Loosening Hezbollah’s Grip on Lebanon Begins at the Airport

Lebanon’s only commercial airport sits in the heart of a densely populated area of southern Beirut largely controlled by Hezbollah. The militant group has for years used it as a smuggling channel and a lever to assert its dominance in the country.

Now the country’s new government, with U.S. support, is trying to take it back.

Dozens of airport staffers suspected of being affiliated with Hezbollah have been removed, according to senior Lebanese security and military officials. Smugglers have been arrested and existing laws are now being enforced, Lebanon’s new prime minister said. Ground crews say they are no longer directed by superiors to exempt some planes and passengers from searches, while flights from Iran have been suspended since February. And the state is installing new surveillance technologies that will incorporate artificial intelligence, a senior security official said.

The overhaul is part of a broader effort to limit Hezbollah’s influence and revenue flows that have made it such a powerful force in the country.

“You can feel the difference,” Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We’re doing better on smuggling for the first time in the contemporary history of Lebanon.”

Lebanon, bordered by Israel and Syria, relies on Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport as its connection to the outside world. Hezbollah’s longstanding influence on the airport has left it vulnerable to attack from Israel, which has complained that Iran has used it to resupply Hezbollah with cash. Israel has also threatened flights it said were aimed at resupplying the Lebanese militant group.

The steps to take back the airport come as Lebanon’s army is making progress dismantling Hezbollah positions and weapons stockpiles in southern Lebanon, the core requirement in a cease-fire deal the country agreed to with Israel in November. That deal came about after a two-month Israeli campaign of intelligence operations, airstrikes and ground maneuvers that wiped out Hezbollah’s leadership and much of its arsenal. The fighting has killed thousands of Lebanese, according to the country’s Health Ministry.

The battering and the cease-fire have created an opening for the Lebanese government to reassert itself after years of Hezbollah holding sway. The country elected a new president earlier this year after obstruction by Hezbollah and it is building up its army in the hope of offsetting the group’s still formidable presence.

U.S. and Israeli military officials have expressed satisfaction with the Lebanese government’s actions to reduce Hezbollah’s control of ports of entry and its armaments in the south, though they say there is a lot of work to be done. U.S. officials say they are cautiously optimistic for more centralized state control under Lebanon’s new technocratic leadership, in an environment where Hezbollah is weakened and public dissent against the group is mounting.

“There is reason for hope here,” said a senior U.S. official who is part of the international committee overseeing the cease-fire. “It has only been six or seven months, and we have stepped to a place that I am not sure I thought was achievable back in November.”

Lebanese security recently foiled an attempt to smuggle more than 50 pounds of gold to Hezbollah through the airport, a senior security official said. Members of the militant group acknowledge they face new difficulties in using that gateway to bring in funds.

The group also lost its major arms smuggling routes, which ran from Iran through Syria, after Bashar al-Assad was toppled in December and replaced by a government hostile to Iran and Hezbollah.

Hezbollah is now struggling to fund commitments to rebuild property that was damaged during the fighting and care for the wounded, as well as rebuild militarily.

Despite the cease-fire, Israel has continued to strike at what it says are Hezbollah cadres and weapons caches. It has carried out hundreds of strikes on Lebanese territory under the truce, according to Unifil, the United Nations peacekeeping force in the country, and it still has troops stationed in several positions in the south. Unifil said it has recorded 19 instances of fire from Lebanon toward Israel while the accord has been in place.

“We have received very severe blows with the killing of our cadres, with the killing of our leadership, with the destruction of a lot of our arsenal,” said Ibrahim Mousawi, who represents Hezbollah in Lebanon’s parliament.

A drone hovered nearby as Mousawi spoke at an office in a building a mile from the airport, surrounded by high-rise buildings that have been turned into rubble and streets damaged by Israeli airstrikes. While acknowledging the damage, he said there are ways for Hezbollah’s military wing to rearm if it chooses. “Where there is a will, there is a way,” he said.

U.S. and Israeli military officials have expressed satisfaction with the Lebanese government’s actions to reduce Hezbollah’s control of ports of entry and its armaments in the south, though they say there is a lot of work to be done. U.S. officials say they are cautiously optimistic for more centralized state control under Lebanon’s new technocratic leadership, in an environment where Hezbollah is weakened and public dissent against the group is mounting.

From the air-traffic control tower at Beirut’s airport, staffers point out dots on the radar that lack identifying flight data. They assume them to be Israeli aircraft flying in Lebanese airspace, which has no effective air defenses.

During the intense bombardment last year, Israeli airstrikes hit buildings less than a mile from the airport, which was being used to bring in humanitarian aid as well as commercial flights. The airport itself wasn’t hit in the most recent fighting.

Before the government clampdown began this year, Hezbollah maintained outsize influence at the airport through sympathetic ground staff and a large bloc in parliament that allowed it to stonewall efforts at reform, the group’s domestic rivals say.

“It was a main port of entry for supporting whatever para-state activities were happening,” said Ghassan Hasbani, a former deputy prime minister and now a member of a Lebanese parliamentary bloc opposed to Hezbollah.

“It was a purposeful blind eye,” he said. “In the absence of international attention and pressure to do something about it, nothing much was done.”

Securing the airport is one of the government’s top priorities as it consolidates state control. In a key test in February, the military confronted Hezbollah supporters who blocked routes to the airport in protest at the refusal of Lebanese authorities to let an Iranian flight land. The intervention sparked a rare violent confrontation between the two camps.

“Can, today, the Lebanese government guarantee the full safety of any visitor to the airport and the roads leading up to it?” Hasbani said. “This is a litmus test, including for some countries to allow their citizens to travel to Lebanon or not.”

Hezbollah officials say perceptions of how much control they held over the airport were exaggerated. “We are part of the system, just like any other Lebanese constituency,” said Mousawi, the Hezbollah parliamentarian.

Salam, Lebanon’s prime minister, is promoting the planned opening of a second airport for commercial and cargo flights in northern Lebanon near the border of Syria, in an area outside of Hezbollah’s control. A second airport could aid economic development and provide an alternative should the Beirut airport get hit or shut down. Hezbollah had used its influence to keep it from being built, Salam said.

“They were the ones who did not want the Lebanese authorities to go for the airport,” he said. “Now things have changed.”