Time for Berri to lead Lebanon’s Shiites away from Iran

Hussain Abdul-Hussain | October 11, 2024

Lebanese army members patrol at the site of an Israeli air strike in Beirut, Lebanon, October 11, 2024. (REUTERS)

With Hassan Nasrallah gone, Hezbollah reeling and Iran’s grip weakening, the Lebanese have started crawling out of the woodwork. On Monday, a few oligarchs and a bloc of 31 lawmakers, out of 128, called for Lebanon’s war to be untied from the conflict in Gaza, for the enforcement of the constitution and UN Security Council resolutions that call for the disarming of Hezbollah, and for the revival of the 1949 truce between Lebanon and Israel. However, no change in Lebanese affairs can be as consequential as steering the Shiites, who have long served as the fodder for Hezbollah’s wars, away from Iran: enter Speaker Nabih Berri.

At 86, Berri has proven to be the savviest of all. He was first elected as speaker in 1992 and has held onto his position ever since, navigating a treacherous and ever-changing political landscape and winning reelection six times. Days before Nasrallah’s death, on Sept. 27, Berri said Lebanon would not stop warring without a ceasefire in Gaza. Days after Nasrallah’s death, Berri said Lebanon was ready for an unconditional ceasefire, dropping Gaza. When whatever was left of the Hezbollah leadership blamed him for changing positions, Berri claimed that Nasrallah himself had agreed to abandoning Gaza, a claim that some in America used — without any reasonable substantiation — to depict Nasrallah as having changed course and arguing that Israel took him out because it wanted to continue fighting.

Berri’s change prompted caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the leader of the Druze Walid Jumblatt to follow suit. The three said they agreed to an unconditional ceasefire and the enforcement of UNSC Resolution 1701, which stipulates disarming Hezbollah and deploying the Lebanese army to the south. Jumblatt later added to his demands the 1949 truce.

While Hezbollah remains a formidable militia that could beat the army if the army tried to disarm it, the Iran-backed militia has a fatal weak point. If all the non-Shiite Lebanese oligarchs and lawmakers demanded that it surrender its arms, keeping them would become increasingly untenable.

While Hezbollah remains a formidable militia that could beat the army, the Iran-backed militia has a fatal weak point

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

While Hezbollah’s armament will become difficult if Lebanon’s non-Shiites demand it, maintaining the militia would become impossible if the Shiites started joining the rest of the Lebanese in demanding that Hezbollah be disbanded.

Berri can play an instrumental role in leading the Shiites to join the rest of the Lebanese population, but being the shrewd politician he is, the speaker always hedges and rarely miscalculates or takes risks. For Berri — and with him his significant Shiite following — to abandon Hezbollah, world and Arab capitals, especially Washington, must offer guarantees that they will not reverse course and start making nice with Tehran midway. Global consistency in insisting that Hezbollah disarm is the surest way to win Berri over to the Lebanese side.

Should Berri decide to sign any statement that spells out that Hezbollah must surrender its arms to the Lebanese army, he could find a wealth of ideological justifications in the literature of the founder of his own party, Amal.

Sayyid Musa Al-Sadr, a charismatic and iconic Shiite cleric, cut his teeth in opposing “resistance,” which at the time was a word that described armed Palestinian militias attacking Israel from Lebanon’s predominantly Shiite south.

“Our problem is the launching of rockets and bombs at Israel from the south,” Al-Sadr said, shortly before he disappeared in Libya in 1978. Launching attacks on Israel was “absolutely not permitted,” he argued, because it meant that “Lebanon (would be) in a state of war with Israel.” When the interviewer challenged him by saying that Lebanon was already at war with Israel, Al-Sadr retorted: “No. We have a truce that was signed between us and Israel until further notice.”

Berri could find a wealth of ideological justifications in the literature of the founder of his own party, Amal

Hussain Abdul-Hussain

If Al-Sadr, the founder of Berri’s Amal Movement, opposed launching cross-border attacks into Israel and demanded that the 1949 truce between the two countries be observed, just like Jumblatt and the opposition bloc are now doing, then there is no reason why Berri should not follow Al-Sadr’s antiwar vision and policy.

Until it was disbanded, alongside all civil war militias except for Hezbollah, Berri’s Amal militia often clashed with Hezbollah. Berri then transformed himself into a statesman, while Hezbollah stayed out of politics and focused on war until Lebanon ejected Syria’s troops from the country in 2005. Starting in 2008, Nasrallah took over as the ruler of Lebanon and Berri was relegated to the status of “junior partner,” often serving as a communication channel between the world and the Iran-backed militia.

But now is the time for Berri to come back and assume the leadership of the Shiites, help dissociate them from Islamist Iran and renew their allegiance to Lebanon and its constitution.

The aging speaker might not have much time left on this Earth, but if he does Lebanon and its Shiites this one last favor, history will remember him favorably.

• Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).