Is Disarming Hezbollah an Impossible Task?

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Transcript

00:00So there are these big demands that have been made by Washington on the newish leadership in Beirut.

00:06There is now a president. There is a prime minister.

00:08Everything sort of is functioning. Everything is in place.

00:11If you want to use the word functioning.

00:12OK, maybe the word functioning is stretching a little bit.

00:17But in terms of those demands by Washington, disarm Hezbollah, and I heard you use it then,

00:21I mean, much easier said than done. Is this mission impossible?

00:25Not really. You're not actually asking the Lebanese army to actually go in and take the physical arms of Hezbollah.

00:33But what is really a catastrophe and a tragedy is for the Lebanese president,

00:38who is a former commander of the Lebanese army, to actually parrot the rhetoric of Hezbollah.

00:43This is actually the real tragedy which we're undergoing.

00:46More importantly, we need to transition to the fact that the constitution does not give the right to any militia

00:53to operate outside the framework of the state.

00:56More importantly, the Americans are not asking for the impossible.

00:59They're asking you to act like a sovereign state by stopping money laundering, by stopping drug operations.

01:08A couple of weeks ago, the Saudis gave us a kind of sums up that we are no longer a narco state.

01:14I actually felt insulted that we were a narco state to begin with.

01:17It's not the fault of the Saudis. It's not the fault of the Americans.

01:20It's the fault of the narco states that were operating within the Hezbollah system, as well as the former Assad regime.

01:28So in a way, one has to address the real problem in the room.

01:31The real problem in the room is that Hezbollah is part and parcel of the Lebanese political establishment,

01:36but it acts as if it's outside it.

01:38And this is where the role of the president is, to confront them politically and to rebuild the country bit by bit.

01:44And it requires transparency, fighting corruption, and in a way, acknowledging that what made Hezbollah normal

01:51is the fact that we were willing to deal with them when they were fighting in Yemen,

01:55when they were fighting in Syria, and when they were spreading terror on behalf of the Lebanese.

02:08Thank you, Lord.