The Pasdaran Did Not Waste Their Time in Lebanon...

The sheer number of rockets recently fired from Lebanese territory toward Israel speaks to several things at once. Chief among them is this: unlike the Lebanese authorities, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has not wasted a moment since the ceasefire agreement between Hezbollah and Israel was reached. That was on November 23, 2024, under the government of President Najib Mikati. President Nabih Berri had played a pivotal role in brokering the agreement, which reflected the Party’s urgent need, at that juncture, to halt the fighting at any cost.

It has become abundantly clear that Israel exploited the ceasefire to assert its freedom to continue its campaign against Hezbollah, while the Revolutionary Guard used the same agreement to consolidate its presence in Lebanon and prepare for the coming phase of confrontation between Iran on one side and America and Israel on the other.

Yes, the Revolutionary Guard did not waste its time. It resumed its activities in Lebanon through whatever remained of Hezbollah. The fruits of the Guard’s success in this endeavor became visible in the period following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, approximately two weeks ago. The consequence of that assassination was Lebanon’s total enlistment into the war Iran is waging against the United States and Israel. How did Lebanon enter this war? What responsibility does the Lebanese state bear for it? This is the overriding question of this moment, as we witness an Israeli expansion of occupation and an intensification of airstrikes, increasingly precise and targeted, across Lebanese territory — reaching now into the heart of Beirut itself.

What is strangest of all is that Hezbollah, as an independent entity, no longer truly exists in Lebanon. Or rather: the Party exists whenever the needs of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard require it to. Those with insider knowledge of the Party relate that an officer of the Guard ordered Hezbollah fighters to launch rockets from Lebanese soil toward Israel. In doing so, the Iranian officer effectively declared the reopening of the South Lebanon front. All of this occurred against the will of the Lebanese state — including President of the Republic Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam — and against the wishes of the Lebanese majority.

Naim Qassem was unaware of the specifics of what had happened. He learned of the rocket fire from television — much as Mojtaba Khamenei learned through the same medium that the Guard had selected him as Supreme Leader. Mojtaba used the occasion of his first speech since his appointment to announce that he had “heard of his appointment on television.” The irony is compounded by the fact that someone had to read the speech in his absence — the new Supreme Leader apparently being incapacitated by wounds he sustained… and perhaps by more than wounds alone.

The meaning of everything that has unfolded, whether in Lebanon or in Iran itself, seems to be twofold: the Guard holds ultimate decision-making authority in both countries, and it has found no better front for itself in Lebanon than Hezbollah. There is no longer any doubt that the Party — which was never anything other than a brigade of the Revolutionary Guard with Lebanese personnel — has become a Lebanese sectarian militia operating under the command of Iranian officers.

Between the ignorance of Lebanese officialdom, at every level, of what is being wrought on Lebanese soil and in the region — particularly regarding the deeper meaning of the transformation in Syria — and the latest developments embodied in the new Israeli military offensive, it is impossible to ignore that Lebanon is living through a moment of historical consequence. The problem is that official Lebanon failed to grasp that time was not working in its favor. Time has caught up with Lebanon. It is clear that the opportunities afforded since the agreement of November 23, 2024 will not come again.

There is no awareness of the plain reality that Joseph Aoun could never have become President of the Republic without Hezbollah’s defeat in the “Gaza solidarity war.” Had the Party still been standing — had it and its former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah survived — it would have clung to its candidate Sleiman Frangieh, who was supposed to occupy the presidency. The Party had been insistent that its candidate hold the presidency, just as it had imposed Michel Aoun in October 2016, shepherding him and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil all the way to Baabda Palace. They were brought to the presidency so that the institution might serve Iran and its expansionist project — hostile to everything Arab in the region — nothing more.

What has passed has passed. What can Lebanon do now that the Islamic Republic has managed, through the Revolutionary Guard, to reopen the South Lebanon front? Can the errors of the near past — a near past that is only a year and a few months old — be avoided? The answer is that there is no alternative to confronting the reality: the country has become, like Iran itself, subject to the authority of the Revolutionary Guard. How does one confront an authority that expresses, in a different but no less total form, Iran’s complete hegemony over Lebanon?

A Lebanese response is needed. And no response of any substance will be possible without breaking through the wall of fear surrounding Hezbollah — a party that barely exists anymore, save as an instrument wholly controlled by the Revolutionary Guard.

Once again: the Guard has not wasted its time since the autumn of 2024, when Lebanon concluded its ceasefire with Israel. It has reinforced its position in the country — a fact confirmed by the volume of rockets launched toward Israel. Lebanon will pay a steep price for those launches, and a steeper price still for having failed to understand that time was not on its side, that every word spoken about disarming Hezbollah is worthless without concrete action on the ground. Action was needed — regardless of the cost, and without fear of threats of civil war or similar specters that, when scrutinized, hold no purchase on reality.