Once more Naim Qassem was in front of the cameras on Al-Manar television and replied again, no. The Hezbollah secretary-general rejected in his Friday speech the framework agreement that the Lebanese capital Beirut and Jerusalem reached under U.S. mediation, saying it was "illegitimate, unlawful, humiliating" and that it must be withdrawn. This wasn't his first time saying it. That's not going to be its final one. But the repetition is the story, a leader who has sunk in as the terrain below his feet is continually shifting.

It's been almost six months since Hezbollah attacked across the border in Lebanon in March 2 and dragged the small nation into the larger conflict that had engulfed Gaza and, briefly, Iran. By any standards, Israel's response was swift and ferocious: heavy air raids, a ground invasion and, according to the Lebanese government, more than 4,300 casualties. The period that followed was a diplomatic marathon, to say the least: seven rounds of talks, a memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran on the generalities of the conflict, and last but not least a framework deal that will see Israel withdraw from “pilot sites” in southern Lebanon in exchange for Hezbollah disarming and allowing the Lebanese army to be brought to these so-called zones.

Qassem will have not of it. He spurns the pilot zones, the verification process designed to ensure that Hezbollah weapons are abandoned, and that his fighters "won't surrender. Language is carefully selected: After a war that has taken a heavy toll on Hezbollah's top brass and a significant portion of its arsenal, the word “surrender” is one that the group can't afford to have associated with its name. If anything has altered on the battlefield, the political stance hasn't: Qassem is still selling resilience to a base that has paid an unparalleled price for the battle.

But the problem with Beirut is that being rejected by Hezbollah doesn't cancel out the deal. The framework, signed by the Lebanese state, not Hezbollah, and the Lebanese cabinet that has already mandated its own army to draft a disarmament road map under the Americans' auspices. But Qassem's answer has been, Hezbollah will regard that as if it never happened and dare the state to act on that. A government that is constrained by an agreement which its most potent armed wing refuses to accept, rather than any isolated speech, is the true split at the heart of this narrative.

Earlier this month, there was some progress in discussions on paper in Rome. The shortlist of countries that could be responsible for the pilot-zone process included the process reportedly agreed upon, and these also would be the ones that would supervise the Lebanese army as it breaks up any Hezbollah infrastructure that remains in areas under the pilot process. That same round, however, fell apart early, as a new escalation in the south took place, and a second round is scheduled for early September with no definite date.

On the ground the ceasefire is a ceasefire in name, more than in deed. Israeli strikes, artillery fire and demolitions have been documented in southern villages by Lebanon's state news agency during the same week Qassem was speaking, around Nabatieh. Israeli forces still occupy a security zone extending about 10 kilometers into Lebanese territory, and Jerusalem has indicated that it has no need to withdraw further ahead of the disarmament of Hezbollah, which has yet to be proven by an independent mechanism a chicken-and-egg impasse that has effectively stalled arguably the most significant aspect of the agreement.

In this, time is of the essence beyond war. Israel is facing an election in October and officials in Beirut privately complain that Jerusalem is dribbling out of withdrawal until after that vote has been taken, fearing a political price to any premature pullback. Patience has become scarce in Lebanon as well, as it is a country which has now faced a security crisis and an economic collapse that predated the war by a half-decade.

The numbers share the reason for the duration of patience. The World Bank estimated that the damage amounted to approximately $14 billion, of which $6.8 billion was for physical destruction and $7.2 billion was for economic activity. Housing alone took $4.6 billion while tourism, a major sector of the Lebanese economy, suffered a $3.6 billion loss. The estimated reconstruction cost is $11 billion, which Lebanon can't come up with on its own as its economy has already shrank by nearly 40 percent since 2019. The World Bank approved an initial tranche of $250 million to help rebuild critical infrastructure, which is just a portion of what is needed and hinges, implicitly, on the level of stability Qassem's speech makes more difficult to ensure.

All of this is on the top of a bigger regional calculation. The disarmament issue remains unresolved every month is a month in which investors, shipping companies and multilateral lenders take into account risk premiums when considering anything associated with the Levant. Money from the Gulf, which would otherwise be going towards Lebanon's reconstruction, remains parked on the sidelines, waiting for a reassuring sign that security is not provisional but permanent. Iran, meanwhile, has its own interest in ensuring Hezbollah has some ability to stay a player in the region, and has seen its own capacity to support Hezbollah shrinking since the broader war.