Qasim ends the debate about Hezbollah’s weapon

In the past days, the media pressure associated with the Hezbollah weapon file increased, and it has emerged as an escalating demand to put a clear time ceiling for this file, whether through international statements or through press leaks and extensive diplomatic moves. This campaign comes in the context of a clear American pressure that seeks to achieve actual breakthrough in this field, by imposing the disarmament agenda or at least its restriction and freezing within internal understandings, before reaching any comprehensive regional settlement.

At the background of this pressure, an Israeli anxiety is increasingly anxious about the party capacity file. After months of the war on the northern front, the Israeli agencies no longer have accurate data about the reality of the party’s strength, the size of its arsenal, or the way to restore its military structure. This strategic ambiguity worries decision makers in Tel Aviv, who fear that the party will have been able to develop its capabilities or store additional quantities of qualitative weapons without intelligence to monitor them.

Followers consider that all this media and political pressure aims to achieve a proactive achievement by neutralizing the party’s weapon or placing it under the roof of an internal Lebanese understanding, before any possible settlement between the United States and Iran. According to estimates, access to a regional settlement may lead to the freezing of conditions as they are, which cuts the way to any future possibility to restrict this weapon or research its fate.

Nevertheless, informed sources indicate that this issue is not raised directly in the current political discussions inside Lebanon. In serious sessions, the disarmament file is not discussed, but rather is presented under the title of the defensive strategy that is related to clear conditions, most notably the endowment of the Israeli aggression, the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories, and the start of the reconstruction process in the south. In this context, President Nabih Berri plays a role in installing this address instead of entering into open conflicts over major issues.

But the most prominent development came through the recent speech of Sheikh Naim Qasim, the Secretary -General of Hezbollah, who put an end to any discussion, and clearly announced that the party will not hand over its weapon under any circumstance. This decisive position brought back the discussion in Lebanon to the zero point, and closed the door to any new approach to this file, at least in the foreseeable term.