Trump push for Syrian intervention against Hezbollah ‘short-sighted’
Analysts say US president’s pressure on Damascus to intervene in Lebanon could undermine Syria’s domestic security and regional stability. Beirut, Lebanon – Sitting alongside his
Analysts say US president’s pressure on Damascus to intervene in Lebanon could undermine Syria’s domestic security and regional stability. Beirut, Lebanon – Sitting alongside his Lebanese counterpart, Joseph Aoun, at the White House on Tuesday, United States President Donald Trump repeated a suggestion that Syria could intervene in Lebanon to “do something with Hezbollah”. Despite widespread opposition, Trump has multiple times floated the idea that Syria, under new President Ahmed al-Sharaa, could militarily interfere in the neighbouring country, whose government has come under US and Israeli pressure to disarm the Iran-backed group. “[Al-Sharaa] would like to come in,” Trump claimed. “You know, they’ve been fighting. He’s been fighting Hezbollah for a long time. I think it’d be very effective. So it’s something I think about,” he said. But on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to downplay the prospect of an intervention. “The Syrian authorities are not big fans of Hezbollah, but what we’ve encouraged Syria to do is to focus on its own internal challenges that it has in building a nation state,” he told reporters. Hezbollah was a crucial ally of Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad before his removal in 2024 by fighters led by al-Sharaa. According to Bassel Doueik, a political and security researcher, a military intervention in Lebanon to help disarm Hezbollah “would be strategically counterproductive” for Syria’s new authorities, which have previously dismissed the proposal. “It would undermine establishing a stable relationship with the Lebanese state and could inadvertently strengthen Hezbollah’s domestic narrative.
Hezbollah would almost certainly portray any Syrian military action as foreign aggression, allowing the group to reframe the situation as a resistance defending Lebanese sovereignty. Such a move could rally support from anti-Hezbollah segments of the population.” Syrian animosity towards Hezbollah Syrian troops first entered Lebanon under Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, in 1976, during the early days of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). Syria occupied most of Lebanon (with the exception of the south, which was under Israeli occupation until 2000) for nearly 30 years, only pulling its troops out after widespread protests in 2005. When Syrians rose up against their own government in 2011, al-Assad responded with heavy-handed violence and suppression. After the opposition picked up weapons to fight back, Hezbollah intervened on behalf of al-Assad. This left deep resentment among many Syrians that remains to this day. Still, analysts believe that a Syrian intervention in Lebanon could incite regional sectarian tensions, risk dragging both countries back into war and disrupt Syria’s post-war state-building project. “A Syrian military return would reopen a deep wound in Lebanon’s political memory and provoke resistance even from communities that strongly oppose Hezbollah, because it would revive the experience of decades of Syrian control,” Nanar Hawach, International Crisis Group’s senior analyst on Syria, told Al Jazeera. “Regionally, it would cast doubt on Syria’s claim to have broken with past patterns of interference, while stretching a still‑fragile transition and risking turning Syria, again, into a theatre of a regional conflict,” said Hawach.
The BriefWire