Hezbollah’s regional expansion is increasingly at odds with Lebanon’s sovereign interests and its attempts to distance itself from the Iranian-Arab conflict. The country was shaken in the last few months by two major incidents: one linked to the Nov. 4 resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri and another with the threats voiced on Dec. 8 by Iraqi militia leader Sheikh Qais al-Khazali against Israel on the southern border. Lebanon’s dilemma with Hezbollah’s growing military ambitions wields, interestingly, varied responses from Hezbollah’s support base.

Lebanon seems to have overcome, for now, a political crisis that shook the country last November, when Hariri announced his resignation as head of the government from the Saudi capital Riyadh. At the time, he issued a strong condemnation of Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group that is a member of the current 30-member national unity Cabinet.

Hariri’s resignation — shrouded in mystery after news circulated that he may have made it under coercion — was quickly overturned with the prime minister coming back to Lebanon and resuming his functions, on condition that Lebanon would stick with its policy of distancing itself from regional conflicts.

In 2015, then-Prime Minister Tammam Salam committed Lebanon to the dissociation policy and called for distancing Lebanon from the region's conflicts. In 2013, Hezbollah officially recognized its involvement alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in cracking down on a mostly Sunni insurgency.