Hezbollah ready to discuss weapons if Israel withdraws, says senior official

As calls for Lebanon’s Hezbollah to disarm gain momentum, a senior Hezbollah official has told Reuters that the movement is ready to hold talks with the Lebanese president about its weapons if Israel withdraws from south Lebanon and stops its air strikes.

The prospect of talks aimed at securing Hezbollah’s disarmament — unimaginable when it was at the peak of its power just two years ago — underlines the dramatic shifts in the Middle East power balance since Israel pummelled the Iran-backed group in a devastating conflict triggered by the Gaza war.

US-backed Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, who vowed when he took office in January to establish a state monopoly on the control of arms, intends to open talks with Hezbollah over its arsenal soon, said three Lebanese political sources.

Hezbollah emerged severely weakened from the 2024 conflict with Israel when its top leaders and thousands of its fighters were killed and much of its rocket arsenal was destroyed. The blow was compounded when its ally Bashar Al-Assad was toppled from power in Syria, cutting its supply lines from Iran.

The senior Hezbollah official said that the group was ready to discuss its arms in the context of a national defence strategy, but this hinged on Israel pulling out its troops from five hilltop locations in south Lebanon. “Hezbollah is ready to discuss the matter of its arms if Israel withdraws from the five points, and halts its aggression against Lebanese,” he told Reuters.

Hezbollah’s position on potential discussions about its arms has not been previously reported. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to political sensitivities.

Hezbollah’s media office did not immediately respond to a request from the agency for comment. The presidency declined to comment.

Israel, which sent ground troops into south Lebanon during the war, has largely withdrawn but decided in February not to leave the five hilltop positions. It said that it intended eventually to hand them over to Lebanese troops once it was sure that the security situation allowed such a move.

Despite a ceasefire since November, Israeli air strikes have kept pressure on the movement while Washington has demanded Hezbollah disarm and is preparing for nuclear talks with Hezbollah’s Iranian backers. Hezbollah has been the most powerful of the paramilitary groups that Iran has backed across the region.

READ: Israeli air strike kills 3, injures 7 in southern Beirut

Reuters reported on Monday that several Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq are prepared to disarm for the first time to avert the threat of an escalating conflict with the Trump administration in Washington. Hezbollah has long rejected calls from its critics in Lebanon to disarm, describing its weapons as vital to defending the country from Israel. Deep differences over its arsenal spilled into a short civil war in 2008.

The group’s critics say that it has dragged Lebanon unilaterally into conflicts and the presence of its large arsenal outside of government control has undermined the state.

A US-brokered ceasefire with Israel requires the Lebanese army to dismantle all unauthorised military facilities and confiscate all arms, starting in areas south of the Litani River, which flows into the Mediterranean some 20 km (12 miles) north of the Israeli border. Two sources familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking said that it is weighing-up the handing over to the army of its most potent weapons north of the Litani, including drones and anti-tank missiles.

Aoun has said that Hezbollah’s weaponry must be addressed through dialogue, because any attempts to disarm the group by force would prompt conflict, said the sources.

Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, the head of Lebanon’s Maronite Church, said last week that it was time for all weapons to be in state hands, but this would need time and diplomacy because “Lebanon cannot bear a new war.”

Communication channels with relevant stakeholders are being opened to “begin studying the transfer of weapons” to state control, after the army and security services had extended state authority across Lebanon, explained a Lebanese official, saying that this was a move to implement Aoun’s policy. The issue was also being discussed with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, an important Hezbollah ally, who plays a key role in narrowing differences, she added.

US envoy Morgan Ortagus, who visited Beirut at the weekend, repeated Washington’s position that Hezbollah and other armed groups should be disarmed as soon as possible and that the Lebanese army was expected to do the job. “It’s clear that Hezbollah has to be disarmed and it’s clear that Israel is not going to accept terrorists shooting at them, into their country, and that’s a position we understand,” said Ortagus in a 6 April interview with Lebanon’s LBCI television.

Several Lebanese government ministers want a disarmament timetable, said Kamal Shehadi, a minister affiliated with the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese Forces party. Shehadi told Reuters that disarmament should take no more than six months, citing post-civil war militia disarmament as a precedent.

A timetable — which presumably would impose deadlines on the process — is, he said, “the only way to protect our fellow citizens from the recurring attacks that are costing lives, costing the economy and causing destruction.”

Shehadi pointed out that he and other ministers hoped that the full Lebanese cabinet would endorse the idea and task the minister of defence with preparing the timetable. “We’re going to keep asking for it.”

The most recent conflict began when Hezbollah opened fire at Israeli-occupied positions in Lebanese territory, in solidarity with the Palestinians at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said on 29 March that the movement no longer has an armed presence south of the Litani, and had stuck to the ceasefire deal while Israel breached it “every day”. Israel has accused Hezbollah of maintaining military infrastructure in the south.

The movement has put the onus on the Lebanese state to get Israel to withdraw and stop its attacks. Qassem said that there was still time for diplomatic solutions, but he warned that the “resistance is present and ready” and indicated that it could resort “to other options” if Israel doesn’t adhere to the deal.

READ: Lebanon: Civilian killed in Israeli drone strike despite ceasefire