to disarm, have adopted an increasingly defiant tone in recent months.
Last week, the group dismissed the Lebanese government’s timetable for disarmament, insisting that any discussion of its weapons must be tied to Israel’s withdrawal from the remaining positions it holds along the Lebanese border and an end to Israel’s attacks inside Lebanon.
In a statement, Hezbollah said the decision was a result of U.S. “diktats,” adding that the group would “deal with it as if it does not exist.”
Dayana Iwaza contributed reporting.