US rewards for Lebanon should follow, rather than precede, Hezbollah’s disarmament.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and his allies tout last month’s Washington visit as a success. Rightly so. President Donald Trump sent Aoun home with political, economic, and security inducements to pull Lebanon toward Washington before Tehran could exploit the US-Iran ceasefire process to preserve Hezbollah. The strategy is sound; its execution is not. 
Washington’s rewards are outpacing Beirut’s implementation of the June 26 Framework Agreement, which conditions new US assistance and phased Israeli withdrawal on verified, nationwide Lebanese action against Hezbollah. Paying in advance risks surrendering the leverage needed to secure those results.

The urgency in Washington and Tehran stems from Hezbollah’s battlefield reversals. Since the group attacked Israel in October 2023, Israel has killed much of its senior leadership and hundreds of mid-level commanders while destroying much of its arsenal and infrastructure. Near-daily Israeli strikes after the November 2024 ceasefire impeded Hezbollah’s recovery. Days after the Iran War began on February 28, Hezbollah attacked northern Israel, triggering a renewed, more ferocious Israeli offensive. 

Iran needed to end that war and Israel’s interminable attrition campaign. In April, Tehran leveraged Washington’s pursuit of an Iran ceasefire to secure a parallel truce in Lebanon and return decisions over Hezbollah’s arsenal exclusively to Lebanese hands, as the group demanded —moving the issue into an arena favoring its regeneration. Hezbollah’s substantial Shia support has kept Lebanon’s political and military leaders fearful that forcible disarmament could ignite civil conflict. A domestic process can therefore be delayed, diluted, or reduced to cosmetic enforcement, giving Hezbollah room to rebuild. 

Trump’s answer was to make Lebanese performance more rewarding. He backed Aoun, moved to restore direct US-Lebanon flights, promised “concrete plans” to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and reportedly ordered an assessment of the army’s needs. Aoun also spoke of US investment and reconstruction, including a possible conference where Lebanese ministers would pitch projects to American companies. Trump reportedly offered to restrain Israeli operations and press Jerusalem to expand the pilot zone process into additional Israeli-held Lebanese territory. Beirut separately claimed US assurances that Israel would not strike areas transferred to LAF control. 

But the framework does not reward Lebanese alignment in the abstract. It conditions further Israeli withdrawal and new American assistance on verified Lebanese performance: the state must establish a monopoly on force, disarm Hezbollah nationwide, dismantle its military infrastructure, and block its financing. Lebanon has not come close to making that process binding or measurable, let alone implementing it. 

Beirut’s only documented field action is LAF activity in three pilot zones—test areas where verified Hezbollah disarmament and exclusive army control are supposed to trigger Israeli withdrawal. LAF was already present in Froun and Srifa; it entered Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh and began ordnance sweeps on July 21 as Israel withdrew. Yet LAF has not publicly demonstrated that it disarmed Hezbollah, dismantled its infrastructure, acted against unauthorized gunmen, completed third-party verification, or secured any zone against the group’s return. Performance deadlines and verification rules remain unsettled. Even full implementation would complete only the agreement’s first test, leaving Hezbollah armed elsewhere and attempting to replenish its arsenal. 

Beirut has yet to establish a credible implementation path beyond the pilot zones. The Lebanese Cabinet has not clearly adopted the LAF’s national disarmament plan, whose contents remain secret and whose implementation is incomplete. Nor has Beirut, in the month since the framework’s signing, adopted a national implementation timetable, assigned units vetted for Hezbollah ties or influence, or adopted safeguards against obstruction of disarmament.  

Instead, Lebanese leaders have begun weakening the framework. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam calls it politically, not legally, binding and limits its ban on hostile political or legal action abroad to negotiations, though the text sets no such limit. Aoun, meanwhile, has inverted the framework’s sequence by demanding Israeli withdrawal before verified disarmament. Hezbollah, which rejects the deal outright, likewise refuses to discuss its arsenal before Israeli withdrawal. Both Aoun and Salam, concerned over civil war due to the group’s “deeply rooted social constituency,” continue to reject forcible disarmament despite Hezbollah’s refusal to demobilize—setting up for an open-ended process that Hezbollah can obstruct indefinitely. 

Lebanon’s efforts against Hezbollah’s finances, meanwhile, consist of isolated and preliminary measures. The Central Bank’s July 2025 Circular 170 bars regulated institutions from dealing with Al-Qard al-Hassan (AQAH)—Hezbollah’s quasi-bank—and related entities. But Beirut has neither frozen their assets, prosecuted their officials, nor demonstrably disrupted their informal financial transactions. A reported June referral of AQAH and affiliated gold dealer, Jood SARL, has still resulted in no formal proceedings. On June 30, the US Treasury found AQAH and other Hezbollah financial entities remain active, while Hezbollah continued using cash, gold, currency exchanges, front companies, commercial and smuggling networks, and cryptocurrency. 

Beirut’s recent behavior, meanwhile, warrants distrust. On January 8, LAF claimed “effective control” of southern Lebanon between the Israeli frontier and Litani River. Two months later, Hezbollah fought Israel from that area with substantial forces and infrastructure still in place. LAF has also refused to enforce the cabinet’s March 2 ban on Hezbollah’s military activities, while Israel alleges LAF has coordinated with Hezbollah to present vacated installations as proof of enforcement.  

Frontloading new rewards despite that record would encourage Beirut to treat presence as performance—and could turn the pilot zones into the framework’s ceiling. Preserving its wider capabilities, Hezbollah could tactically retreat from pilot zone localities and then return after Israel withdraws and international attention fades. Israel’s withdrawals in 2000 and after the 2006 war did not disarm the group; Hezbollah, which portrays Israel as a permanent threat irrespective of its occupation of Lebanese territory, simply found new justifications for “resistance” and now rejects any linkage between Israeli withdrawal and its disarmament. 

Trump is right to contest Iran’s attempts to reclaim Lebanon, but Washington cannot win by paying Beirut in advance. That approach has already facilitated Hezbollah’s growth and Iranian influence. The framework was meant to correct course by making the US-Lebanon relationship performance-based rather than promise-based. Alignment with Washington should pay—but only as Beirut delivers. 

About the Authors: Ahmad Sharawi and David Daoud

Ahmad Sharawi is a research analyst at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on Middle East affairs, specifically the Levant, Iraq, and Iranian intervention in Arab affairs, as well as US foreign policy toward the region. Previously, Sharawi worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He created a map visualizing the border clashes on the Israeli-Lebanese frontier and authored articles on Jordan and Morocco. Ahmad previously worked at the International Finance Corporation and S&P Global. He holds a BA in international relations from King’s College London and an MA from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

David Daoud is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously worked as a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, director of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria research at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), and a research analyst at FDD. His work has been cited or published in outlets including Haaretz, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

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