Hezbollah’s Curse on Lebanon? From a Country with a Message to a State of Crises

Two years after the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the harder question is not who won, but what remains of the Lebanese state.

Resistance, and the question of the weapons

Hezbollah was founded in the context of Israel’s 1982 invasion and was tied from the start to the Iranian Revolution. For supporters, its story is resistance to occupation, and it did play a central role in confronting Israeli forces in the south, from which Israel withdrew in 2000 after about eighteen years. But if the occupation ended, why did the weapons remain? Supporters say they are needed to protect Lebanon. Opponents say a private arsenal challenges the state’s sovereignty. The core issue is who decides on war and peace: the state or the party?

Over the years Hezbollah became more than an armed group: a political and social force with its own institutions and influence in parliament, government, and society. Nasrallah, who took over in 1992 after the killing of Abbas al-Musawi, became a political and media phenomenon across the Arab world.

Victory, and who pays for it

The July 2006 war lasted 34 days. More than 1,200 people were killed in Lebanon, according to an Associated Press toll, while Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets at Israel. Nasrallah called it a “divine victory.” Yet the question remains: what did Lebanon gain? Can a movement claim a military achievement while the nation emerges burdened with destruction and displacement?

A nation is measured not only by the rockets fired, but by the children who go to school without fear.

The question then moved inward. In May 2008, armed clashes broke out in Beirut and elsewhere after disputes over Hezbollah’s communications network, and the party and its allies used weapons against Lebanese opponents. Weapons said to exist mainly to confront Israel now sat at the center of an internal dispute. In 2011, Hezbollah entered Syria on the side of Bashar al-Assad, which its supporters described as protection against jihadist groups and its critics as proof of its tie to Iran’s regional project.

After Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, Hezbollah opened a front on the Lebanese-Israeli border to support Gaza. Lebanon again found itself inside a regional war whose decision did not rest with its institutions alone. The confrontation escalated in 2024, and Israel struck Nasrallah in Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 27, 2024; Hezbollah announced his death the next day.

Criticism is not sectarian hatred

Criticizing Hezbollah does not mean hating Shiites, who are an integral part of Lebanese society alongside Sunnis, Christians, Druze, and others. The problem is not the sect but the moment sectarian affiliation becomes a political and military project that overrides state institutions. Lebanon needs a state stronger than the sects, an army stronger than the militias, and law stronger than weapons. A strong state threatens no sect; it protects everyone.

Nasrallah is dead, but Hezbollah is not. It is a political, military, and social organization with institutions, networks, and a long history. His death is nevertheless a historic moment that lets Lebanon revisit a postponed question: do the Lebanese want a state that alone decides its future? No foreign capital will answer that. It is first and foremost a Lebanese question.

When will Lebanon win?

The real question after Nasrallah is not whether Hezbollah, Israel, or Iran won, but when Lebanon will. When will weapons be held only by legitimate institutions? When will disagreement mean competition in parliament rather than confrontation in the streets? Perhaps Lebanon’s greatest victory would be to overcome its perpetual need for war. History may record that the guns won many battles, but it was the nation that paid the bill.