U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee offered a blunt solution Wednesday to one of the Middle East’s most intractable problems: deport every member of Hezbollah and Hamas to Iran.
“Iran demands Israel cease defense of border against Hezbollah. Gaza peace plan depends on Hamas disarming,” Huckabee posted on X. “Idea: EVERY member of Hezbollah & Hamas DEPORT to ‘Mothership’ in Iran. Result? Lebanon & Israel free from Iran terror proxies. Give PEACE a chance!”
Iran demands @Israel cease defense of border against Hezbollah. Gaza peace plan depends on Hamas disarming. Idea: EVERY member of Hezbollah & Hamas DEPORT to "Mothership" in Iran. Result? Lebanon & Israel free from Iran terror proxies. Give PEACE a chance!
— Ambassador Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) June 17, 2026
The proposal, characteristically direct, cuts to the heart of a dynamic that has destabilized the Levant for decades — both Hamas and Hezbollah are, in the most meaningful sense, Iranian instruments. The Congressional Research Service has documented that Iran’s support for regional armed groups has been “a pillar of the Iranian government’s foreign policy since the 1979 founding of the Islamic Republic,” coordinated through the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The State Department estimates Iran provides up to $100 million annually to Palestinian terrorist groups including Hamas, while Hezbollah — Iran’s most powerful proxy — receives the bulk of its “funding, training, weapons, and explosives” directly from Tehran.
Huckabee’s quip lands against a backdrop of renewed diplomatic activity. Reports of a possible Israeli-Lebanese rapprochement have emerged in recent weeks, raising cautious hopes that Lebanon might finally escape the orbit of Iranian influence. But history counsels skepticism. Lebanon’s sovereignty has been hollowed out twice over — first by the PLO following the 1969 Cairo Accord, which turned southern Lebanon into a launchpad for attacks on Israeli civilians and helped ignite the catastrophic civil war that killed roughly 150,000 people, and then by Hezbollah, which filled the vacuum left after Israel’s 1982 war forced the PLO terrorist Yasser Arafat into Tunisian exile.
By 2023, Hezbollah’s arsenal had grown to over 150,000 rockets, dwarfing the Lebanese army it nominally coexists with. Its financial corruption has metastasized through Lebanon’s banking sector, contributing to what the World Bank describes as one of the most severe economic depressions globally since the mid-19th century. The Lebanese pound, pegged at 1,507 to the dollar for two decades, had lost over 98% of its value.
The human cost of Iran’s proxy strategy was underscored when 92 retired U.S. generals and admirals published an open letter on the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas massacre of over 1,200 Israelis, warning that “Iran’s reign of terror transcends boundaries” and that “October 7 is not an isolated incident, but one front in a much larger global civilizational struggle.”
Huckabee’s “Mothership” proposal won’t appear in any formal peace framework. But its underlying logic — that sustainable peace in Lebanon and Gaza requires severing, not managing, Iran’s grip on its proxies — reflects a growing consensus among U.S. and Israeli strategists that half-measures have consistently failed.
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