Hundreds of high school students and tourists enjoy a view of Syria from the top of Mount Bental, which was closed to the public due to Israel’s war with Hezbollah, which ended with a February ceasefire still in place, May 28, 2025. Photo by Michael Giladi/Flash90.
It will take patience, prodding and the imposition of consequences, but for the first time in a long while, cautious optimism can be construed for this part of the Levant.
One year ago, the genocidal dictator of Syria was in power, propped up by his Iranian patron with the help of Hezbollah, a Shi’ite jihadist proxy. At the same time, in Lebanon, Hezbollah held sway and was under the direct control of Iran. Lebanon was a nation in traumatic distress from long-time civil wars as Hezbollah intimidated Christian, Sunni and Druze leaders, flexing their muscle as the strongest military in Lebanon, with the government’s Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) unwilling or unable to confront them.
What a difference a year makes. In rapid-fire succession, beginning in August 2024, the Israeli Air Force pre-emptively struck and destroyed Hezbollah’s vast missile-launching network. In September, Israel decapitated the senior Hezbollah leadership, including its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, disrupting its command-and-control structure. This was in conjunction with a James Bond-style intelligence operation, as Israel had penetrated their walkie-talkie and pager devices, further degrading the terrorist network.
A targeted ground operation in Southern Lebanon followed in October. Hezbollah and its overlord—the Islamic Republic of Iran—were devastated, agreeing to a ceasefire and claiming that the terror group would abide by the 2006 U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, disarming and withdrawing from Southern Lebanon.
Suddenly, a generational opportunity presented itself, holding out the possibility that Lebanon could come out from the shadow of Iran and Hezbollah. A generation ago, Lebanon expelled Syria and that neighbor’s dominance over the state, only to experience the Syrian assassination of its president, Rafiq Hariri, sending the nation back down the rabbit hole of civil chaos and impotent government.
The Israeli military campaign and its victory against Hezbollah motivated the Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria to move south from its stronghold in northwestern Syria to seize control of the country. They knew Israel created an opportunity for them by weakening their Hezbollah enemy embedded in Syria.
By December, Assad had fled to Russia, and Iran, Hezbollah and other Shi’ite-controlled militias had left Syria in the hands of Sunni jihadist Abu Mohammad Al-Julani, now known as Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was a part of ISIS and an Al-Qaeda leader, but who has now convinced much of the world that he had renounced those allegiances.
Is this simple pragmatism on the part of al-Shaara to get much-needed reconstruction funds without much scrutiny? Is this an opportunity for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to advance his neo-Ottoman expansionism and dominate Syria just as Iran did? Or is there an actual change that could be a pathway for Syria and Israel to not only have a cold armistice, but also a path to normalization?
Meetings with U.S. State Department officials, American and Israeli politicians, think tanks and intelligence officers, as well as seven visits during the past 18 months to the Israeli-Lebanese and Syrian borders, have opened my mind to new possibilities that I could not have imagined a short time ago. But I am skeptical.
Yet, President Donald Trump and both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have seemingly adopted a trust-before-verifying policy as it relates to the new Syrian leader, removing sanctions without reciprocity of tangible actions from al-Shaara. His disarming, pragmatic manner was good enough to give the Syrian leader a prime-time in-person appearance with the president and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Perhaps America and the Saudis are purposely trying to get ahead of the curve, as the other more likely nations to influence Syria are Qatar and Turkey, pillars of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar has the wallet, and Turkey has the Islamist muscle and the vision to recreate another Ottoman Empire.
Lebanon’s new president, Joseph Khalil Aoun, is saying many of the right things, but he has also acknowledged that elements of Hezbollah may need to be incorporated into the LAF. The not-so-secret secret is that Hezbollah has been embedded in the LAF officer corps for years. On the one hand, the LAF is destroying Hezbollah munitions, but on the other, it is too weak to go into the thousands of private homes in Southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has stored weapons. The LAF has also been unwilling to dismantle Hezbollah’s clandestine weapons factories in the area, a primary source for their future resurgence.
Why is the mechanism monitoring the Lebanese ceasefire working well so far? Because Washington is committed to monitoring it with some 20 U.S. personnel working from Beirut and coordinating with the LAF to help them fulfill their mission as much as possible.
The third layer ensuring quiet in Lebanon’s southern areas is Israel, whose forces are in place to operate against Hezbollah pre-emptively should they break the conditions of the ceasefire. Israel has remained in five topographical vantage points there, giving approximately 60% of the Israeli displaced population who evacuated from the northern border the confidence to return to their homes on the border.
To the credit of the Lebanese government, it has removed most of Hezbollah’s control at Beirut’s airport, a known conduit for cash from Iran to Hezbollah, as well as weapons transfers. Unfortunately, America’s frenemy, Turkey, is now allegedly working at the behest of Iran to ferry cash through the airport to resupply Hezbollah. In the Middle East, Persian Shi’ites sometimes work with Turkish Sunnis if they share interests. This is not the first time that Turkey has helped Iran evade sanctions. Iran is also moving weapons and cash through the Beirut port, which will provide another test for the LAF.
U.S. Special Envoy Morgan Ortigas is pushing the Lebanese president to enact both U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 and Resolution 1559, the latter of which demands that the Lebanese government disarm Hezbollah not only in the south but in the entire country. As long as Hezbollah, even degraded, is allowed to operate in other parts of the country, there should be humanitarian, but not reconstruction aid. Iran and Hezbollah will try to take over the reconstruction projects in Lebanon, siphoning off billions and making sure Hezbollah contractors profit from funds from the Gulf nations. They have had strategic, patient thinking for decades, while the United States wants quick solutions, which is a curse for successful Middle Eastern policy.
Congress and the administration would be right to restrain the impulse to send funds quickly in hopes of trying to seize the opportunity to change the regional balance toward U.S. interests, otherwise, it may find it has strengthened its enemies by mistake. The Lebanese government and its people will do anything not to return to a state of civil war, which unfortunately means accommodating Hezbollah to some degree. The question is: Can America pressure the Lebanese president to do whatever it takes to prevent Hezbollah’s resurgence, short of destabilizing the government?
In Syria, the brutal civil war displaced more than half the population, and today, the minority populations of Druze, Alawites, Christians and Kurds feel vulnerable to the Sunni takeover. In the case of the Kurds, al-Shaara’s patron, Turkey, ethnically cleansed Syrian Kurds from the northwest a few years ago, and the Kurds of the northeast, American allies who fought ISIS, are worried. There is some cautious optimism that they are finding an accommodation, but long-term rivals’ trust doesn’t build quickly in the Levant.
The renewal of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) mandate to patrol Southern Lebanon is coming up this summer; It would be best not to renew it.
UNIFIL has not stopped one of the 150,000-plus missiles transited to Hezbollah since 2006 from Iran, and Hezbollah has infiltrated the international body’s ranks. Most egregiously, Hezbollah tunnels and weapons facilities were built close to U.N. bases, whose staffers failed to report these violations, making UNIFIL not only impotent but a part of the reason why Lebanon could not free itself from Hezbollah’s grip.
Along Israel’s northern border, the quiet these days is startling after experiencing the sounds of war and thousands of projectiles and UAVs targeting Israeli civilian towns in the not-too-distant past. This is in contrast to the active fighting in Gaza, hostages still languishing in horrific conditions in Hamas tunnels, the Houthis still sending ballistic missiles into Israel’s heartland, and, most importantly for Israel, the fear of an ineffective deal being negotiated by Iran and America.
It will take patience, prodding and the imposition of consequences when U.S. interests are in question to advance this once-in-a-generation opportunity to create long-term quiet on Israel’s northern border, something that very much correlates with America’s national security.
This article appeared in the Jewish News Syndicate on May 31, 2025.
Dr. Eric R. Mandel is the director of MEPIN, the Middle East Political Information Network, senior security editor of The Jerusalem Report and a contributor to The Hill and The Jerusalem Post. He regularly briefs member of Congress and their foreign-policy advisers about the Middle East.