Issued on: 16/04/2026 - 18:32Modified: 16/04/2026 - 18:35

Hezbollah plunged Lebanon into war with Israel in early March. Six weeks later, the group, which had suffered setbacks in 2024, is still putting up a fight. But how? And can the Lebanese government succeed in getting the militant group to disarm? In this edition of Middle East Matters, we are joined by Dr. Matthew Levitt, Fromer-Wexler Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute and Director of its Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

"Hezbollah has wanted to have a dual identity," says Dr. Levitt, "but anybody who says that it's not part of the fabric of Lebanese society is wrong".

He also argues that "anybody who says that it is solely and only Lebanese is also wrong, as we have seen now, as Hezbollah has dragged all of Lebanon into a war with Israel not once, but twice, that nobody in Lebanon other than Hezbollah wanted."

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