Hezbollah and Lebanon’s national dialogue: 20 years of talks over its weapons, no deal on implementation

The divide is familiar: Supporters see dialogue as a way to avert confrontation, while critics argue it merely buys Hezbollah time. But the stakes have shifted, with the debate moving beyond the decades-old question of a “defense strategy” to government decisions asserting the state’s exclusive authority over weapons. The dispute dates back to the March 2006 national dialogue convened , when Hezbollah’s arsenal became part of discussions over a national defense strategy. The July war interrupted those talks. The issue resurfaced after the May 2008 clashes, when Hezbollah turned its weapons against domestic opponents. The subsequent Doha Agreement paved the way for the election of a president and a national unity government in which the opposition secured 11 of 30 cabinet seats, giving it the power to block decisions requiring a two-thirds majority. The agreement included a pledge not to use weapons for political gains but stopped short of securing Hezbollah’s disarmament. Talks resumed under then-President Michel Suleiman, culminating in the June 2012 Baabda Declaration, which called for keeping Lebanon out of regional conflicts but left the weapons dispute unresolved. In 2014, Hezbollah and the Future Movement launched bilateral talks in Ain al-Tineh to defuse sectarian tensions. Disagreements over the Baabda Declaration persisted through a meeting in Baabda in 2020. The issue took a new turn in August 2025, when the government tasked the army with drafting a plan to bring weapons under exclusive state control. In March 2026, it banned Hezbollah’s military and security activities and demanded that the group surrender its weapons. Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said on Oct. 6 that the group was ready to cooperate on bringing weapons under state control, provided the process followed the constitution and laws and was free of foreign dictates. He stressed that an Israeli withdrawal remained the priority. Dialogue entrenched the imbalance of power Former lawmaker Fares Souaid argued that Lebanon’s national dialogue initiatives had consistently worked in Hezbollah’s favor, helping the group consolidate its arsenal and tighten its grip on political decision-making. He said another round of domestic talks would be futile because the real decision-making power lay in Iran. Any serious dialogue, he argued, should be with Tehran rather than Hezbollah as a Lebanese political actor. Souaid told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Lebanese national dialogue that followed roughly 15 years of civil war and 150,000 deaths had produced constitutional changes and a new political and social compact embodied in the Taif Agreement. Any subsequent dialogue, he said, should have focused on implementing Taif rather than undermining the foundations of Lebanon’s postwar political system.