The Trump administration has approved $230 million worth of military and security aid for Lebanon as it’s pushing the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah, Reuters reported on Friday.
The Hill reported that the US sent $230 million on September 30 as a last-minute action before the government shutdown so the funds wouldn’t expire. “It’s not a huge amount, but for a small country like Lebanon, that’s really significant,” a congressional aide told reporters on October 1.
A Lebanese source told Reuters that $190 million will go toward the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and $40 million is for the Internal Security Forces. On September 10, the US Department of War announced a $14 million weapons package for the LAF that it said would help “dismantle weapons caches and military infrastructure of non-state groups, including Hezbollah.”
In an interview released on September 22, Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey, who has also been involved in talks with Lebanon, said that the US was arming the LAF so it could fight its own people.
“We’re going to arm them so they can fight Israel? I don’t think so,” Barrack told The National. “So you’re arming them so they can fight their own people, Hezbollah. Hezbollah is our enemy. Iran is our enemy.”
Barrack’s comments came as critics of the US policy in Lebanon have been warning that the push to disarm Hezbollah could lead to a civil war. The US has also continued to strongly back Israel’s action in Lebanon, even though it has flagrantly violated the ceasefire deal signed in November 2024 and continues to conduct near-daily strikes. Since the truce deal was signed, Israel has killed hundreds of people in southern Lebanon, including at least 103 civilians.
Israel has continued to bomb Lebanon even after the Lebanese government said it agreed to the US and Israeli demand to disarm Hezbollah. In late August, two Lebanese soldiers were killed when a crashed Israeli drone they were investigating in southern Lebanon exploded. A few weeks earlier, six Lebanese soldiers were killed in an explosion while working to dismantle an arms depot in southern Lebanon that was believed to have previously belonged to Hezbollah.
