Diplomatic efforts in Lebanon must aspire for a long-term change

A month has passed since Israel abandoned its containment policy towards Hezbollah's attacks over the past year and went on the offense against the organization. By now, Israel has decapitated most of Hezbollah's leadership and caused significant damage to the organization's advanced and long-range weapons capabilities. The limited incursion into Lebanon's territory along the international border has exposed the extent of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)'s failure over the years, as it has been this force's mission to prevent Hezbollah from having any military presence in the area. 

The United States and France are already engaged in diplomatic efforts to devise a political solution that could end the war. Unfortunately, it appears that these diplomatic efforts are focused on tactical half measures, dealing only with Hezbollah's operations in southern Lebanon but ignoring the broader circumstances that have enabled the organization to transform Lebanon's soil into an Iranian forward operating base used to promote Tehran's regional military ambitions to eradicate Israel. 

Over the past three decades, every conflict in Lebanon ended with a political agreement that only served the interests of Iran and Hezbollah in a way that set the ground for the next crisis. The 1989 Taif agreement, which formally ended 15 years of civil war, led to the disarmament of all militias—except Hezbollah. 

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 from 2006, which ended the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah, was never enforced, as Hezbollah's overwhelming influence on the Lebanese government prevented any chance of the state institutions fulfilling their international obligations under the resolution. The outcome of this tragic failure is what caused the current war.

The Doha Agreement, which was signed in 2008 after Hezbollah carried out a de facto military coup against the Lebanese government, legitimized Hezbollah's independent military force and granted the organization a veto over any future state decision. 

The common denominator in all these agreements is their attempt to create a facade of quiet and stability without tackling the core issue: Lebanon's state institutions and the fundamental pillars of its sovereignty are constantly usurped by Hezbollah. No functioning state can exist while a terror organization, heavily sponsored by a foreign country, is controlling its government. 

With no monopoly over the use of force, no control over its borders, and no capacity to fulfill its essential civilian functions, Lebanon is practically a failed state. The existence of Hezbollah as a hybrid state/non-state actor in Lebanon, which receives substantial external support in the form of arms and funds from Iran, is a critical element of the dysfunctionality of the Lebanese state institutions. 

It should come as no surprise that Yemen, Iraq, and Syria – the other three main theaters of Iranian intervention – are also ranked highly on the list of the world’s failed states. A low-functioning state is crucial for the ability of the Iranian proxies to gain political influence and maintain their independent military capabilities. 

In Lebanon, Hezbollah and its accomplices and political allies have actively prevented for years any change or reform of the state institutions, as the country's weak and limited capabilities are crucial for the organization's ability to function as a "state within a state," or as some analysts claim, "a state over a state." 

The organization's Iranian support is the primary source of Hezbollah's power in Lebanon. Money and arms supplied by Iran have enabled Hezbollah over the years to transform from a radical terror group in the early 1980s into a national political party overseeing a vast social and military infrastructure. 

Those capabilities, together with the unrestrained use of political violence against its political rivals through assassinations and intimidation campaigns, are the elements that have brought Hezbollah to its current position as the behind-the-scenes ruler of Lebanon. 

Under this political reality in Lebanon, any long-term political agreement must confront the conditions that led to the current war and ensure the means of preventing the re-establishment of those conditions in the future. This means preventing direct and unsupervised Iranian transfer of funds, goods, and arms into the country. 

The fact is that an internationally-recognized legitimate legal framework for such a scenario is already in place. U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1680 set the ground for Lebanon's efforts to regain its sovereignty by disarming all armed militias in the country and cementing the country's control over its border with Syria, which is the main gateway for Tehran's illegal arms and money smuggling to Hezbollah. 

The fact that the United States solely focuses on U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 as the infrastructure for a future political agreement while ignoring the critical need to enforce both resolutions 1559 and 1680 to achieve long-term stability in Lebanon is a significant mistake that reflects short-sighted strategic planning. 

This is especially true as more than one political party in Lebanon has raised the need to implement U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1680 as a critical condition for reforming the authority of weak state institutions and regaining Lebanon's sovereignty over its territory. 

The tendency of the international community is to approach the current crisis through the limited scope of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701. But it misses the structural causes of the current war, as it is not a local border dispute but one of the most critical front lines in the fight over the future of the Middle East. Iran's regional aspirations and its ability to threaten and destabilize other Arab countries are dependent on its ability to build and support its network of proxy non-state terror organizations. 

Using the current crisis in Lebanon to push forward the full implementation of internationally-recognized U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1680 will reshape Lebanon's future and send a clear message against Iran's lasting efforts to expand its influence in the region by supporting various terror groups. Anything short of that outcome will allow Tehran once again to breach Lebanon's sovereignty to rebuild Hezbollah, which will only set the ground for the next war.

Dror Doron is a senior advisor at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) focusing on Hezbollah and Lebanon. He spent nearly two decades as a senior analyst in the Office of Israel’s Prime Minister. Dror is on Twitter @DrorDoron