Lebanon is split over a large cache of explosives seized at a checkpoint in Dahr el-Baydar, a location between the Bekaa Valley and the Mount Lebanon region. Lebanese officials said security forces stopped a minivan there on October 5 and found it carrying hundreds of kilos of explosive materials, including TNT and C-4.
On Thursday, Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah issued a statement saying the explosives belonged to the group. Hezbollah has demanded their return, as well as the release of the two people who were detained in the vehicle.
Hezbollah says the cache was meant for Israel
In his statement, Fadlallah said Hezbollah’s relevant bodies contacted the security and judicial agencies as soon as the vehicle was stopped. He said the group told them the vehicle and its cargo belonged to the resistance and asked for the detainees to be freed and the van and its contents returned.
Fadlallah said the materials were capabilities used to confront the Israeli occupation of “our land in the south [of Lebanon].” He stressed that they were meant for use against Israel, which still occupies large parts of southern Lebanon, and not against the Lebanese government or rival groups, despite suggestions to the contrary by some political figures and analysts.
He also warned Lebanese authorities about the consequences of what he described as escalating measures. Fadlallah said Hezbollah would defend its people’s rights and the means it uses against Israel, and would not accept being targeted by any party carrying out American demands against the group’s armed resistance.
Rivals fear the explosives could be turned on them
Many of Hezbollah’s political opponents fear the smuggled explosives could be used against the group’s critics. They point to the past, when they say the Iranian-backed group targeted political opponents in assassinations.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam noted that C-4 had been used in previous assassinations. However, he pointed out that investigators have not established that the seized shipment was intended for such an attack.
Hezbollah has never admitted carrying out assassinations, despite repeated accusations against it. Those accusations include the 2005 killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The disarmament dispute and the framework deal
The dispute builds on months of tension over the group’s weapons. On March 2, Hezbollah responded to ongoing Israeli attacks for the first time in more than a year, after the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In response, Salam and his government banned the group’s military activities.
Two Hezbollah ministers in Salam’s coalition government opposed that decision. The group has repeatedly ignored the government’s declaration by continuing to fight Israel.
Fighting has largely eased since June, when Beirut and Tel Aviv signed a trilateral framework agreement administered by the United States. Under the deal, pilot zones would be set up as part of a phased process. Israel would eventually withdraw its troops, and the Lebanese Army would move in to disarm Hezbollah.
The programme has run into problems from the start, according to locals, because Israel never had a presence in some of the areas included in the pilot zones. Israeli demolitions also continue in the parts of the south under its occupation.
The disagreement goes back further. Since the end of Lebanon’s civil war in 1990, Hezbollah has been the main Lebanese force to keep its weapons. That arrangement was framed as part of a national security formula, “the army, the people and the resistance,” aimed at opposing Israeli occupation, which lasted until 2000 and resumed in 2024, and aggression. At the same time, Syria exercised hegemony over the country.
That changed last year, when President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Salam took office. The Hezbollah-allied al-Assad regime in Damascus had just fallen, cutting off a major land route for weapons and financing from Tehran. Lebanon’s leaders then announced that all non-state weapons would come under state control.
Hezbollah opposed the new leaders’ decrees, but the Lebanese Army still moved to disarm Hezbollah sites in the south. Some opponents have described the group as weak and defeated. Analysts, however, say it still retains some fighting power and that Lebanon’s regional alliances may largely depend on events across the region.
Doubts over the investigation and security agencies
Lebanese officials have condemned the smuggling operations, and Salam has promised to investigate the incidents, particularly the Dahr el-Baydar case. Recent weeks have seen security forces uncover several other operations aimed at smuggling explosives.
“We will deal with weapons outside the legal framework with the required firmness,” Salam wrote on social media, adding that the government would not go easy on the investigation into those involved.
Issam Kayssi, a Beirut-based analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center, questioned Salam’s relationship with the Lebanese security apparatus. He noted that Lebanon has several security agencies, some with loyalties to different political figures or parties. Kayssi pointed to the Raouche incident, a 2025 Hezbollah event on Beirut’s seafront that commemorated the assassinations of the group’s late leaders, Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine. Hezbollah projected their likenesses onto Pigeon Rock despite a ban by the authorities, and Salam called for the arrest of those responsible. Security agents on site did not act to stop the projections. Observers fear that some elements of the security agencies may not fully cooperate with Salam in the explosives investigation he ordered.
Marcel Baloukji, a former brigadier general who oversaw the Lebanese Army’s border committee with Syria, told an interviewer that the recent busts, particularly Dahr el-Baydar, were linked to the wider regional situation. He cited the US-Israeli war on Iran and a recent escalation of violence between Yemen’s Houthis and Saudi Arabia. Baloukji suggested Hezbollah could be seeking to follow other pro-Iranian actors in the region by stepping up attacks on its adversaries, and added that it might need explosives for drones to target Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.
Baloukji described Salam’s relationship with the security agencies as “somewhat strained,” and said it could become another difficulty for a government already facing Israel’s occupation and its ongoing demolition of southern infrastructure. “Our situation remains in a state of prolonged limbo, with no solutions in sight,” Baloukji said. “The framework agreement is stalled and there is no resolution to de-escalate the situation in the south.”
