Lebanon's Joseph Aoun Trying to Sedate Hezbollah with Lukewarm Water

First he announced in his oath (a year ago) that Hezbollah's weapons should go away. 

He then formed a cabinet in which he welcomed Hezbollah's representatives.

In August 5, 2025: He issued an official government decision that Hezbollah needs to be disarmed and that only the Lebanese Army should have the exclusive monopoly on violence.

A few weeks later, he instructed the Lebanese Army to give him monthly reports on its gradual "disarming" of Hezbollah. 

But the "disarming" has remained theoretical for now. 

Politicians always try to throw their military under the bus and blame them instead of assuming their own reponsibility. What Joseph Aoun is doing today with his army is what President Charles Helou did when he dispatched his own army chief - Emile Boustani - to sign the infamous Cairo Accord of 1969 in which the Lebanese State surrendered its territory south of the Litani River to Yasser Arafat and his criminal thugs. Joseph Aoun is trying to put current Army Chief Rodolphe Heykal in the awkward position of assuming full responsibility for disarming Hezbollah. But Heykal has so far played it safe, telling the president and the government that he can at least try to disarm Hezbollah by force, as long as the executive gives him the order, the political cover, which has not yet happened. 

With Hezbollah digging its heels and refusing to disarm, the stench of the insoluble stalemate is becoming unbearable. Everyone is trying to dump the problem in everyone else's lap, when the only solution is one of two things: Either Hezbollah voluntarily disarms, or someone forces it to with equal or superior violence. 

The Americans are pressuring Aoun to use military force to disarm Hezbollah, but Aoun retorts that the army is not strong enough to do it. The Americans refuse to give the Lebanese Army sufficient firepower to do the job because - and here is the long standing US-Israeli fake argument - if the Lebanese Army becomes powerful enough to disarm Hezbollah, it would pose a threat to Israel. Imagine: Israel, which can strike thousands of miles away from its colonial settlements in places like Iran, Yemen, the Emirates and beyond, will be under threat if the puny Lebanese army has a bit more weapons (than the used trucks and jeeps that the Americans keep sending it from their scrap junkyards) to defeat Hezbollah.

Besides the fact that Aoun is reluctant to wage a civil war by using the army against Hezbollah - the army could fracture into sectarian brigades like it did in the 1970s when it tried to fight the Palestinian-Muslim coalition - that leaves one and only one avenue to disarm Hezbollah, and that is an expansive and deep Israeli intervention, including a land invasion of Lebanon like the one of 1982. 

And I think this is the preferred option for the US-Israel duo: A land invasion would lead to confiscation and annexation of Lebanese territory south of the Litani River (which includes the city of Tyre) or even further north up to the Awwali River (which would include the city of Sidon). Just as Trump yesterday betrayed Syrian president Ahmed Al-Sharaa by reaffirming Israel's theft of the Syrian Golan, it wouldn't surprise me if Trump and Netanyahu have planned together an operation leading to expanding the Jewish-American colony's northern border by stealing a chunk of tiny Lebanon. 

Joseph Aoun's gradual sedation of Hezbollah by marinating it gradually into lukewarm policies is smart but it doesn't seem to net significant results. Like the proverbial example of frogs in warm water: If you plunge a frog into boiling water, it jumps right away out of the vessel. But if you put it first in cold water, then slowly raise the temperature, the frog just stays and dies. 

The latest installment of Joseph Aoun's gradual sedation of Hezbollah is his announement that he wants to negotiate with Israel - which is the worst taboo for Hezbollah -  by appointing a civilian, Simon Karam, to lead the otherwise exclusively military negotiating committee. 

All of these moves by Aoun to inject the anaesthetic slowly to Hezbollah show some signs of success as it buys time for Hezbollah to digest the fact that the 60-year-long orgy of violence it and the Palestinians inflicted on south Lebanon is about to end. But more importantly, Aoun is trying to placate the Israeli threats and the American pressure, both of whom keep a gun to his head and once in a while kick him in the butt with a strike here and a strike there around areas where Aoun has dispatched his army. They have given him a deadline of December 31, 2025.    

I predict an imminent and major Israeli move - not unlike that of 1982. Back then, it took three days between the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador by Palestinians in London and the June 6, 1982 invasion of Lebanon to rid it of the PLO.  How long will it take for the 2025-2026 invasion to take place after the killing of 15 Jews in Australia earlier this week and rid Lebanon of Hezbollah?