Amassed Defeats Do Not Make a Victory

In the midst of the great transformations sweeping the region, the Lebanese front appears to be the only one still waiting for the final picture of what is unfolding between the United States and Iran to come into focus. The agreement that halted the war machine and redrew the lines of regional confrontation has yet to reveal the full extent of its repercussions on Lebanon, while the Lebanese watch and wait for the coming days to disclose which direction the forces bound to the Iranian project will take, after long years of wagers, wars and ventures.

It is true that the ceasefire represents a gain for all Lebanese, after the country paid an exorbitant price in lives, economic resources, infrastructure and social cohesion. Yet this development cannot turn back the clock, nor erase the catastrophic consequences the war has left in its wake. Every party today seeks to present itself as the victor, but the question that matters to the Lebanese is not who won and who lost — it is what the Lebanese State has gained, and where are the achievements that consolidate legitimacy, institutions and national sovereignty.

The war was, in its essence, a confrontation between the United States and Israel on one side, and Iran and its military proxies in the region on the other. The Lebanese State was neither a partner in the decision to go to war nor in the decision to end it; it played no role in defining the objectives of the confrontation or in managing its course. And yet it will bear the full weight of its consequences — politically, in security terms, economically, financially and in terms of its built environment. On the legal and constitutional level, no war, no settlement and no regional arrangement can alter by a single word the decisions issued by Lebanon's constitutional institutions.

The war began on an Iranian decision and ended, in practice, on an Iranian decision. Hezbollah has never concealed its doctrinal, political, military and financial allegiance to Tehran, just as its leaders have never hidden their subordination to decisions emanating from the Iranian leadership. The repeated declarations of Iranian officials serve only to confirm the nature of this relationship, which goes far beyond political support to reach the level of an organic fusion with the Iranian project in the region.

But whatever shifts the regional conjuncture may bring, a fundamental reality remains that cannot be circumvented: military and political developments cannot annul the decisions of the Lebanese government. A governmental decision can only be revoked by a governmental decision; one form of legitimacy cannot simply be substituted for another; the State does not fall to the benefit of any organization, party or militia, however extensive its influence may be.

It is from this standpoint that the official Lebanese position remains unambiguously clear: any weapon not subject to the authority of the State and its legitimate military and security forces is an illegal weapon, and any attempt to confer legal status upon it remains a violation of the very concept of statehood, of sovereignty, and of the provisions of the Constitution and the laws in force.

Even if Iran contributed, directly or indirectly, to bringing about the ceasefire, it did so in pursuit of its own interests and its own strategy, not out of any concern for Lebanese interests. States act according to their calculations, and Iran is no exception. The Lebanese interest can only be defined by the Lebanese themselves, through their legitimate constitutional institutions.

It must also be recalled that the sole representative of Lebanon in any negotiation concerning its future, its sovereignty and its borders is the Lebanese State alone. Negotiating on behalf of Iranian interests or defending them is a matter that concerns Tehran. The President of the Republic has affirmed repeatedly that the State is the sole reference point in managing the country's major national affairs, and that all Lebanese are children of the Lebanese State and not of any external project or regional axis.

The era of political and military mandates is over, and the illusions of tutelage that sought to control the Lebanese decision for long decades have collapsed. What the region is witnessing today — this redrawing of balances — confirms that it is States that endure, while cross-border projects recede, however powerful they may have appeared at any given moment.

Before some rush to proclaim victory, it is worth pausing over facts rather than slogans. The data circulating about the American-Iranian agreement does not suggest a triumph for the Iranian axis; it points rather to a significant strategic retreat that could have direct repercussions on Hezbollah and on all the arms linked to Tehran.

If the circulating data proves accurate, Iran will have been compelled to abandon one of the most prominent objectives of its strategic project — namely, the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon or approach its threshold — by accepting strict restrictions on its uranium enrichment operations. It will also have stepped back from using the Strait of Hormuz as a permanent pressure lever on the international community, allowing navigation there to resume its normal course without securing the political and financial gains it had long sought.

The most sensitive loss, however, lies in the tightening of the financial stranglehold around the funding of its military proxies in the region. For the fundamental problem facing these organizations is not one of political or media discourse, but of their ability to preserve the sources of financing, armament and recruitment that have, for decades, constituted the essential spring of their power.

In the Lebanese case specifically, the picture appears even more severe. The war produced no new liberation of territory, did not alter the balance of forces; it left behind ruined villages, tens of thousands of displaced persons, immense human and material losses, and an unprecedented exhaustion of Hezb's military and logistical structure. Any objective reading of the results makes it difficult to speak of victory, while the realities of the field, the economy and the social fabric point, before anyone else, to Hezbollah's own support base as the first to have paid this exorbitant price.

The picture thus more closely resembles an attempt to repackage defeat as victory, and a search for exits that save face after years of wagers that ended in a shrinking of Iranian influence across multiple arenas, rather than the expansion that was so widely trumpeted.

The most important question remains open: what place does Lebanon occupy in all these transformations? Where does it stand in the new Middle East that is taking shape? What are its ties with the Arab Gulf states? How will it build its partnerships with Turkey, the Arab world and the international community? Will it become once again a normal state, capitalizing on its geographical position, its openness and the energies of its people — or will it remain hostage to the projects of others and their conflicts?

Lebanon's future begins on the day when the decision of war and peace becomes a purely Lebanese decision, when the State has recovered full authority over its territory and its institutions, and when all have understood that legitimacy is indivisible, that the State alone is destined to endure — and that militias, however long they persist, are condemned to disappear.