U.S., Israel Push to Destroy Lebanese Deterrence

Date: 07 April 2025 - 21:38

News ID: ۱۳۸۲۳۴

BEIRUT (Dispatches) -- The Israeli war on Lebanon is far from over. Southern Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley, and Beirut’s southern suburbs remain open territory for Tel Aviv’s assassination operations targeting Hezbollah cadres. Barely a day goes by without an Israeli drone carrying out a targeted killing or detonation.
Israeli drones rarely leave the skies over the south or the Beqaa – whether engaged in intelligence gathering or circling for a kill. Alongside this, western diplomats warn the Lebanese government that Israel is preparing for another round of violence to pressure Hezbollah into disarmament – unless a specific timetable is set for handing its weapons to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).
U.S. envoy to the region, Morgan Ortagus, visited Lebanon and held talks with several officials over the weekend, including the country’s president, prime minister, and parliament speaker.
Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that Ortagus’s visit aims to convey a threat – that Hezbollah must be disarmed, otherwise Israel will launch a new military operation against the country, which has received a U.S. green light.
During an interview with the LBCI news outlet on Sunday, Ortagus said that the U.S. “always brings up disarming Hezbollah” with the Lebanese government.
As Tel Aviv’s key supporter on the global stage, Washington calculates that reigniting war will force Hezbollah’s support base to turn against it, pushing for disarmament once its weapons are seen as ineffective in deterring Israeli aggression.
This narrative is promoted through media outlets and social media influencers seeking to normalize this outcome. Even some Lebanese politicians have begun echoing these talking points in interviews.
In contrast, a counter-reading among security officials suggests the occupation entity stands to gain little more than what it already has in the war. It can assassinate Hezbollah personnel at will, without prompting retaliation on settlements, given Hezbollah’s declared commitment to the ceasefire and its alignment with the Lebanese state.
Why, then, would Israel risk disrupting the truce and endangering settlers – especially when its stated goal of Hezbollah’s disarmament is far from guaranteed and the cost remains unknown?
Two scenarios are being floated for the handover of arms. The first sees Hezbollah voluntarily relinquishing its weapons – something party officials call impossible. In fact, Hezbollah’s base has become even more entrenched in its support for the resistance’s weapons, particularly after the massacres they saw in Syria’s Alawite coastal villages.
There, extremist factions tied to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the new Syrian intelligence forces slaughtered thousands of civilians based solely on their sectarian identity. Many now see existential threats emanating both from Israel and the extremist takfiri government in Syria.
The second scenario hinges on adopting a national defense strategy under Lebanese army leadership. This is a concept Lebanese President Joseph Aoun often brings up, with talk of Hezbollah transferring its arsenal to the army and integrating its fighters into the military institution to form a unified national defense force.
Yet here, a critical fact is omitted: the Lebanese army consistently destroys all missiles it seizes from Hezbollah positions south of the Litani River – particularly Almas and Kornet systems. Reports say international observers attend and sometimes film these destruction processes.
According to these reports, the army follows explicit U.S. directives in destroying these capabilities. The aim is clear: keep Lebanon’s army weak and incapable of forming any real deterrent against its aggressive southern neighbor.
Washington has no intention of allowing Hezbollah’s military assets to be transferred to the national army. Lebanon’s compliance with this plan spells the death of any genuine defense

strategy – and the country’s new U.S.-backed president, fresh from his post as commander of the LAF, well knows this.
U.S. dictates go further than just weapons destruction. Beirut also refuses to condemn Israel’s repeated breaches of the ceasefire. Since the truce was signed on November 27, 2024, Israel has racked up over a thousand violations and killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians and soldiers.
Diplomacy has failed to halt these aggressions or compel Tel Aviv to withdraw from five occupied sites inside Lebanese territory, nor has Israel complied with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s request to halt the use of warplanes and drones over Lebanon.
In response to these thousand-plus violations, only three incidents of rocket or missile fire have been recorded from Lebanese territory into Israel – yet Tel Aviv’s aggression has been ferocious.
Following the latest rocket fire, Israel bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is keen to impose a clear, new military equation on the northern neighbor: any rocket launched toward Israel will carry an exorbitant cost for Lebanon. Tel Aviv is using disproportionate violence to deter further attacks.
The U.S., meanwhile, has pinned responsibility on Lebanon for preventing rocket launches from its territory. In response, Lebanese security services carried out a series of arrests. Ten suspects were detained in total – seven by army intelligence (three Lebanese, two Syrians, and two Palestinians) and three by General Security (two Lebanese and one Syrian).
However, none of the 10 have any proven connection to the rocket launches – they were arrested solely for being near the launch sites, according to technical evidence. In other words, the detainees are all likely innocent of the so-called “crime” of rocket fire.
With Lebanese agencies unable to apprehend any of the actual perpetrators, two scenarios remain. One is that Israel, through its local collaborators, is staging these rocket attacks to create a pretext for military escalation – especially given its near-total aerial control over the south, which makes undetected launches virtually impossible.
Proponents of this theory argue that Tel Aviv sees an opportunity – perhaps its last – to eliminate Hezbollah once and for all, buoyed by the international climate’s indifference to mass violence, as seen in Gaza. The severing of Hezbollah’s supply lines after the fall of former president Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria only reinforces this belief.
The second scenario is that Hezbollah or a Palestinian faction is indeed behind the launches. Some even suggest elements acting without organizational approval. Given the known launch zones, only three actors are considered possible: Israel, Hezbollah, or a third group operating with Hezbollah’s awareness.
If Israel’s complicity is ruled out, it means the southern front is unlikely to quiet down, regardless of how much violence Tel Aviv uses as deterrence. Any future war, no matter how destructive to Hezbollah’s arsenal, will not prevent southern Lebanon from becoming an open arena for all factions, organizations, and lone actors.
After all, despite the near-total destruction of Gaza following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, Israel has failed to stop rocket fire from Palestinians continuing to resist the carnage. This very dynamic threatens the northern front, leaving Israeli settlers vulnerable and placing massive pressure on the Zionist regime – now in its third year of a war, with no tangible victory in sight.
Tel Aviv has neither eliminated the threat nor secured its settlers close to the border areas – and it knows it cannot stop the rockets. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s patience with Israeli violations is wearing thin. The resistance is steadily rebuilding its military capacity.
When it is ready – once diplomacy is dead, and the Lebanese resistance’s legitimacy is renewed by continued Israeli occupation and daily atrocities – Hezbollah will not hesitate to respond. That will happen once the U.S.-backed Lebanese government and army show they have zero ability to counter aggression – ironically, an outcome created entirely by the U.S.-backed Israeli attacks on Lebanon.