It is not goodwill alone that compels a call for dialogue; weakness can also compel it. In most cases, a call for dialogue in the middle of a war is equivalent to conditional acceptance of ending it. This is precisely the case with Hezbollah in its two states of weakness: an assumed dialogue with Saudi Arabia, and a de facto ceasefire with Israel.

We can appreciate, then, the Secretary General of Hezbollah’s initiative to call for dialogue with Saudi Arabia, just as we can appreciate, as survivors of death, the moment that drove him to seek an end to the most recent war with Israel. But this appreciation, in both cases, necessarily assumes that Hezbollah is willingly submitting itself to the realities that ended the war, and that now compel a call for dialogue with Saudi Arabia.

Hezbollah exists, therefore, between two weaknesses, born of different circumstances but converging in the outcome of its last war. The weakness revealed in its call for dialogue with Saudi Arabia is imposed by the scenes of destruction in the South and in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and by the party’s inability—like that of the Lebanese state itself—to reconstruct and restore. In the perception of Sheikh Naim Qassem, Saudi Arabia is the primary actor capable of providing that reconstruction.

The other weakness is tied to the need to exit the war altogether, which in turn requires acceptance of the Lebanese state’s decision to monopolize arms, and thus Hezbollah’s acknowledgement that it is a component of the state rather than an adversary, or at best a force wielding a permanent veto against it.

Will Hezbollah take such a step? Most likely not. For when Sheikh Naim Qassem publicly calls for dialogue between Saudi Arabia and the “resistance,” he invokes a term whose very meaning constitutes the first obstacle for Saudi Arabia. He also disregards the fact that “the Saudis are already negotiating with a Lebanese state in which Hezbollah is implicitly included, and under conditions that have already been made public.”

One can understand, then, the reasons for the invitation while also recognizing that it exists between ambiguity and reality.

The call for dialogue with Saudi Arabia arises from a belated pragmatic awakening: a realistic recognition that the reconstruction of what the war destroyed is within Saudi capability and beyond Lebanese means. Yet the call also presumes that its sponsor does not forget that Saudi Arabia is a state deeply distrustful of Hezbollah. It also presumes his awareness that Saudi Arabia has its own conditions, conditions tied specifically to Hezbollah as an armed party. Sheikh Qassem himself, and Hezbollah’s media, had long described Saudi Arabia’s envoy to Lebanon (Yazid bin Farhan) as the foremost negative influence—before even the Americans and Israelis—in pushing for the monopolization of arms by the Lebanese state.

Saudi conditions, however, go well beyond Lebanon and its geography. They are tied above all to the kingdom’s security, which inevitably intersects with Hezbollah and its weapons. The Saudis will likely begin their list of conditions with the war in Yemen between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, in which Riyadh regards Hezbollah as a partner of Ansar Allah in threatening its security. This is layered atop a long history of hostility between the party and the kingdom. From this angle, one understands Saudi insistence on the disarmament of Hezbollah, whether through dialogue or otherwise.

Sheikh Qassem knows, of course, that his framing of dialogue with Saudi Arabia—beginning from the “resistance” as an unquestionable axiom—runs directly counter to a Saudi framing in which reconstruction funds are conditional upon Hezbollah’s disarmament.

It is unlikely, then, that Sheikh Qassem’s call today rests on an abundance of goodwill to meet Saudi Arabia’s position halfway—except perhaps…

The exception, as a gesture of goodwill, would arise from the mended relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It would assume that Tehran’s authority over Hezbollah and its weapons is what compelled the party’s Secretary General to extend a call for dialogue with Saudi Arabia. Such a move would mark a departure from the usual accusatory narrative that Saudi Arabia is simply backing a Lebanese state intent on disarming Hezbollah, and would come instead in a regional climate suggesting that everyone is seeking to avoid a wider regional war that only Benjamin Netanyahu seems to want.

Still, even this exception requires Sheikh Qassem, in calling on Saudi Arabia to dialogue with the “resistance,” to assume that the term “resistance” is stripped of its Lebanese and Iranian meanings.