Ali al-Taher Exposes Hezbollah’s War on the Lebanese State
For weeks, Lebanese media carried conflicting accounts of who would take Ali al-Taher. By the time the argument was settled on the ground, Israel was claiming the ridge and Lebanon was still debating the terms of its own authority.
By Tony Boulos
What Happened at Ali al-Taher
For weeks, Ali al-Taher produced a different story almost every day in the Lebanese media. Hezbollah had refused to hand it over. Hezbollah was ready to leave. Israel would accept an army deployment. Israel would not guarantee that its troops would stay out. Television reports debated whether the Lebanese army could enter without being trapped between two armed forces. Meanwhile, the shelling continued and the siege tightened. Then, on September 4, Israel announced that it had established “operational control”.
The attention was not misplaced. Ali al-Taher is a strategic ridge north of the Litani River overlooking villages and roads leading toward Nabatiyeh, one of southern Lebanon’s largest cities. Beneath it, Hezbollah built tunnels, command posts and weapons rooms over more than two decades. Even after a June ceasefire quieted much of Lebanon, fighting continued around the heights. Israel regarded the complex as a military threat and said it had begun dismantling it after entering the ridge.
Behind the competing headlines were several different handover formulas. Israel initially signaled that it could forgo a major assault if the Lebanese army entered the ridge, took control and dismantled Hezbollah’s infrastructure. L’Orient Today reported that the army made its deployment conditional on an agreement with Hezbollah. At that stage, Hezbollah still rejected surrendering a military site north of the Litani River.
As the siege tightened, the positions reportedly shifted. A later proposal called for Hezbollah to withdraw and transfer the facility to the army. The army demanded guarantees that Israeli forces would not enter after it deployed; Israel did not provide them. Al Jadeed reported that another formula—allowing the army to enter while Hezbollah fighters remained—was rejected by both Lebanon and Israel. The army had not simply rejected the site; it refused to enter without a political agreement and enforceable guarantees. Hezbollah’s reported willingness to transfer it was late, conditional and disputed by its own MPs. The media confusion reflected a real political failure: no formula succeeded in putting Lebanese territory under uncontested Lebanese authority.
Why Hezbollah Sees the Lebanese State as a Threat
Ali al-Taher does not prove that Hezbollah simply preferred Israel to the Lebanese army. It shows a more complicated failure. Hezbollah made the transfer part of a negotiation over withdrawal, fighters and equipment; the army required an agreement and security guarantees; Israel withheld those guarantees. The deeper problem remains Hezbollah’s refusal to accept state authority as unconditional. A national army cannot exercise sovereignty only when an armed organization approves the terms. That leaves Hezbollah with parallel power over decisions that belong to the state, while the government manages the consequences.
Southern Lebanon and the country’s wider Shiite community continue to pay the highest price. Villages have been damaged, families uprooted and young men killed in wars decided outside Lebanon’s constitutional institutions. The latest war killed more than 4,000 people (primarily Hezbollah fighters) in Lebanon and displaced more than one million, according to the Associated Press. People have every right to ask Hezbollah why their homes and futures remain hostage to calculations that do not serve Lebanon’s national interest.
Yet Hezbollah continues along the same path, guided less by a Lebanese decision than by Iran’s strategic interests. When Tehran escalates, the Lebanese front becomes leverage; when Tehran pulls back, Hezbollah adjusts. Lebanon, the south and the Shiite community bear the cost, while the power to decide war and peace remains outside the state.
Lebanon Cannot Wait for Iran
Waiting for Iran to weaken further, or for Tehran to declare that Hezbollah’s regional role has ended, is a gamble Lebanon cannot afford. As I argued recently in MidEast Journal, sovereignty cannot remain contingent on events in Tehran. What Lebanon has endured since 2023 should be enough evidence of the cost of preserving this equation.
The Lebanese state can no longer justify delaying its own decisions. Hezbollah’s military and security structures operate outside the law and beyond the chain of command of the Lebanese armed forces. Nor is the familiar distinction between the group’s political and military wings credible. Both protect the same arsenal, subordinate the state and keep Lebanon’s strategic decisions tied to Iran.
The question is now unavoidable: will the Lebanese state leave Israel to do what Beirut has failed to do, or will it make the sovereign decision required to protect its own territory?
The United States and Israel show no sign of retreating from the demand that weapons be placed exclusively under state control. Israel is also unlikely to withdraw unconditionally while Hezbollah retains an independent arsenal. Benjamin Netanyahu has every domestic incentive to present Israeli positions in southern Lebanon as proof that the northern border is more secure. Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm gives him the argument he needs.
As long as Hezbollah maintains military sites and weapons outside the state’s authority, it supplies Israel with a standing pretext to continue operations and potentially widen its territorial presence. This does not excuse Israeli occupation or attacks on Lebanese civilians. It explains how Hezbollah’s strategy repeatedly makes them easier to justify and harder for Lebanon to end.
One Army and One Authority
If Hezbollah truly regards Lebanon as an independent country, itself as a Lebanese political party, and the south, the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs as parts of one state, then it must choose. It can tie the fate of those regions to Iran, or return them fully to the authority of the Lebanese state.
Lebanon has an opportunity to restore sovereign decision-making: one army, one legitimate arsenal and one constitutional authority empowered to decide war and peace. Foreign policy and national defense must remain in the hands of state institutions.
Hezbollah also stands at a crossroads. It can choose Lebanon, end its independent military role and transfer its weapons to the state. Or it can continue as an Iranian proxy, binding its own fate and that of its community to Tehran’s regional project while exposing Lebanon to more strikes, displacement and occupation.
Recent diplomacy offers a different path. The return of Lebanese and Syrian detainees, conducted through the Lebanese authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross, followed negotiations and American mediation. The same diplomatic track is intended to secure Israeli withdrawal and restore state authority in the south. It is incomplete and fragile, but it shows what statecraft can do when Lebanon speaks through legitimate institutions.
Lebanon can defend its citizens without turning villages into battlegrounds for Iranian messages. Ali al-Taher tests whether the state can assert undisputed authority before outside powers decide its fate.
Tony Boulos is a Lebanese journalist and political analyst specializing in Middle East security and geopolitics. He is a senior contributor to MiddleEast24 and MidEast.Journal.