The State Department is denying that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday described Hezbollah as a legitimate actor in the Lebanese government, after the secretary’s comments drew harsh criticism from regional experts.
Tillerson told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. had to “acknowledge the reality” that Hezbollah is “part of the political process in Lebanon.” A State Department spokesman told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Tillerson, in that remark, was “absolutely not” accepting Hezbollah as a legitimate political actor. The U.S. regards Hezbollah as a terror organization.
The State Department referred TWS to a Thursday press conference with the Lebanese prime minister, where Tillerson affirmed Hezbollah’s status as a terror group and said that the U.S. does not accept “any distinction” between Hezbollah’s “political and military arms.”
“It is unacceptable for a militia like Hezbollah to operate outside the authority of the Lebanese Government,” he said. “The only legitimate defender of the Lebanese state is the Lebanese Armed Forces.”
But Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that Tillerson’s statements throughout the week exemplified the “contradictions” inherent in U.S. policy toward Lebanon.
“The United States is confronted with a major question: you are supporting a government that is dominated by Hezbollah, which includes Hezbollah,” he said. “You are giving U.S. taxpayer money to institutions that are at least in part loyal to Hezbollah.”
The heart of the paradox, he said, lies in drawing a distinction between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government—despite the dominance of Hezbollah inside that government.
“If you’re asking the Lebanese government to do something, and it has Hezbollah in it, then how are you expecting them to do it?” said Badran. “The policy of supporting this government is a policy, de facto, of supporting Hezbollah.”
Tillerson’s Wednesday comment about Hezbollah’s role in the Lebanese political process earned warnings on and off Capitol Hill.
“If what he means by that is that we should accept them as a legitimate actor, I have a problem with it,” Florida senator Marco Rubio said early Thursday. “If by acknowledgment he means that we need to acknowledge they play a role in Lebanese politics today—that would be like acknowledging that Russia has troops in Syria, but we don’t necessarily support that, or that they’ve invaded Ukraine, but we don’t support it.”
