In September, after a year of wrangling and amidst economic and fiscal crisis, a new governing coalition formed in Beirut, which gives Hizballah and its allies more clout than ever. A month later, the U.S. pledged $67 million in aid to the Lebanese military, along with other support. Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, has for at least a year made clear that he is willing to cooperate with Hizballah officials, so long as his country’s economic interests are served. And there’s more, writes Tony Badran:

The Biden administration is pushing to revive stalled maritime border-demarcation talks between Israel and Lebanon. The talks were set in motion in the final months of the Trump administration, with the misguided belief that Lebanon’s economic duress, and the promise of revenue from potential offshore gas, would quickly lead to a deal. Predictably, the talks came to a halt as the Lebanese expanded their demands by several hundred kilometers to lay claim to Israeli fields and territorial waters.

The fact that the Lebanese government, indeed the entire political order, is run by Hizballah, does not temper the administration’s vision. . . . Naturally, any potential future revenues from offshore gas, assuming whatever is found is commercially viable, would be available to Hizballah.

The Biden administration would like to see more than just energy companies invest in the Hizballah-run order in Lebanon. The Biden team, in tandem with Macron, has been pressing Saudi Arabia to do just that. Even after the kingdom publicly declared it wanted nothing to do with Lebanon, [a senior official] reiterated the administration’s call for the Gulf states to give “political and financial support.” In particular, the Biden administration wants the Saudis to fund the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and other security agencies.

The LAF represents the flip side of the administration’s fictional take on Lebanon. The false distinction between Hizballah and so-called “state institutions” serves as cover for injecting funds to stabilize the Hizballah-run order. The Saudis recognize this as an American fantasy and have brushed off these requests, in the recognition that they would only be propping up an Iranian satrapy.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.