It is an undisputed fact that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard continues to maintain a strategic military relationship with Hezbollah, a military organization that Iran’s Revolutionary guard was instrumental in establishing 30 years ago. At that time Lebanon was still in the midst of a terrible civil war and southern Lebanon was under Israeli occupation. Today, 23 years after the end of the civil war and the disbanding of all other Lebanese militias, and 13 years after the liberation of the south from Israeli occupation (in which the Lebanese resistance played a crucial role), Hezbollah continues to maintain an independent and heavily armed military force outside the authority of the state. This is happening with the direct support and sponsorship of your country.

As we are sure you would agree, the presence of any armed militia in parallel to the legitimate armed forces of the state and operating outside the state’s control and political authority is not only in conflict with the Lebanese constitution, but also with the very definition of a sovereign state—any state. This is the case irrespective of the religious affiliations of such non-state militias or the causes they claim to champion.

Hezbollah’s insistence on maintaining an independent military organization, under the banner of “Islamic Resistance,” has been a major obstacle in the face of much-needed national efforts to strengthen state institutions and to put an end to the legacy of the civil war and the spread weapons throughout the country. This has, inevitably, also weakened Lebanon’s national unity and exposed the country to the widening sectarian fault lines in the region, and has contributed to the rise of religious extremism and militancy.