The failure of Israel’s military campaign to degrade Hezbollah’s operational capability has exposed a critical intelligence failure and a strategic miscalculation that will reverberate across the region. The Lebanese militant group, far from being crippled, has demonstrated resilience that suggests pre-war estimates of its strength were dangerously optimistic for Tel Aviv. This is not a setback. It is a defeat of strategic proportions.
The ceasefire, cobbled together under US and French pressure, has collapsed into a whimper of violence and diplomatic theatre. Hezbollah retains its rocket arsenal, its tunnel infrastructure, and its command-and-control networks. Israeli ground forces have pulled back from key positions without achieving their stated objectives: the destruction of Hezbollah’s precision-guided munitions and the creation of a buffer zone. The group’s leadership, now operating from hardened bunkers, is already rearming and reconstituting. The question is not whether Hezbollah will strike again but when and with what new capability.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has pivoted to a long-shot diplomatic gambit: a push for a sovereign, unified Lebanese state capable of disarming Hezbollah by force or political integration. This is naive. The Lebanese Armed Forces are neither willing nor able to confront the Party of God, which is deeply embedded in the state’s institutions and Shia population. For the UK to advocate a ‘sovereign Lebanon’ while Hezbollah’s rocket batteries remain pointed at Haifa is to ignore the threat vector entirely. A sovereign state requires a monopoly on violence, and Beirut does not have it.
The British proposal, however, may serve a darker strategic purpose: buying time for a political settlement that legitimises Hezbollah as a political actor while Israel licks its wounds. The US, distracted by its own election cycle and the Pacific pivot, appears content to let the UK take the lead. This is a dangerous game. Any settlement that does not include Hezbollah’s disarmament will be a victory for Iran’s axis of resistance, allowing the proxy to reconstitute its conventional military threat under a diplomatic umbrella.
The immediate risk is an escalation to a broader war. Hezbollah, emboldened by the failed campaign, may test the ceasefire’s fragility with a precision-strike demonstration. Israel, humiliated and politically fractured, could launch a massive air campaign against Lebanese infrastructure, triggering an exodus and a humanitarian catastrophe. The next phase of this conflict is not about deterrence but about survival. The UK’s diplomatic push is a distraction from the hard reality: Hezbollah endures, and the security of the Levant is now hostage to a strategic pivot that has failed.
