This week, the president of Lebanon met at the White House with President Donald Trump to discuss the June security framework intended to systematically address Hezbollah’s military threat to Israel and ultimately demilitarize the group. It all depends on the willingness of the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Armed Forces to act. Having funded the LAF for decades, Congress should leverage its assistance to incentivize rapid, verifiable implementation while maintaining a credible threat of punitive measures against Lebanese officials or entities obstructing Hezbollah’s disarmament.
The Israel-Lebanon framework agreement’s center of gravity is its “pilot zone” model. These zones consist of parcels of Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory that, under the agreement, will be transferred to LAF control. Within each zone, Lebanon must dismantle Hezbollah’s weapons and infrastructure, take legal action against armed personnel engaged in unauthorized activity, permit credible third-party verification, and deploy “highly qualified” LAF units to prevent Hezbollah’s resurgence.
These responsibilities are not new. LAF, assisted by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon in an auxiliary role, should have been performing them for decades pursuant to Lebanon’s existing obligations under international law, U.N. Security Council Resolutions, and bilateral agreements with Israel. Beirut has instead avoided confronting Hezbollah, citing the threat to domestic stability and civil war. Meanwhile, Washington has provided the LAF with more than $3 billion — currently averaging approximately $285 million annually — without producing meaningful progress toward Hezbollah’s disarmament.
The June 26 framework seeks to break this pattern by “strictly conditioning” continued U.S. assistance to Lebanon “on verifiable milestones, full transparency, demonstrated results, and ongoing oversight.” Yet Beirut is already signaling that it may retreat from its commitments under the deal.
The LAF has repeatedly rejected confrontation with Hezbollah — including after the Lebanese government proscribed the group’s military activity on March 2 and ordered the army to proceed with disarmament — citing domestic stability and unity. Beirut is now demanding an Israeli withdrawal before Lebanon even discusses its corresponding obligations, thus reversing the framework’s agreed-upon sequencing. Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and President Joseph Aoun, have also sought to narrow the agreement’s binding significance, describing it as a negotiating guide rather than an agreement or treaty. They have also reframed its terms and minimized Lebanon’s disarmament commitments. Salam and Aoun have cast disarmament as a process to be achieved through “domestic dialogue” with an intransigent Hezbollah rather than coercion.
Congress has previously considered sharply curtailing or eliminating LAF assistance. Congress has also restricted LAF assistance to counter-Hezbollah purposes and directed the Pentagon to establish performance benchmarks and identify options for suspending aid if the LAF proves unwilling to disarm the group. Under the June 26 framework, Lebanon has now explicitly accepted that continued assistance will depend on measurable performance.
Congress should translate that principle into the structure of future assistance. Rather than continuing to allocate security aid broadly between the LAF and Internal Security Forces, it should direct funding to the LAF units implementing the pilot zones. That assistance could support operations against Hezbollah weapons caches, the demolition of tunnels and other military infrastructure, and the sustained deployment of Lebanese forces in cleared territory.
Funding should be released gradually as the LAF verifiably meets defined benchmarks. Given Israeli claims that the LAF has coordinated with Hezbollah to present vacated sites as evidence of disarmament — strengthened by Lebanon’s historical evasiveness regarding confronting the group — the United States should verify compliance in real time, rather than relying on LAF reports after the fact.
Congress should treat any Lebanese failure or unreasonable delay as grounds for withholding funding and reassessing continued support. Congress can also push for sanctions against military or government officials under existing corruption and counterterrorism authorities.
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Such proactively punitive measures would complement the executive branch’s demonstrated willingness to sanction Lebanese officials for impeding Hezbollah’s disarmament and, by extension, obstructing the U.S.-sponsored peace process that the June 26 agreement is intended to advance.
Hezbollah will continue resisting implementation and disarmament, while its political allies seek to delay or dilute Lebanese action. Conditional assistance cannot alter Lebanon’s internal dynamics or eliminate those obstacles. But Lebanon needs U.S. assistance to have an impact on Beirut’s incentives. Conditioning aid can ensure that American taxpayers support demonstrable progress rather than further open-ended Lebanese promises of eventual action against Hezbollah that never materialize. The LAF should now be judged — and funded — according to whether it performs the mission assigned to it under the framework.
Tyler Stapleton serves as senior director of government relations at FDD Action.
David Daoud is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who focuses on Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon affairs.