Who holds power and who gets left out

A stakeholder analysis of the June 26 framework reveals a negotiation table that includes state actors and armed groups but excludes the population most directly affected by the outcome. The United States and Israel occupy the highest leverage positions as broker and occupying power, respectively, while Joseph Aoun’s government holds diplomatic authority but limited coercive capacity. Hezbollah, though the object of the disarmament condition, retains military power and political legitimacy contested by its opponents. The stakeholder map identifies three parties with significant stakes that sit entirely outside the negotiating structure: displaced southern residents, whose return is the explicit goal of the deployment; Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which a Lebanese official told UPI “may have taken control of Hezbollah’s decision-making”; and U.S. commercial airlines, whose resumed routes serve as a visible symbol of normalized relations. Also absent are Hezbollah’s rank-and-file constituency — the people whose security calculus the resistance paradigm claims to represent but who have no direct voice in whether disarmament occurs.

The displaced population carries the highest humanitarian claim and the least influence. No party represents them in the framework’s conditional sequences. Their return depends on Israeli withdrawal, Hezbollah’s acceptance of disarmament, and Iran’s forbearance from ordering a strike — conditions whose simultaneous satisfaction the framework’s own structure makes improbable.

The IRGC’s position is particularly consequential because its coercive power over Hezbollah makes it a de facto decision-maker on the question that could collapse the entire framework: whether to resume firing on Israel. The unnamed Lebanese official warned that if the IRGC orders a strike, Israeli retaliation would be “catastrophic” for Lebanon, causing “more destruction, casualties, and the occupation of additional territory.” The IRGC is not a signatory to the June 26 agreement, has no stake in its success, and faces incentives tied to the broader U.S.-Iran conflict rather than to Lebanon’s territorial recovery. Multiple independent reporting corroborates the trajectory: Reuters documented in March 2026 that the IRGC “rebuilt Hezbollah’s military command” after the 2024 war with Israel, “plugging gaps with Iranian officers” before restructuring the group, while the Washington Institute recorded “deeper, more direct oversight by Iran’s own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” The paradox is structural: the weapons whose presence the resistance paradigm treats as sovereignty’s guarantee are the same weapons whose use would destroy what sovereignty remains.

Three visions of sovereignty

The competing worldviews at work in southern Lebanon can be organized into three paradigms, each making demands that no single settlement can satisfy simultaneously.

The state-sovereignty vision, voiced by President Aoun and retired Brig. Gen. Ziad al-Hashem, assumes that sovereignty means territorial control exercised by a state holding a monopoly on legitimate force. Al-Hashem called the Zawtar al-Gharbieh deployment a “historic achievement” because it marked the first time territory had been recovered “through diplomatic means rather than force.” Under this vision, Hezbollah’s armed presence in the south is an obstacle to sovereignty, and disarmament is the necessary condition for Israeli withdrawal. Aoun framed Israeli withdrawal from occupied parts of southern Lebanon as an “essential step” toward consolidating Lebanon’s sovereignty and stability.

The resistance-sovereignty vision, articulated by Hezbollah officials and supported by Lob’s analysis, treats armed capacity as the essential guarantee of protection when the state cannot defend its territory. Hezbollah officials criticized the deployment by arguing that Zawtar al-Gharbieh “had not been occupied” — a claim that, within this vision, makes the deployment a performative gesture serving state legitimacy rather than a tangible security gain. Lob told UPI that even after being degraded, Hezbollah has “reverted to operating more as a guerrilla force” and, watching Gaza, concluded “there’s just no way we can disarm.” In this paradigm, disarmament is not merely refused: it is conceptually impossible because the state’s inability to prevent Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon — Israeli troops have repeatedly entered and withdrawn for tactical reasons, as al-Hashem acknowledged — means the resistance’s armed presence is the sovereignty the state cannot provide.

The great-power-guarantee vision, encoded in the June 26 framework itself, treats sovereignty as something underwritten by a powerful patron. The framework conditions Israeli withdrawal on Hezbollah disarmament, puts implementation under “specialized U.S. military teams,” and wraps the process in a White House incentive package that includes military assistance, resumed commercial flights, and increased investment. Aoun’s visit to Washington — the first by a Lebanese head of state since 2009 — was the diplomatic toll. Al-Hashem acknowledged the bind: “bringing more territory under Lebanese sovereignty is very important, while keeping Lebanon linked to the U.S.-Iran track is very dangerous for the country.” The great-power vision works only if the guarantor maintains its willingness to restrain Israel and fund reconstruction — both uncertain over time. Lob noted that Washington is playing “a big role” in restraining Israel, but that whether that restraint continues is uncertain.

Where the paradigms do and do not meet

The three visions overlap only in rejecting the others’ definition of success. The state-sovereignty paradigm needs disarmament; the resistance paradigm needs weapons; the great-power paradigm needs compliance benchmarks that depend on behaviors neither other paradigm will accept. The vocabulary of the framework — “phased withdrawal,” “conditionality,” “compliance” — makes sense only within the great-power vision. Hezbollah and Iran “continue to insist on linking Lebanon’s negotiations to the suspended U.S.-Iran talks,” a demand the framework treats as obstruction but their own worldview treats as structural realism.

Al-Hashem proposed a containment strategy that would immobilize Hezbollah’s weapons “without triggering a confrontation” by “simply keeping them in depots and preventing them from being moved.” This formulation borrows from the great-power vision (supervision, immobilization) and accepts the state-sovereignty vision’s goal (Hezbollah’s weapons neutralized) but says nothing about ownership. Lob’s analysis suggests the group has preserved the option to rearm and resume guerrilla operations, meaning the resistance paradigm might accept the depot as a pause but not as a permanent loss of capacity.

The deepest incommensurability lies at the core of the framework: “disarmament” means permanent removal of weapons to one side, and suspension of activity to the other. No term in the June 26 agreement can satisfy both definitions simultaneously.

What the framework asks Lebanon to hold together

For the framework to succeed, three conditions must hold at once: the United States must continue restraining Israel; Hezbollah must tolerate containment that falls short of disarmament; and Iran must refrain from ordering an IRGC-controlled strike that would trigger a catastrophic Israeli response. Each condition depends on the others, and each contradicts the framework’s own conditional logic. Al-Hashem warned that if the Lebanese government fails to fulfill commitments, Israel would gain “a pretext to resume attacks, destroy more villages, and abandon the accord.” The first condition — U.S. restraint of Israel — is itself conditional on Hezbollah disarmament, the second condition’s unworkable requirement. The loop has no entry point.

Several parties with direct operational relevance are absent from the framework’s public account. UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force stationed in southern Lebanon, is unmentioned despite its monitoring and observer mandate. European donors and Gulf states, whose reconstruction funding the framework’s success would require, are unnamed; the agreement’s economic dimension presupposes financing that no one has committed.

The July 24 deployment purchased a symbolic victory at the price of making the underlying contradictions visible. The state-sovereignty vision cannot deliver reconstruction and displaced return fast enough to outpace the resistance paradigm’s patience, and the great-power guarantee will not outlast its own fragility — a second administration, a shifting Middle East priority, an Israeli decision to bypass U.S. restraint. The question that remains is whether the residents of southern Lebanon can achieve any outcome from a negotiation that never gave them a seat.

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

Root-Cause Analysis
Traces a symptom back along its causal chain to the conditions that actually generated it.
Stakeholder Mapping
Charts the parties to a situation — their interests, power, and alignments.
Worldview Cartography
Maps the clashing worldviews underlying a dispute.