Lebanon Breaks the Unity of Paths with Iran

The announcement of Lebanese-Israeli negotiations, with American participation, in Washington, amounts to no more than a first step along a long road that will pave the way for a definitive separation between the Iranian and Lebanese trajectories. It should likewise open the path, at least in principle, to a peace treaty between Lebanon and Israel modelled on the Egyptian-Israeli treaty of 1979 and the Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement of 1984.

What is now at stake is Lebanon's capacity to recover its autonomous decision-making and to dissociate it from Iranian tutelage, much as it once managed to sever the unity of path with Syria under the successive reigns of Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad. Both had wielded the slogan of "unity of path and destiny" with Lebanon as a bargaining chip in their dealings with Washington, and as a tool for perpetuating the state of neither-war-nor-peace that has so long defined the Middle East.

Will 2026 be the year in which the Cairo Agreement is finally buried? That accord, signed in 1969, lies at the very root of the Lebanese tragedy. It seems to have taken fifty-seven years of wars fought among Lebanese and wars fought by others on Lebanese soil for the country to rid itself, at long last, of that agreement and its lasting consequences.

What remains established, at least for now, is that Lebanon is firmly resolved, under the stewardship of President of the Republic Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, to reject any Iranian attempt to negotiate on its behalf. Lebanon is indeed seeking, through their efforts, to achieve a provisional ceasefire along the lines of the agreement that the "Islamic Republic" has reached with the United States; yet it is equally unwilling to find itself absorbed into the American-Iranian negotiations, which seem destined to fail, all the more so if Tehran clings to demands that admit of no realistic satisfaction.

Nothing compels Lebanon to go on paying the price for the ventures of an Iranian regime that has spared no effort to reduce it to one of its colonies. Tehran had even come, at a certain point, to regard Beirut as an Arab capital under its direct grip and as its window onto the Mediterranean, while South Lebanon had itself turned, in a similarly telling phase, into a mere post box between the "Islamic Republic" on the one hand and the Hebrew state on the other.

The time has long come to put an end to a farce that has gone on far too long. The unity of path between Lebanon and Iran is merely the counterpart of what the unity of path between Lebanon and Syria once was. The "Islamic Republic" clings to Lebanon as though it were the last card remaining to it in the region, even as it retains its grip on Iraq and on a portion of Yemen, where the Houthis now find themselves in a deepening predicament, dependent as they are on a Gulf Arab state to pay the salaries of civil servants in the territories they still control, including Sanaa.

Lebanon's move testifies to a remarkable political acumen, even if the first session of direct negotiations with Israel, expected shortly, will be largely ceremonial in character. It is worth noting that Israel's agreement to hold this session came twenty-four hours after the strikes it had carried out against various sites across Beirut, a way of asserting that it remains capable of intervening inside Lebanon and that it holds the reins of political decision in the country. Has Lebanon grasped the Israeli message, which means above all that the Hebrew state is determined to see through the destruction of Hezbollah to its conclusion, and that it contemplates no withdrawal from South Lebanon in the absence of a prior peace agreement?

The fundamental question, however, refuses to go away, for if the "Islamic Republic's" negotiations with the American "Great Satan" are permissible, on what grounds would Lebanon's negotiations with the Israeli "Lesser Satan" be deemed forbidden?

Lebanon has at last chosen to serve its own interests rather than those of Iran, in whose service Hezbollah had committed all its resources, faithfully obeying the orders and directives of the Revolutionary Guards. Lebanon now knows full well the party’s arsenal means the perpetuation of the occupation, its deepening and its entrenchment, and that this arsenal represents a source of weakness rather than of strength, in any form whatsoever.

There is no doubt that Lebanon is waging a momentous battle, one whose stakes are no less severe than those of the struggle to emerge from Syrian tutelage in 2005, following the assassination of Rafic Hariri and his companions on the fourteenth of February of that year.

What may help Lebanon in this battle is that the majority of Lebanese have now come to understand that arms mean the perpetuation of Israeli occupation, and that the only path to ending it lies in direct negotiations with Israel, negotiations that have become unavoidable. Is Lebanon worth less than Egypt or Jordan?

Lebanon has no remaining option but direct negotiation, for which it must prepare by assembling a delegation as broadly representative as possible of the active political forces, including those that carry genuine Shia weight. The Shia community has interests entirely at odds with those of Iran and Hezbollah, since it stands to gain everything from an end to the Israeli occupation, from the return of displaced inhabitants to their devastated villages, and from the reconstruction of those villages, rather than seeing the displaced transformed into a time bomb at the national level, and most acutely within Beirut itself.

What may finally help Lebanon advance decisively in its negotiations with Israel is Iran's loss of its Syrian card. Now that Syria has rid itself of the Alawite regime, it no longer serves as a pressure tool against official Lebanon or against the Lebanese people. This will undoubtedly help the country shake off Iranian domination, so that Lebanon may be Lebanon and Iran may be Iran, and so that the farce known as "unity of fronts" and the "axis of resistance" may at last come to its end.