The Challenge, to Counter Not "the Lebanese", but the Khomeinist Project
People often spoke, especially before the war, of the « Lebanese miracle », of Lebanon compared to the phoenix rising from its ashes. A beautiful image… Except that by constantly rising from its ashes for more than half a century, the Land of the Cedar is today out of breath… Especially since it is undermined from within by a party that in no way cares about « the interest of Lebanon and the survival of its people », as President Joseph Aoun aptly emphasized in his online intervention addressing the leaders of the European Union.
The head of state did not hesitate to put his finger on the wound by openly accusing Hezbollah of having reactivated the South Lebanon front to « serve Iranian interests », stating that the objective of the group allied with the Pasdaran is to provoke « the fall of the Lebanese state » to subsequently claim that it alone is capable of confronting Israel.
Such is therefore the true existential problem, in the full sense of the term, that Lebanon faces. This is a truism for sovereignist parties and spheres of influence. But when the President of the Republic – whom some circles accuse of being too complacent towards Hezbollah – comes to stigmatize the pro-Iranian party's deviations before international bodies, it means that the danger in this regard has reached a particularly critical threshold. And for good reason: the Hezb's irrational, even « irresponsible » behavior – as the French ambassador to the UN emphasized on Wednesday – has gone beyond all understanding.
It is precisely this danger that the army commander, General Rodolphe Haykal, obscured when addressing the officers of the Great Mute a few days ago. Seeking to justify the troops' passivity in the face of the pro-Iranian group's militia surge, in flagrant violation of the Council of Ministers' resolutions on the matter, he stressed that the army « must remain equidistant from the Lebanese people ». Clearly, Yarzé must, according to him, refrain from applying government decisions so as not to enter into confrontation with a part of the population. But this is a false problem, or a way of posing the problem in a completely distorted manner.
What is required is by no means to confront a part of the Lebanese people. What is asked is to face a political project whose ideological, theocratic, transnational foundation is the negation of the very idea of Lebanon, of a pluralist, liberal Lebanon, open to the world, respectful of the specificities of each of its social components.
The Khomeinist project (since that is what it is about) is ideologically diametrically opposed to the raison d'être of the Lebanese entity, whose existence it does not even recognize, perceiving it solely and exclusively as a mere battleground with the Western world and a front line of « defense » against Israel. Is not the reopening of the Southern front on March 2nd, to avenge the death of the Iranian Supreme Leader, with all its consequences for Lebanon, the most striking proof of the total contempt that the Pasdaran, and in their wake Hezbollah, have for Lebanese legality, the most elementary interests of Lebanon, and the will of its population to survive?
Some might retort that a confrontation between the army and the pro-Iranian militia would be very costly in terms of human lives and internal stability. Are the inhumane consequences of this fifth war against Israel in the South, triggered on March 2nd by Hezbollah at the request of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, less costly? More than eight hundred dead in two weeks, no less than 600,000 residents of the South and suburbs forced into exodus, new villages razed by the Israeli army, hundreds of targeted air raids with their share of destruction and victims, and, above all, a new occupation that seems to be looming... And this time, in all likelihood, the Hebrew State will not agree to withdraw before imposing an agreement that will make Hezbollah and others regret the May 17th agreement or the terms of the November 2024 ceasefire. But what does it matter, isn't the survival of the Pasdaran and the tyrannical and bloodthirsty regime of the mullahs in Tehran the important thing?
In light of such tangible realities, it would be nothing less than a violation of the Constitution and a treacherous blow to Lebanon to show complacency and laxity towards a party whose theocratic ideology, militia action, regional role, and very existence are the antithesis and negation of the foundations of the Land of the Cedar.