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Is Hezbollah weakened as Lebanon shifts towards new governance?
Beirut, Lebanon – A new president. A new prime minister. And the sense that Hezbollah, arguably the most powerful group in the country, has been weakened.
It has been a potentially transformative few weeks in Lebanon, particularly when taken in the context of a political system that often appears frozen.
The developments have been a cause for celebration among many Lebanese, but they also could lead to questions for the entire political class, including Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, a Shia political group and militia, has dominated Lebanon for the better part of the past two decades. But in the past few months, it has suffered numerous setbacks, including the loss of most of its senior members, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah, in its war with Israel and subsequently the fall of its staunch ally, Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
“Hezbollah still has legitimacy,” Ziad Majed, a Lebanese political researcher, told Al Jazeera. “It will have to accept to be a strong – and it will be strong – Lebanese party like all the others but without the ownership of the decision of war and peace.”
Hezbollah’s ‘hand cut off’
Hezbollah helped Joseph Aoun get the required number of votes to become president by backing him in the second round of voting on January 9. But the group, which had planned to support incumbent Najib Mikati in the vote for prime minister on January 13, abstained after it became clear Nawaf Salam, the former president of the International Court of Justice, would win.
Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad said the group had extended a hand to the nation by voting for Aoun but Salam’s nomination saw that “hand cut off”.
The Iranian-backed group feels that many of its opponents in government are taking advantage of the losses it suffered in Israel’s war on Lebanon.
In his first speech as prime minister-designate, however, Salam promised to unite the Lebanese people and spoke to issues that impact the Shia community deeply after Israel’s war on the country. Israel’s attacks on Lebanon focused predominantly on areas with high Shia populations, even in areas where many locals said Hezbollah military infrastructure or fighters were not present, including southern Lebanon, much of the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s suburbs widely referred to as Dahiyeh.
Much like Aoun’s speech a few days earlier, Salam said he would work to make sure Israel’s military withdraws “from the last occupied inch of [Lebanese] land” and the areas impacted by Israel’s devastating attacks would be rebuilt.
“Reconstruction is not just a promise but a commitment,” he said.
“He is smart enough to find the appropriate ways to try to be inclusive,” Karim Emile Bitar, an international relations professor at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, told Al Jazeera. “I do not think he will try to exclude the Shia constituency from participating in government and state building, but this is a decision the Shia parties have to make.”
Hezbollah is, however, in a precarious position. For years, Hezbollah and its allies were politically and militarily influential enough to block decisions they opposed, such as government formations that didn’t satisfy their needs. In one of the most well-known examples of the group’s power, Hezbollah deployed fighters to the streets of Beirut in May 2008 after the Lebanese government ordered the dismantling of the group’s private telecommunications network, forcing the state authorities to backtrack.
But the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria has made receiving weapons more difficult and removed a key regional ally for the group.
Monopoly on weapons
Under the terms of the ceasefire with Israel, Hezbollah is supposed to move north of the Litani River, which runs across southern Lebanon from north of Tyre in the west to just south of Marjayoun in the east, and the Lebanese army is to deploy in southern Lebanon after the Israelis withdraw from the territory.
Hezbollah has said its military infrastructure must only be removed from the south, but Israel has recently attacked targets north of the Litani that it said are associated with Hezbollah. However, some officials in Israel and the United States – and even Lebanon – have said Hezbollah’s military infrastructure should be targeted anywhere in Lebanon. This leaves questions over whether all parties have the same understanding of the ceasefire.
Aoun and Salam have both spoken about the state having a monopoly on weapons and deploying to southern Lebanon, a clear message to Hezbollah that its military supremacy may be over.
Whether Hezbollah will accept that is a different matter. On Saturday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem warned that Hezbollah must be included in any incoming government.
“[No one can] exclude us from effective and influential political participation in Lebanon as we are a fundamental component of the country’s makeup and its renaissance,” Qassem said before adding that no force was able to “take domestic advantage of the results of the [Israeli] aggression, for the political path is separate from the situation of the resistance [Hezbollah]”.
Lebanon’s new leaders have promised to ensure Israel withdraws from every centimetre of southern Lebanon and to rebuild its destroyed homes and villages in what analysts believe is an effort at extending a hand to the Shia community.
Hezbollah is under pressure from its constituencies in the south, the Bekaa Valley and Dahiyeh to rebuild their homes and lives. For that, analysts said, Lebanon will need international aid. This could lead Hezbollah to accept the new political direction for Lebanon for the time being.
“Either [Hezbollah] allows the rebuilding to happen in a way that is state-led and has sufficient legitimacy from [Arab] Gulf donors who are willing to put their money in, or it’s not going to happen,” Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, said.
And there are indications that, despite the rhetoric from some, Hezbollah may be open to a more conciliatory path, at least in the short term.
“The important thing is to rebuild state institutions, achieve political, financial and economic reform, implement the ceasefire agreement and follow up on the implementation of the Taif Agreement,” Qassem Kassir, a political analyst close to Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera, referring to the 1989 pact designed to end the 15-year Lebanese Civil War. “The issue of confronting the Israeli enemy is one of the priorities.”
New hope in Salam
The partnership of Aoun and Salam signals a shift away from the traditional blocs of political power in Lebanon as well as the billionaire prime minister profile of some of Salam’s predecessors, including Saad Hariri and current caretaker Premier Mikati.
Many Lebanese said Salam’s designation as prime minister in particular is a boon for the country and its hopes at reforms.
“I am very hopeful,” said Dalal Mawad, a Lebanese journalist and author who counts Salam as a mentor. “He embodies the justice and accountability and the rule of law that we want to see in Lebanon.”
“What we can say is that Nawaf Salam’s nomination definitely augurs well for the future of Lebanon,” Bitar said. “Most Lebanese are optimistic for the first time in a couple of decades or at least for the first time since 2019.”
Salam’s name first began to be circulated for the premiership shortly after the mass protests that broke out on October 17, 2019. He is widely seen as someone who, despite being from a prominent political family – his relatives include former Prime Ministers Saeb Salam and Tammam Salam – is outside the traditional political oligarchy.
In his first speech as prime minister-designate, Salam spoke about building “a modern, civil and just state”.
He also spoke about achieving “justice, security, progress and opportunities”.
He spoke specifically of justice for the victims of the August 4, 2020, Beirut port blast and the 2019 bank crisis when depositors were suddenly stripped of access to their money and no officials or banks were held accountable.
Lebanese media reported on Tuesday that the investigation into the blast, which had been derailed by Lebanese political groups including Hezbollah, would resume shortly.
Struggles ahead
Despite the focus of many on Hezbollah, all of Lebanon’s most powerful parties have taken advantage of the system to avoid accountability or block political agendas they oppose.
The next challenge for Aoun and Salam will be to deliver on their statements as they confront a political system built on sectarianism.
Lebanon’s sectarian system “necessitates new approaches”, Majed said, adding that Lebanon was in need of a monopoly on violence by state institutions and weapons and “a strategy to defend Lebanon from real Israeli hostilities”.
Under the current sectarian system, Lebanon is managed by a handful of political parties and leaders with deeply rooted support and control over the state’s institutions. These leaders, who span Lebanon’s religious sects, are accused of using these resources and their political power to build their patronage networks, holding people accountable to them rather than the state.
These powers have become entrenched in their positions and resistant to change.
“We need to make fundamental, structural reforms in Lebanon to the political system, and I do not know if that is doable,” Hilal Khashan, a political scientist at the American University of Beirut and former colleague of Salam’s, told Al Jazeera.
Appointing strong or new leaders in positions of power is not all that is needed to root out the deeply entrenched corruption and clientelism. Salam, for example, is not the first technocrat to take a prominent role in Lebanon.
“The difference is that, in the past, technocrats came to power when the political class wanted to procrastinate,” Houry said. “They were never brought in with any legitimacy, which depended on the political class, so they didn’t have the capacity or support to put in place most of their reforms.”
But today, the myriad crises in Lebanon mean the political class understands it has to let some reforms happen – even if it will likely continue to oppose systemic changes.
Salam and Aoun will have to tackle questions of economic stability, security and national dialogue without isolating any community and while managing foreign relations, including Israeli aggression. The series of issues to address is long and arduous.
Analysts, however, said Salam and Aoun have a unique opportunity. The collapse of the al-Assad regime, a constant meddler in Lebanese affairs, the weakening of Iran and the willingness of the international community to provide foreign aid and backing to Lebanon’s new leaders mean there is support for a reform agenda that wasn’t previously there.
Even with positive conditions, confronting the deeply entrenched and resilient Lebanese political class will still be a back-breaking endeavour. Many analysts said that despite their positivity over Salam’s appointment, they held doubts about whether anyone could uproot the Lebanese political system.
Still, Khashan said, Salam “is the right man for the period”.
China quietly mobilized thousands of fishing boats twice in recent weeks to form massive floating barriers of at least 200 miles long, showing a new level of coordination that could give Beijing more ways to impose control in contested seas.
The two recent operations unfolded largely unnoticed. An analysis of ship-tracking data by The New York Times reveals the scale and complexity of the maneuvers for the first time.
Last week, about 1,400 Chinese vessels abruptly dropped their usual fishing activities or sailed out of their home ports and congregated in the East China Sea. By Jan. 11, they had assembled into a rectangle stretching more than 200 miles. The formation was so dense that some approaching cargo ships appeared to skirt around them or had to zigzag through, ship-tracking data showed.
Ship formation on Jan. 11
Maritime and military experts said the maneuvers suggested that China was strengthening its maritime militia, which is made up of civilian fishing boats trained to join in military operations. They said the maneuvers show that Beijing can rapidly muster large numbers of the boats in disputed seas.
The Jan. 11 maneuver followed a similar operation last month, when about 2,000 Chinese fishing boats assembled in two long, parallel formations on Christmas Day in the East China Sea. Each stretched 290 miles long, about the distance from New York City to Buffalo, forming a reverse L shape, ship-position data indicates. The two gatherings, weeks apart in the same waters, suggested a coordinated effort, analysts said.
Ship formation on Dec. 25
The unusual formations were spotted by Jason Wang, the chief operating officer of ingeniSPACE, a company that analyzes data, and were independently confirmed by The Times using ship-location data provided by Starboard Maritime Intelligence.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘This is not right’,” he said, describing his response when he spotted the fishing boats on Christmas Day. “I mean I’ve seen like a couple hundred — let’s say high hundreds,” he said, referring to Chinese boats he has previously tracked, “but nothing of this scale or of this distinctive formation.”
In a conflict or crisis, for instance over Taiwan, China could mobilize tens of thousands of civilian ships, including fishing boats, to clog sea lanes and complicate military and supply operations of its opponents.
Chinese fishing boats would be too small to effectively enforce a blockade. But they could possibly obstruct movement by American warships, said Lonnie Henley, a former U.S. intelligence officer who has studied China’s maritime militia.
The masses of the smaller boats could also act “as missile and torpedo decoys, overwhelming radars or drone sensors with too many targets,” said Thomas Shugart, a former U.S. naval officer now at the Center for a New American Security.
Analysts tracking the ships were struck by the scale of the maneuvers, even given China’s record of mobilizing civilian boats, which has involved anchoring boats for weeks on contested reefs, for instance, to project Beijing’s claims in territorial disputes.
“The sight of that many vessels operating in concert is staggering,” said Mark Douglas, an analyst at Starboard, a company with offices in New Zealand and the United States. Mr. Douglas said that he and his colleagues had “never seen a formation of this size and discipline before.”
“The level of coordination to get that many vessels into a formation like this is significant,” he said.
The assembled boats held relatively steady positions, rather than sailing in patterns typical of fishing, such as paths that loop or go back and forth, analysts said. The ship-location data draws on navigation signals broadcast by the vessels.
The operations appeared to mark a bold step in China’s efforts to train fishing boats to gather en masse, in order to impede or monitor other countries’ ships, or to help Beijing assert its territorial claims by establishing a perimeter, said Mr. Wang of ingeniSPACE.
“They’re scaling up, and that scaling indicates their ability to do better command and control of civilian ships,” he said.
The Chinese government has not said anything publicly about the fishing boats’ activities. The ship-signals data appeared to be reliable and not “spoofed” — that is, manipulated to create false impressions of the boats’ locations — Mr. Wang and Mr. Douglas both said.
Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, when approached by The Times with these findings, confirmed that they had observed the same packs of boats with their own ship-location analysis.
“They are almost certainly not fishing, and I can’t think of any explanation that isn’t state-directed,” Gregory Poling, the director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at C.S.I.S., wrote in emailed comments.
The fishing boats assembled in the East China Sea, near major shipping lanes that branch out from Shanghai, among the world’s busiest ports. Cargo ships crisscross the sea daily, including ones carrying Chinese exports to the United States.
These are maritime arteries that China would seek to control in a clash with the United States or its Asian allies, including in a possible crisis over Taiwan, the island-democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.
“My best guess is this was an exercise to see how the civilians would do if told to muster at scale in a future contingency, perhaps in support of quarantine, blockade, or other pressure tactics against Taiwan,” Mr. Poling wrote. A “quarantine” means a sea operation to seal off an area that is meant to fall short of an act of war.
The boat maneuvers in January took place shortly after Beijing held two days of military exercises around Taiwan, including practicing naval maneuvers to blockade the island. Beijing is also in a bitter dispute with Japan over its support for Taiwan.
The fishing boat operations could have been held to signal “opposition to Japan” or practice for possible confrontations with Japan or Taiwan, said Andrew S. Erickson, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College who studies China’s maritime activities. He noted that he spoke for himself, not for his college or the navy.
Japan’s Ministry of Defense and coast guard both declined to comment on the Chinese fishing boats, citing the need to protect their information-gathering capabilities.
Some of the fishing boats had taken part in previous maritime militia activities or belonged to fishing fleets known to be involved in militia activities, based on a scan of Chinese state media reports. China does not publish the names of most vessels in its maritime militia, making it difficult to identify the status of the boats involved.
But the tight coordination of the boats showed it was probably “an at-sea mobilization and exercise of maritime militia forces,” Professor Erickson said.
China has in recent years used maritime militia fishing boats in dozens or even hundreds to support its navy, sometimes by swarming, maneuvering dangerously close, and physically bumping other boats in disputes with other countries.
The recent massing of boats appeared to show that maritime militia units are becoming more organized and better equipped with navigation and communications technology.
“It does mark an improvement in their ability to marshal and control a large number of militia vessels,” said Mr. Henley, the former U.S. intelligence officer, who is now a non-resident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. “That’s one of the main challenges to making the maritime militia a useful tool for either combat support or sovereignty protection.”
Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from Seoul and Javier C. Hernández and Kiuko Notoya contributed reporting from Tokyo.
Data source: Starboard Maritime Intelligence.
About the data: We analyzed automatic identification systems (AIS) data of ships that broadcast positions near the formation in the 24-hour periods of Dec. 25, 2025 and Jan. 11, 2026 that either follow China’s fishing ship naming convention or are registered as China-flagged fishing vessels. Ships do not always transmit information and may transmit incorrect information. The positions shown in maps are last known positions at the specific times.
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Exiled Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi unveiled Friday a 6-step plan to exert pressure on the regime, which he declared “will fall, not if, but when.”
“My brave compatriots still holding the line with their broken bodies but unbreakable will, need your urgent help right now. Make no mistake, however, the Islamic Republic is close to collapse,” Pahlavi declared.
“Ali Khamenei and his thugs know this. That’s why they are lashing out like a wounded animal, desperate to cling to power,” he continued. “The people have not retreated. Their determination has made one thing clear. They are not merely rejecting this regime. They are demanding a credible new path forward. They have called for me to lead.”
Pahlavi said he has a comprehensive plan for an orderly transition and asked the international community to do six things, starting with protecting the Iranian people “by degrading the regime’s repressive capacity, including targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard leadership and its command-and-control infrastructure.”
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Exiled Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi speaks during a news conference on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
“Second, deliver and sustain maximum economic pressure on the regime, block their assets worldwide, target and dismantle their fleet of ghost [oil] tankers,” he said.
“Third, break through the regime’s information blockade by enabling unrestricted internet access. Deploy Starlink and other secure communications tools widely across Iran and conduct cyber operations to disable the regime’s ability to shut down the internet. Fourth, hold the regime accountable by expelling its diplomats from your capitals and pursue legal enforcement actions against those responsible for crimes against humanity,” Pahlavi continued.
“Fifth, demand the immediate release of all political prisoners. Six, prepare for a democratic transition in Iran by committing to recognize a legitimate transitional government when the moment comes,” he concluded.
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Iranian demonstrators gather in a street during a protest over the collapse of the currency’s value, in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 8, 2026. (Stringer/WANA/Reuters)
Pahlavi’s remarks came as President Donald Trump seemed to remain ambivalent about the possibility of Pahlavi taking over the country if the Islamic regime were to fall.
“He seems very nice, but I don’t know how he’d play within his own country,” Trump told Reuters during an interview on Wednesday. “And we really aren’t up to that point yet.
“I don’t know whether or not his country would accept his leadership, and certainly if they would, that would be fine with me,” he added.
When Pahlavi was asked Friday by a reporter about how he plans to win Trump over, he said, “President Trump has said that it’s up to the Iranian people to decide, and I totally agree.”
President Donald Trump has yet to give exiled Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi the green light to lead if the regime in Iran falls. (Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images)
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“I’ve always said it’s for the Iranian people to decide. And I think the Iranian people have already demonstrated in great numbers who it is that they want them to lead to this transition,” he added. “So I’m confident that I have the support of my compatriot. And as for the international leaders to assess the fact on the ground and see who is capable of doing that. I believe I can, and I have the Iranian people’s support.”
Fox News Digital’s Rachel Wolf contributed to this report.
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