BEIRUT — Political and military developments in Lebanon are accelerating amid increasing U.S.-Israeli pressure and attempts to redraw the rules of engagement in South Lebanon through the five-member committee tasked with monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire between Lebanon and the Zionist entity.

Originally created to oversee Resolution 1701, this committee is now being repurposed by Washington into a political-security negotiation framework, echoing the Syrian model that would allow Israel to violate its sovereignty under the guise of peace arrangements.

An informed source told Tehran Times that U.S. envoy Morgan Ortagus, during her meetings with Lebanese officials, pressed to reactivate the committee under the pretext of stabilization.

Obviously, Ortagus’ goal is to transform the committee into a platform for discussing Hezbollah’s weapons and the resistance’s presence in the South.
According to the same source, Ortagus refused to provide any guarantees of halting Israeli aggression or withdrawal from occupied points. 

Instead, she emphasized Lebanon’s “obligations to the international community,” a phrase that reflects Washington’s full adoption of the Israeli narrative, a narrative that blames Hezbollah’s arms for obstructing de-escalation and seeks to strip them through a security-political mechanism.

Diplomatic reports reveal that the U.S. administration plans to expand the committee’s mandate, adding foreign military experts and holding sessions abroad to give it an “internationally neutral” character. 

Lebanese officials fear this is a prelude to internationalizing the southern front and weakening the state’s sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to violate Resolution 1701 with daily incursions. Analysts in Tel Aviv describe this as part of a calculated campaign to impose new ground realities that would force Lebanon to accept “reforms”, the first step toward a controlled settlement under American-Israeli terms.

In Israeli circles, the current regional chaos is seen as a “golden opportunity to clip Hezbollah’s wings.” Yet, the same analysts acknowledge that a full-scale war could prove disastrous, given Hezbollah’s enhanced deterrent capacity and extensive battlefield experience.

The electoral front: Washington’s political leverage

Parallel to this external pressure, Lebanon faces a new internal crisis over proposed amendments to its electoral law, notably the abolition of the six expatriate seats and the redistribution of votes across the 128 existing parliamentary seats.

In this volatile situation, Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea has resurfaced as a key political actor, exploiting Western hostility toward the resistance to position himself as a “credible alternative.” 

Geagea advocates “positive neutrality,” urging Lebanon to distance itself from the resistance axis and engage in indirect normalization through international frameworks like the ceasefire mechanism — a move perfectly aligned with U.S. strategy.

Analysts warn that Washington’s approach is intended to reshape Lebanon’s internal political balance, pushing select factions toward confrontation with Hezbollah, thereby isolating the resistance and undermining its national legitimacy.

Yet, Geagea’s opponents caution that this path mirrors the disastrous alliances of the 1980s, when reliance on foreign intervention plunged Lebanon into another civil war.

It is increasingly clear that Lebanon is being pushed — through calibrated diplomatic and financial pressures — toward a new negotiating framework designed not for peace but for disarmament and submission. 

Washington seeks to replicate in Lebanon what it achieved in Syria: a gradual erosion of sovereignty through “mechanisms” of mediation and control.
But despite the growing entanglement of foreign influence and domestic fragility, the equation on the ground remains intact. It is defined by Hezbollah’s deterrent power and the steadfast of the Axis of Resistance, not by the diplomatic committees or the illusion of international “stability.”