New research highlights Lebanon’s distrust of its own government as a key barrier to Hezbollah disarmament, complicating US and Israeli pressure tactics.
A push to disarm Hezbollah is colliding with a harder political reality: many Lebanese people who may not back the Iran-backed militia still want it to keep its arms, largely because they believe the Lebanese state has forfeited the legitimacy needed to enforce disarmament.
The debate is now playing out against a backdrop of unusual diplomacy between Israel and Lebanon.. For the first time since 1993, the two countries are talking directly.. Yet the agenda in Washington is overshadowed by a reality that Hezbollah itself won’t share: any disarmament plan is fundamentally incomplete if the group remains armed and politically protected. a point that has become a fault line throughout the wider Middle East crisis.
Last September, the Lebanese government launched what it described as its most ambitious disarmament effort to date.. Officials moved quickly at first, seizing weapons and deploying Lebanese Armed Forces soldiers south of the Litani River.. But the initiative stalled as violence escalated across the border. including U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. Hezbollah’s retaliatory rocket barrage into northern Israel. and Israel’s air and ground campaign in Lebanon—an operation that the report says has killed more than 2. 500 people and displaced over a million since March.
Even after a tenuous cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel, disarmament against Hezbollah has largely ground to a halt.. In Washington and Jerusalem. the typical response to such an impasse is to escalate pressure—sanctions. conditional aid. and military steps intended to force Hezbollah into compliance.. The report argues that these approaches rest on a flawed assumption: they treat disarmament as something that can be imposed from outside while overlooking the domestic political support required for any durable outcome.
That logic matters because the research suggests that sustainable disarmament depends on whether ordinary Lebanese citizens see Hezbollah’s weapons as necessary.. If a critical mass believes the militia must remain armed. then negotiated or coercive disarmament is likely to be temporary. the report warns.
The findings are drawn from a December 2025 study completed as part of the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence. Policy. and Trends (XCEPT) research program at King’s College London.. Researchers surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 Lebanese citizens and conducted additional hourlong conversations with 300 participants.. The study reports that only 18% of respondents express political support for Hezbollah. consistent with the militia’s recent electoral results. while nearly half—45%—resist its disarmament.
One of the central puzzles posed by the study is how to reconcile that split: why do people who do not support Hezbollah politically still resist disarmament?. The report says it tested several widely discussed explanations for Hezbollah’s staying power. comparing how respondents who scored higher or lower on each factor differed in their attitudes toward Hezbollah’s disarmament. while accounting for demographic and regional differences.
The study’s results challenge assumptions that often shape policymaking conversations.. Sectarianism is presented as one of the most prominent explanations—an argument that Hezbollah’s embedding in Shiite communal life makes support a function of identity and social ties.. The report says this holds strongly for political loyalty: among respondents whose Shiite religious faith most shaped their decision-making. political support for Hezbollah is 30 percentage points higher than for the rest of the population.
But that same sectarian logic does not appear to explain opposition to disarmament.. The report says resistance to disarmament is only three points higher than the rest of the population among those where sectarian identity is most pronounced. suggesting that the motivations behind refusing to disarm are not simply rooted in religious affiliation.
A second common argument is that Hezbollah survives because it provides services that compensate for a dysfunctional Lebanese state.. Yet the study reports that respondents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. who might be expected to depend more directly on subsidies or assistance. were slightly less likely to support Hezbollah both politically and on disarmament.. That pattern held even when researchers separated respondents by sect, the report states.
Instead of a straightforward story of material dependence, the report describes Hezbollah’s support as cutting across population segments.. It also argues that simply substituting Hezbollah’s service infrastructure—however important as a broader policy goal—would not automatically move public opinion on the key question of weapons.
Security concerns are identified as a third major explanation.. Hezbollah has long portrayed itself as Lebanon’s credible deterrent against Israel. and the report says fighting in recent years has helped harden that perception.. A participant quoted in the study describes a sense that only Hezbollah and the Amal movement defend the south while the state appears absent.. In the survey. one in five respondents reported severe exposure to war and political violence since 2023. and more than half said they felt existentially threatened by Israel.
The study says security exposure does influence resistance to disarmament: those who felt more threatened and were more exposed were 17 percentage points more likely to want Hezbollah to keep its weapons. But the report says security is not the dominant driver.
By far, the strongest factor explaining opposition to disarmament is described as a moral grievance against the Lebanese government itself.. Respondents who said they lost trust in the state and felt a deep sense of injustice were 29 percentage points more likely to oppose disarmament. regardless of sect. socioeconomic status. or direct exposure to war.. In this framing. the most categorical opponents of disarmament are not the most loyal Hezbollah partisans; rather. they are those convinced the state has failed them.
The grievances the report points to are concrete and procedural.. The study describes a perceived lack of fairness, with leaders seen as allocating resources through political favoritism and sectarian alignment.. It also highlights a perceived absence of accountability and justice. including the example of the Beirut Port explosion. which the report says remains a defining wound after more than five years as investigators face systematic obstruction.
Corruption, in this telling, compounds the damage to legitimacy.. The report cites the banking system collapse, saying it wiped out ordinary people’s savings while elites shielded assets abroad.. Researchers link these cumulative grievances to what they describe as a profound collapse of trust: fewer than 1 in 4 respondents in the study said they felt some trust in the government.
That erosion of trust, the report says, leaves the state without a “moral license” to demand a monopoly on violence.. In practical policy terms. it suggests that any push for Hezbollah to disarm must contend not only with the militia’s power. but with whether the state is seen as capable. fair. and legitimate.
The study also complicates a more optimistic view that Lebanon is broadly unified behind disarmament.. It references polling from Gallup in which 79% of Lebanese said the army should be the only group with weapons.. But the report argues that consensus is thinner than it appears for several reasons: the Gallup data was collected last summer. when disarmament was still a loose aspiration floated by a new government and Hezbollah was reportedly considering partial disarmament.
The report further says that after that polling. the Lebanese government approved the army’s disarmament plan and began enacting it. Shiite-aligned leaders mobilized opposition. and Hezbollah rearmed.. It also notes that the Gallup survey excluded areas in the south. the Bekaa Valley. and Beirut’s southern suburbs—regions the report identifies as critical because Hezbollah is most present there.
Even more importantly, the study says the question wording differs in a way that may mask the core issue.. Gallup asks whether the Lebanese Army should be the only group with weapons.. By contrast, the survey in this report asks directly whether Hezbollah should be disarmed.. In an environment where respondents view the government pushing disarmament as untrustworthy. the report argues. people may support the army in general while still resisting a specific government agenda aimed at Hezbollah.
The pattern described in the report holds across Lebanon, but it intensifies where it matters most for policymakers.. In southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley—Hezbollah strongholds—opposition to disarmament stands above 70%. and the report says grievances can outweigh the security rationale even when the threat from Israel is acute.
A woman quoted from Beirut’s southern suburbs underscores the point in personal terms. describing paying for electricity that does not arrive and saying the state wronged her.. She argues that disarmament can only follow from a state that first earns legitimacy. saying that compliance cannot be demanded when rights have not been provided.. The report uses that view to illustrate why disarmament is not only a military question but a political relationship.
The study also offers an example from the opposite end of the country.. Near Akkar. where the report says people are predominantly Sunni or Maronite and political loyalty to Hezbollah is negligible at 5%. 41% still oppose Hezbollah’s disarmament.. The report argues sectarianism cannot explain this and notes that Hezbollah’s service provision is largely absent there.
Instead, it points to state abandonment.. Akkar is described as Lebanon’s most deprived governorate. lagging behind the rest of the country on poverty. infrastructure. healthcare. and education.. For communities that have seen little from the central government. the report says. the demand to trust that same state with a monopoly on force rings hollow.
For the United States and its allies. the report says the uncomfortable implication is that a long-standing foreign policy approach—carrots and sticks designed to erode Hezbollah’s strength by substituting services or escalating sanctions—may be targeting the wrong motive.. Hezbollah’s service role, the report suggests, may not be the lever that moves public opinion on weapons.. More central is the state’s failure to provide services and. even more critically. how citizens feel they have been treated during a disarmament process.
At the same time, the report argues the Lebanese government is not failing in a vacuum.. It says Israeli attacks have repeatedly devastated infrastructure and institutions that a reforming government would need to rebuild credibility. including the destruction over the last three years of schools. hospitals. municipal buildings. and fragile networks of local governance that connect citizens to the state.
In this view. each cycle of destruction gives the government a built-in excuse for inaction while also reinforcing perceptions of injustice and state incompetence—the motives the report identifies as the strongest reasons Lebanese people oppose Hezbollah laying down its arms.. The report says Israeli aggression is therefore working against the shared goal of mitigating the threat from Hezbollah sustainably. a priority the report says is shared by Lebanon. the United States. and the international community.
As negotiations continue between Israel and Lebanon amid a shaky truce. the report adds another layer of complication: Hezbollah has already signaled it considers itself unbound by whatever comes out of the two states’ talks.. It warns that some hawks in Jerusalem and Washington may interpret that as proof that only force will resolve the matter.
But the report’s argument is that nearly half of Lebanese resisting disarmament are not motivated primarily by what military or economic pressure could accomplish.. Instead. it frames the central driver as a judgment formed through repeated crises: citizens believe a state that is badly broken cannot be trusted.. The report concludes that no military operation or sanctions package can substitute for a single requirement it sees as indispensable—an integrated vision of a Lebanese state that people would trust enough to disarm for.
Hezbollah disarmament US Middle East policy Lebanon Israel talks sanctions strategy Lebanese Armed Forces Cross-Border Conflict Evidence