Lebanon must move faster to disarm Hezbollah, Rep. Darin LaHood said in an interview with MBN on Thursday, adding the United States will support the Lebanese army but cannot do its job for it.
“We can’t do everything for Lebanon,” said LaHood, an Illinois Republican who sits on the House Intelligence Committee and co-chairs the U.S.-Lebanon Friendship Caucus. “The Lebanese government has to be independent and take some of these actions on their own.”
MBN Editor-in-Chief Leila Bazzi interviewed LaHood a month after he visited Beirut, where he met President Joseph Aoun, Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri and Lebanese Army commander Gen. Rodolphe Haykal. The interview followed the conclusion of Oct. 20–22 talks at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa between the United States, Israel and Lebanon. The talks produced little, which LaHood attributes in part to Israel’s election season.
His message in Beirut was blunt: With Bashar al-Assad gone in Syria, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah dead and Iran “on their back foot,” he says, “the stars have aligned” for Lebanon to take control of its own territory.
“If not now, when?” he asked.
“You cannot have a third party, a militia within a country that is dictating the terms there,” he says. “It’s hard for people in the Congress or in the Trump administration to understand why the Lebanese government is not moving forward more proactively.”
Hezbollah, which the U.S. State Department has designated a foreign terrorist organization, is an Iran-backed Shiite Muslim political party and militant group in Lebanon. Known as a “state within a state,” Hezbollah maintains extensive political, social, and security infrastructure it uses to influence and, in some cases, control large swaths of Lebanese territory.
LaHood dismissed warnings that attempts to disarm Hezbollah could spark a civil war. That notion, he said, “isn’t backed up by the evidence.”
A recent poll reported by the Statistics Lebanon Institute showed 66.4% of Shiites supported placing Hezbollah’s weapons under the control of the Lebanese government. In addition, a broader poll of Lebanese society found that only 5.9% of respondents believed Hezbollah should have a greater role in Lebanon.
U.S. aid is “partially linked” to Lebanese action against the Iranian-backed group, Lahood added.
Congress will fund the Lebanese Armed Forces each year, he says, but Washington wants to see the army move into areas it has not controlled, such as the Dahiya, Beirut’s southern suburbs, one of Hezbollah’s strongholds.
“It’s perplexing for many of us to think that the LAF can’t go into the Dahiya,” he said. “That is simply not acceptable.”
LaHood also called on Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon once security arrangements protecting northern Israel are in place. “That should be the ultimate goal,” he said. “And I think it will be.”
As to who would verify Hezbollah’s disarmament, LaHood said the United States must serve as the “backstop,” a view he said he has shared with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the National Security Council. He is open to a small multinational force with European allies but said UNIFIL, the U.N. mission in the south, “was not successful” in stopping Hezbollah’s tunnels and weapons.
Turning to Syria, LaHood said arms flows through Syrian territory to Hezbollah have “stopped for the most part” under President Ahmed al-Sharaa, removing what he calls an excuse for Lebanese inaction. He credits Turkey with helping stabilize Syria and said Washington could mediate between Ankara and Israel.
The Iran war, about to enter its ninth month, could go “one or two directions” after the Nov. 3 U.S. midterm elections, LaHood said. While he said he preferred a negotiated settlement, he noted that a June memorandum of understanding collapsed and Iran “has never been compliant” with past commitments.
LaHood praised Aoun’s and his cabinet’s handling of the economy, but said IMF-mandated reforms are “moving too slowly.” He called for passage of the financial gap law, an independent judiciary, action against oligarchs and accountability for the 2020 Beirut port blast, which damaged large swaths of the city and killed more than 220 people and injured thousands more.
LaHood, whose great-grandparents emigrated from the northern village of Aitou and who counts some 8,000 Lebanese families in Peoria among his constituents, said he will keep pressing the relationship as long as he serves in Congress.
“I’m very proud of that heritage,” he says.
