US envoy Thomas Barrack said Monday he was very pleased by the Lebanese authorities’ response to a request to disarm terror group Hezbollah, which was heavily weakened in a recent war with Israel.

“I’m unbelievably satisfied with the response,” Barrack, Washington’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, told a press conference after meeting President Joseph Aoun.

“It’s thoughtful, it’s considered. We’re creating a go-forward plan. To create that, we need dialogue. What the government gave us was something spectacular in a very short period of time,” he said.

Lebanese leaders who took office in the aftermath of the two-month war between Israel and Hezbollah last year have vowed a state monopoly on bearing arms, while demanding Israel comply with a November ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said Sunday his group would not surrender or lay down its weapons in response to Israeli threats, despite pressure on the Lebanese terror group to disarm.

“Hezbollah is a political party. It also has a militant aspect to it. Hezbollah needs to see that there’s a future for them, that that road is not harnessed just solely against them, and that there’s an intersection of peace and prosperity for them also,” Barrack said.

He warned that “the rest of the region is moving at Mach speed, and you will be left behind,” noting that “dialogue has started between Syria and Israel, just as the dialogue needs to be reinvented by Lebanon.”

Israel has regularly carried out drone strikes in Lebanon that it says are aimed at operatives belonging to Iran-backed Hezbollah, despite the ceasefire, which followed over a year of conflict, and two months of open war, sparked by daily Hezbollah rocket, missile and drone attacks on northern Israel starting on October 8, 2023.

It has also kept troops deployed at five border points inside Lebanon it deemed strategic.

Disarmament would end Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah members and unlock funds to rebuild parts of Lebanon destroyed by Israeli forces last year, sources with knowledge of Barrack’s plan told Reuters. It would also include Israel pulling out of Lebanon, according to the Associated Press.

Lebanese authorities say they have been dismantling Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in the south, near the Israeli border.

Israel says it reserves the right under the ceasefire agreement to act against imminent threats by Hezbollah, and accuses the terror group of ceasefire violations, which it denies.