*Event date: 2025-08-07*
Lebanon’s cabinet has approved the objectives of a U.S. proposal that would require Hezbollah’s weapons to be brought under state control by the end of the year, a move that has triggered fierce resistance from the Iran-backed group and its allies.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said after Thursday’s meeting that ministers had endorsed the “objectives” of a U.S. plan for ensuring that weapons are held only by the state. According to Al Jazeera, the information minister later said the cabinet had endorsed those objectives, including ending Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, but had not discussed specific timelines. That distinction matters because the government has taken a political step without yet signing onto the operational details.
The decision is unprecedented in the decades since Lebanon’s civil war. Hezbollah has long kept its own arsenal alongside the Lebanese state, but the cabinet’s move would set a timetable for dismantling that exception. The proposal comes after pressure from U.S. envoy Tom Barrack, who presented a phased plan tied to a Lebanese army deployment and to Israeli withdrawal from positions it still holds in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah rejected the plan immediately. Its political council deputy chief Mahmoud Komati called the government’s move a humiliation and said it amounted to surrender to Israel and the United States. The group’s parliamentary bloc accused the government of slipping into American demands. Hezbollah itself said it would treat the decision “as if it did not exist,” describing it as a grave sin.
The cabinet meeting also exposed political friction inside the government. Hezbollah ministers and Shia allies withdrew in protest while the proposal was under discussion, according to Lebanese political sources cited by Reuters in the Al Jazeera report. That walkout signals the scale of the internal dispute over whether the state can, or should, move against the group now.
The U.S. and Israel are linked to the plan in different ways. Washington has said it welcomes the Lebanese decision to put all weapons under state control. Israel, meanwhile, is expected under the truce to withdraw fully from Lebanon, but it has continued to strike targets in the country and still holds five positions in the south, according to the Reuters-cited cabinet agenda.
The ceasefire framework also spells out the two sides’ obligations: Hezbollah was to pull fighters north of the Litani River, while the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers would expand their presence in the south. The current dispute is over whether that sequence can still be enforced while Israel continues to attack and Hezbollah insists the government is rewarding pressure from abroad.
Iran, one of Hezbollah’s main backers, also weighed in. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the final decision rests with Hezbollah and that Tehran supports the group without interfering in its decisions. That leaves the group with room to resist and the Lebanese cabinet with little obvious leverage beyond political pressure.
What happens next may decide whether the decision becomes a real disarmament process or remains a symbolic cabinet statement. For now, Lebanon has moved farther than it has in years toward confronting Hezbollah’s arsenal, but the country has not yet shown it can carry the policy through.
