Articles

The American-Israeli offensive launched on February 28 against the Iranian mullahs' regime, as well as the subsequent reopening of the South Lebanon front by Hezbollah, on the night of March 1 st to March 2, have taken a new turn over the past forty-eight hours. As aerial raids against Hezbollah positions continue, particularly in the southern suburbs of Beirut and in several villages in the southern region of the country, the Israeli air force is escalating targeted raids aimed at eliminating senior leaders of the pro-Iranian faction and fundamentalist Palestinian organizations. On Wednesday, March 4, and during the day on Thursday, March 5, raids were carried out in Aramoun, Saadiyate, Bchemoun, Choueifat, Saida, Hazmieh, on the road to Beirut airport (where two Hezbollah leaders were assassinated), Zahle and in the Palestinian camp of Baddawi, in North Lebanon, where a senior Hamas official was killed. In each of these localities, the leaders were killed by a missile strike either at their homes or while they were traveling by car. In parallel, the Arabic-speaking spokesperson for the Israeli army reiterated his call to all residents south of the Litani to evacuate their villages and move north of the river. He issued a similar appeal to the residents of the southern suburbs, asking them to withdraw to Tripoli or certain mountain areas. According to one of the Israeli television channels, the IDF intends to bomb and destroy "dozens of buildings in the southern suburbs." The Iranian Front Regarding military operations in Iran, missiles were launched on Thursday morning against Doha (Qatar), Manama (Bahrain), and Iraqi Kurdistan where the headquarters of Iranian Kurdish forces opposed to the mullahs' regime was targeted. It should be noted in this regard that, according to American officials cited by Fox News and the Axios website, Iranian Kurdish opposition forces stationed in Iraq launched a ground offensive towards Iranian territory earlier this week, with the support, these same sources affirm, of American and Israeli Services. The White House, however, denied wanting to provide aid to Iranian Kurdish opponents stationed in Iraq. The Pasdaran, for their part, indicated in this context that they had opened fire against "secessionist elements" who were trying to cross the border with Iraq. In addition to this tension on the Iran-Iraq border, a serious development occurred on Thursday morning. The Pasdaran launched two missiles towards an airport in Azerbaijan where, moreover, troop concentrations had been reported on the border with Iran, according to some information. Earlier in the week, it is recalled, the Revolutionary Guards had launched missiles towards Cyprus, against a British base, and towards Turkey where NATO's anti-aircraft defense intercepted the missile. It therefore appears evident that the Pasdaran are increasingly striving to extend the conflict to new countries and new geographical areas, the objective for the Islamic Republic being to increase the internationalization of the conflict in order to escalate it as much as possible in an attempt to stop the American-Israeli offensive. Faced with the firepower and extent of the American-Israeli offensive, the mullahs' regime, undoubtedly panicked, is opting for a reckless escalation and the extension of the conflict to increasingly broader geographical areas in order to break its confrontation with the United States and Israel. However, such a strategy is turning against Tehran and only increasing its isolation, as illustrated by the international positions recorded in the last twenty-four hours. The Secretary General of NATO thus declared that the overwhelming majority of Atlantic alliance countries support President Donald Trump's position regarding the Iranian conflict. In the same vein, the European Commission condemned the behavior of the Iranian regime, emphasizing that the Islamic Republic's conduct constitutes a threat to stability in the Middle East and security in Europe. In this context, President Emmanuel Macron indicated on Thursday that he had proposed to Italy and Greece to send troops to Cyprus to strengthen the island's defense capabilities. France, in this regard, decided to authorize American planes access to its military bases in the Middle East. Great Britain had also opened its bases earlier in the week to US aviation. For his part, the Canadian Prime Minister declared on Thursday that he did not rule out his country's participation in the war against the Iranian regime. As for Australia, it announced the sending of "military potential" to the region. Finally, it should be noted that the US Senate rejected a resolution presented by Democratic elected officials aimed at limiting President Trump's freedom of action in Iran.

In truth, we know nothing, for truth lies at the bottom of the abyss Democritus of Abdera Messrs. Presidents, To say that Lebanon finds itself today facing a new major existential crisis — the result of a malicious streptococcus, Hezbollah, which was not, or could not be, treated in time — borders on truism. For what is unfolding today goes far beyond the familiar mechanics of Lebanese crises. This is no longer about yet another reshuffling of confessional balances, nor even another sequence of the interminable proxy war that others have waged on our soil. What is wavering this time, more than ever, amid the din of the Israeli invasion and the collapse of the Iranian hegemonic project, is the very substrate of Greater Lebanon — that fragile, often betrayed, but irreplaceable idea that allowed antagonistic communities to cohabit, to clash violently, and, at times, to recognize one another. Which is, in the end, the lot of any couple learning to live together. In its decompensatory escapade, Hezbollah is now finishing itself off — and, in doing so, finishing off Lebanon as well. Its strategic suicide — gnostic in its logic of self-immolation, imperial in its ambitions, sectarian in its vertigo — reveals not so much a military defeat as a profound ontological fracture. For a long time, Hezbollah claimed to embody a resistance, and its followers believed it. Yet it embodied, in the end, nothing but servitude — to Iran, its dreams of regional supremacy, its theocratic project exported into the veins of a Lebanon it bled to the bone. This pro-Iranian supremacism, from which the Shia component of Lebanese society has ultimately suffered the most, has chosen to consume itself — and no one can do anything about it. But Hezbollah did not metastasize alone. It must be said plainly: the entire Lebanese political, social, and communal body did so alongside it, each in its own way, especially during the long years of Michel Aoun’s tenure, with its infinite turpitudes and its assumed vassalization to Tehran and to the logic of the alliance of minorities. Messrs., Look at the state of the communities you de facto represent within the institutions, by virtue of your respective functions. The Christians — even the most sovereignists among them, those who carried for decades the idea of a pluralist and independent Lebanon in the tradition of Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir — are today retreating into a defensive particularism. The federalist idea, long marginal, is gaining ground — as if, at the depths of despair, partition had become the only possibility of survival. This is a tragic regression on the part of those who were the pioneers of Greater Lebanon, the architects of the very idea of an institutionalized common life within a shared State. That they should desert it now constitutes a cultural defeat as much as a political one. The Shia community, for its part, is traversing a distress of a depth that the triumphalist discourses of another age can no longer conceal. To have believed in the resistance, to have given it everything — sons, villages, decades — only to see it turn into a machine of regional domination in the service of a foreign power: this is an immense mourning, which few outside observers measure with the empathy it deserves. Lebanon’s Shia deserve infinitely better than what Hezbollah offered them: martyropathy. They deserve to survive this nightmare that has gone on far too long, without feeling crushed. The Sunnis, for their part, are navigating a painful political void. Not that they have renounced Lebanon — far from it. But in the absence of reference figures and a unifying project, some are looking once again toward the Syria of Ahmad al-Sharaa and, beyond that, toward the Turkey of Erdoğan. This temptation is understandable in its genesis, yet it would be devastating in its effects. To dilute Lebanese sovereignty once more into a regional space that does not resemble it, in the name of a poorly defined civilizational solidarity, would be to repeat the Arab error of 1958 — under different flags, but with the same renunciation of self. The blood of Hassan Khaled and Rafik Hariri was not shed for nothing. As for the Druze — a community viscerally rooted in the idea of Greater Lebanon, the one that has paid the blood price with the greatest constancy —, they find themselves confronted with a leadership rivalry whose certain manifestations, in the neighboring Hauran, are eyeing alliances that would have been utterly unimaginable a decade ago. No, the vertigo of the Zionist neighborhood is not an abstraction. Messrs., This portrait is not that of a country dying all at once. It is that of a country disintegrating slowly, community by community, reflex by reflex, retreat by retreat — without the maps of the Levant being geographically redrawn, without even imploding in a visible paroxysm. It suffices for Lebanon to lose its national unity to disappear of its own accord, without its own function, engulfed by interests that surpass it — Israel, Syria, Turkey — and that have no reason to spare it if it no longer knows how to defend itself through the coherence of its project. We have almost always relied on others as a way of shedding our own responsibilities. It was more comfortable, easier. The calamitous result is plain to see — the country now reeks of carrion. Yet, and this is what we wish to say here, contrary to received ideas that have long poisoned public debate, Greater Lebanon is not a burden inherited from French colonialism, nor some dhimmi artifice. It was conceived by its founding fathers — of all confessions — as a refuge, a guarantee, a space of pluralism in a Middle East that offered precious little of it. For the Christians, certainly. But also for the Druze, for the Shia whom geography and history had marginalized within the Ottoman space, for the Sunnis who wagered on liberal modernity against the temptations of a dissolving pan-Arabism. Greater Lebanon was, in its original vocation, a necessity for all. Errors of governance, injustices in representation, regional ambitions incompatible with its size and nature, delirious ideologies imported from outside or manufactured within, and grandiose personal fantasies have seriously shaken the edifice. But a shaken edifice is not a condemned one — provided one has the courage to repair it rather than quarrel over its rubble. The battle being waged today — against the arrogance of a collapsing Hezbollah and the infinite warmongering of the Israeli invader — goes beyond the question of the monopoly on legitimate violence or the halting of a destructive military offensive. These stakes are real and urgent. But the primary question is this: who are we, together? What does Lebanon wish to continue being, for itself and for its children? Once again, in self-destructing, Hezbollah is annihilating Lebanon. But Lebanon in general, and its Shia in particular, deserve to survive this nightmare that has gone on far too long. You are three men, at the head of three institutions, that history has placed there, at this precise moment, to answer that question. Not to sidestep it. Not to defer it to some post-crisis future — for there will be no after without the work of the now. That said, if this responsibility belongs to all without exception — for the problem is not strictly Shia — and if the Lebanese executive has sinned by lack of firmness toward Hezbollah since the end of the 2024 catastrophe, your responsibility, Mr. Berry, remains the greatest. You have always been ambivalent, pushing to the furthest limit the art of tightrope-walking to pull through and satisfy everyone — including yourself. But cunning has no place anymore. For three decades, Lebanon has wagered on a historic stance from you that would unambiguously mark a Lebanese identity and a sense of statehood in relation to Hezbollah. Until now, that wager has proven perfectly futile. End your political career beautifully. You will not be betraying your community; you will be saving it, there where the eschatological sect is bleeding it dry. And with it, Lebanon. Messrs., Of course, we do not ask you to agree on everything. Lebanese democracy, in what is most beautiful about it, has always fed on living disagreement. What we call upon you to do is to speak with one voice on the essential: Greater Lebanon is truly worth saving. And its survival demands, from all, a partial renunciation of their particular calculations in favor of a common project — the only one worth having, the only one that endures, the only one that makes sense. Be clear. Be firm. Be responsible. That the State is no longer afraid is very well. But it must no longer content itself with dissociating itself and proving that it exists independently of the para-state. It must act, firmly, making use of force itself to definitively bury the ghosts of 1969 and prevent the metastasis from metastasizing in turn into generalized neighborhood and regional quarrels. Contrary to appearances, internal conflagration will only be avoided if the State begins to exist, no longer accepting the fait accompli. It is not State action that would set the powder alight, but, on the contrary, its inaction. The party’s secretary-general openly defies you and demonizes you? This sinister buffoonery has gone on long far too long. The weapons have destroyed everything. The penal code, and beyond it the Constitution, grant you the power to act decisively, even forcibly, without hesitation, before this furious madness carries off still more innocents. Otherwise, the price of an inevitable peace accord will be more costly to pay — if Israel consents, this time, not to de facto annex part of Lebanese territory. So let us avoid the capitulation, the humiliation, and the new permanent occupation into which Hezbollah is dragging us! The only path to salvation is to restore the authority and prestige of the State once and for all. And this is said in a tone of measure and moderation, even of a weary voice… certainly not with ardor and enthusiasm… Messrs., The Lebanese idea is beautiful. It is perhaps even the only truly original idea that this corner of the Levant has offered to political modernity: to live together without resembling one another, to recognize one another without dissolving into one another. So let us not spend another half-century mourning what we will not have known how to preserve for ourselves, for having failed to honour our political duties. Please accept, Messrs. Presidents, the expression of my highest respect. Michel HAJJI GEORGIOU

Lebanon today stands divided along a stark vertical fault line, particularly since the executive branch moved to ban all Hezbollah’s military activity. Meanwhile, the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate, as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah steadily widens. The opening of the southern front, coupled with Hezbollah’s political and media responses – in which it criticizes the Council of Ministers and the President of the Republic, and attacks Lebanon as a whole – can, at best, be described as irresponsible, if not openly defiant. The first to pay the price are Hezbollah’s own supporters; Lebanon as a whole comes next. Hezbollah supporters and their families, fleeing Israeli threats and bombardment, are now facing their fifth exodus since 1992. There is, however, no guarantee that this one will once again be temporary – particularly if, as Israel’s Defense Minister has stated, Israel expands its occupation of southern Lebanon in order to establish a buffer zone stretching northwards. Defying all logic, many Hezbollah supporters accept this situation. They express unwavering trust in their leadership, loyalty to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and certainty of victory over Israel, no matter what happens. They are convinced that their destiny is to die avenging Khamenei’s death. This suicidal logic is deeply troubling, and the government’s inaction risks prolonging an erosive status quo. Since the November 2024 ceasefire, Israel has continuously targeted Hezbollah’s leadership and infrastructure, without provoking any retaliation. At the same time, the group persisted in refusing to restore state sovereignty, thereby reneging on its commitments in this regard. Until now, Israeli strikes had been conducted within a well-defined and predictable geographical framework. However, since 2 March, Lebanon has been drawn into a new “support war,” modelled on 2023–2024, version 2.0 – entirely unnecessary and having no impact on the broader conflict between Iran, the United States, and Israel. It is increasingly clear that Hezbollah will never change its stance, consistently prioritizing ideology over the pragmatism it once claimed to champion. Faced with the choice between suicide and options that would ensure the safety of its supporters, it has chosen suicide – a path it cannot, however, impose on other Lebanese, who have opted for the rule of law, continue to believe in it, and have been striving for fifty years to build such a state. Syria’s thirty-year occupation of Lebanon, followed by the dominance of Hezbollah and the Amal movement, has eroded the state from within. It facilitated the entrenchment of their supporters – as well as others belonging to corrupt fiefdoms – within the country’s administrations, judicial apparatus, and security institutions, systematically undermining their foundations. Without the presence of a handful of genuine resistors – discreet yet active within these institutions, and there are enough of them – the state would have long since ceased to exist. Passivity, the Worst Option Over the past fourteen months, the executive and the President of the Republic have spared Hezbollah, adopting a paralyzing stance of passivity while a dynamic shift was underway across the Middle East. Machiavelli considered passivity to be the worst option: if those in power remain passive and neutral, they become the prey of the victor. Lebanon cannot afford to alienate the United States, home to more than a million Lebanese – including dual citizens and Americans of Lebanese descent. Among them are senators, members of Congress, and officials such as Thomas Barrack, Massaad Boulos, Darrell Issa, Daren Lahoud, and many others who work tirelessly in support of Lebanon. Still drawing on Machiavelli, and especially in times of belligerence, Lebanon cannot adopt a passive stance between Washington and Tehran. Such neutrality has become synonymous with ruin. Once again, Israel is expanding its occupation of southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah and Iran are completely unable to prevent or deter it. On the contrary, they are helping provide the very pretext for Israel to occupy more Lebanese territory and displace its inhabitants. Some observers claim that enforcing the latest decision of the Council of Ministers would lead to civil war or an armed confrontation between the army and Hezbollah. These arguments cannot be sustained, as Hezbollah cannot afford – after all it has endured – a direct clash with the military institution or the risk of further alienating the majority of Lebanese. Other skeptical analysts doubt the army’s ability to enforce the government’s decision. At a historic moment such as this, only statesmen – rare in these times – could make a difference, possessing a clear vision and plan for doing so, without the country sliding into civil war or internal confrontation. For example, the Supreme Defense Council, which includes the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, and the Ministers of Defense, Interior, Finance, and Economy, should convene in an open session and oversee, hour by hour, the mission to disarm Hezbollah, rather than leaving the army to struggle alone against a politically complex situation that has been dragging on for forty years. The Supreme Defense Council could thus take the initiative and fully assume its responsibilities, since the decision-making power rests with it and not the military. In doing so, it would also reaffirm the supremacy of civilian authority over the army during a crisis such as the one we are experiencing. Left to their own devices, military actions can have significant political repercussions. On this basis, the army should be politically secured – not only through a decision by the Council of Ministers, but also through close, hour-by-hour oversight to ensure the proper implementation of that decision. Moreover, the parliamentary Defense Committee is conspicuously absent. Yet it is responsible for meeting periodically, and as frequently as the gravity of the situation demands, to question, take responsibility, and, where necessary, legislate to guide the actions undertaken, providing all resources required to support the army in successfully carrying out its assigned mission.

What you are reading here is not one more article on a cause that the world believes it already knows. It is an attempt to understand — to understand how a people that has carried its dream for decades continues to carry it, on a land that has never fallen silent and never will. This text is the introduction to a multi-part study on the Palestinian situation, in its historical, political, and human ramifications. Because what is unfolding cannot be reduced to a headline. And because silence, too, is a stance. As you prepare your breakfast, think of others (Do not forget the pigeon’s food). As you conduct your wars, think of others (Do not forget those who seek peace). As you return home, to your home, think of others (Do not forget the people of the camps). These are the words the poet Mahmoud Darwish spoke at the close of the last century — after his return to his homeland under the Declaration of Principles on interim self-government arrangements in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, as a consequence of the Six-Day War, as Israel calls it, or the war of the "Naksa," as the Arabs named it. The poet had declared neither his approval nor his opposition to the Oslo Accords of 1993. He had chosen instead to resign from his eminent seat on the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization — the highest recognized political authority — as though he wished to take the measure of things in his own poetic way, on a terrain from which he had long been absent. Yet the poet was soon to express his astonishment and wonder at what he saw: the unceasing popular celebrations among the people of Gaza and the West Bank as they welcomed the returning exiles; the veneration of the accord's maker and architect, the emblematic Yasser Arafat; and the overflowing joy at the deep and sweeping transformation the agreement had brought to the daily lives of ordinary people — their sense that freedom was approaching, that peace was within reach, above all when the Israeli army withdrew first from the major cities and the direct grip of occupation was lifted from five million Palestinians after more than a quarter century. But the decisive scene was the overwhelming popular mandate — the vote of the vast majority in favor of President Arafat in the first elections ever held on Palestinian soil in 1996. And returning to our finely sensitive poet, who had become one of the pillars of the new era, commanding an elite and popular consensus that President Yasser Arafat himself had never enjoyed, one might venture to say that his profound intuition regarding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — with all its intractable problems — had made him keenly aware of its fragility, and had kept alive in him the premonition of its collapse, ever since Israeli extremism had drawn its pistol and murdered Yitzhak Rabin at the height of his glory, at the very moment he was being crowned as "king." And the forces of extremism had also brought down, through the ballot box, the seasoned Shimon Peres. At the same time, Palestinian extremism was whetting its daggers and unleashing its suicidal energy to blow up "the accord of treachery," as the parties of the "resistance and rejection" axis call it. And today they celebrate their "victory" over the peace process, with not a thought for what has befallen the people of the tents in Gaza, or the inhabitants of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The poet's intuition proved right when he urged everyone to think of others. But the extremists on both sides are indifferent to this call. Terrorism Whatever the intentions when thinking of the other — whether brother, friend, adversary, or enemy — and whatever the aspiration, be it coexistence, compromise, reconciliation, or simply living together, the peacemaker must first contend with extremism within his own environment before he can engage with the other. In this context, I call for abandoning the term "terrorism," which has come to carry meanings far beyond its technical and linguistic definition. It has become a political epithet hurled about by terrorists themselves, a ready-made charge wielded by states and politicians and slapped, at times, on their most balanced and moderate adversaries and enemies. Our most telling example is the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas! I therefore believe that "national supremacism" among great powers, "religious fanaticism," and "political extremism" are terms far more objective in their denotation and description of what humanity endures than the word "terrorism." Building on what was said in the first section, one may say that its moral dimension raises challenges of an altogether different order — challenges that belong to the very core of contemporary political theory, which expresses the international order of the post-World War II era. That era witnessed an exceptional ascent in the fields of science and technology, the human and social sciences, and the production of the most refined legislation across many domains. Yet we also witnessed massacres and slaughter, from the Vietnam War to the war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, as defined by the International Court of Justice. We have also seen ethnic cleansing, from the Balkans and Myanmar to Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as forced displacement from Syria, Sudan, and other countries. And if we single out the wars waged in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia, it is precisely because they were launched for no other purpose than to uproot terrorism and eliminate terrorists! The outcome? Negotiation with those very terrorists. And the only tangible achievement: the destruction of states, homelands, and peoples. Now that the war of extermination against the people of Gaza has been halted by decree of the master of the White House — while the firing has not ceased for a single moment to this day, and operations aimed at displacing millions of Palestinians from their land have not relented — this reality demands a new analysis, which may be summarized as follows: 1. The geography of historic Palestine and its people constitutes a living, ongoing case study, revealing the utter incapacity of international law and its relevant conventions to secure the most basic rights of life — water, food, medicine — let alone to provide a simple tent... a tent, nothing more! Who can believe this is happening in an age of civilization and human values?! 2. What is unfolding — this slow extermination without heavy artillery — is in fact a comprehensive test of the credibility of the concepts that Western governments have exported to us with a measure of condescension and a measure of contempt. 3. The function of the White House's ceasefire decree is to protect the international political order and its mechanisms of operation as seen through the American lens, and to prevent the erosion of Israel's standing, as Trump himself declared. And in order to protect the Israeli government, he graciously extended to the Palestinians the gift of halting the war of extermination, while permitting the war of attrition to continue. Thus has modernity, in its most splendid guises — through artificial intelligence and by its means as well — enabled the production of genocide, whose effects continue unabated, as the Israeli government has not retreated from its declared objectives of ethnic cleansing, annexation of lands, and the political crushing of the Palestinian political entity and its historical social fabric. All of this emanates from a modern state sponsored by the largest secular democracy on the planet — and yet, with remarkable ease, modernity may be discarded and a return made to biblical myth to demonstrate that the purpose of all this is the fulfillment of the "divine promise," as the American ambassador to Israel declared. He did not, however, tell us whether this biblical promise was written before the Big Bang, after it, or at the precise moment of its occurrence! The October 7 Attack The suicidal attack of October 7 triggered a state of collective hysteria across Israeli society — from the apex of the political hierarchy, through the military, all the way to the settlers. The Israeli mind could not absorb this sudden collapse of the military and security barriers deployed along the Gaza Strip's border — and above all, the failure of the high-tech electronic fence to sound an early warning! It is well known that this pivotal event brought about a deep and qualitative transformation in the nature of Israeli-Palestinian relations at every level. Nothing remained as it was. Rage, hatred, and the direct drive to destroy the other exploded with full force. Such became the equation between the two parties — and the world witnessed it, filmed and documented, on screens everywhere. On the Palestinian side, only a small fraction of the elites condemned the Hamas attack, for the vast majority of ordinary people saw in it a natural act of retaliation against the brutality and torment inflicted by the Israeli occupation army. Others viewed it as a confrontation between the Jewish religious extremism practiced by the Israeli government and the Islamic religious extremism practiced by the Hamas movement. In this debate, I find it illuminating to shed light on the visit paid by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during the Biden administration, to Ramallah and his meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas — a visit in which he quickly pressed Abbas to condemn and denounce the attack and classify it as terrorism… But President Abbas replied in a sharp tone and a loud voice: "You are the ones who created the Hamas movement, and you are the ones who brought it to power in the Gaza Strip… The responsibility lies with you, and do not ask anything of me." After that episode, American and Israeli media began to speak of the Authority's corruption, the need for change, the old age and incapacity of the Palestinian administration — culminating in the delegitimization of its political standing, without pausing before the truth that reveals how the peace-building process between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples had ground to a halt ever since Netanyahu's team seized power in Israel on the ruins of the Rabin-Peres government at the end of the last century. And because American administrations, in the wake of the September 11 attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, succeeded in nothing but expanding the use of violence that negates justice and entrenches domination by force — all while calling it a "peace process" — we are today harvesting the fruits of policies of accommodation and exploitation of political Islam, in both its Sunni and Shia dimensions, as evidenced by the renewed outbreak of violence under new-yet-old headings that signal the redrawing of the map of the Greater Middle East. And we do not know when the war will lay down its burdens after the liquidation of the ruling elite in Iran, for the matter is not who governs Iran but who steers the world from the White House.

“They are finished (…). This war is seven times more powerful than the previous one.” With those few words, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth summed up the diection the war – launched on February 28 by the United States and Israel against the Iranian mullahs’sbregime – has taken, or is now beginning to take. The U.S. minister stressed that this war remains in its early stages, specifying that additional aircraft and military forces will be dispatched soon to the Middle East to take part in ongoing operations. The Secretary of War’s remarks clearly reflect the developments now unfolding in Iran. March 4, 2026, was marked above all by intense and sustained airstrikes carried out by the Israeli Air Force against regime buildings, command centers and infrastructure in the Tehran region. More than one hundred Basij centers – the repressive armed wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – were reportedly targeted by Israeli bombers. “No Revolutionary Guard building will be left standing,” an official Israeli source said, adding that the U.S. and Israeli militaries are dividing the task of destroying the regime’s military and civilian infrastructure. According to the same source, Israeli aircraft are focusing on western Iran, targeting regime buildings, command centers and civilian infrastructure, while the United States is taking charge in the southwest, striking nuclear sites, ballistic missiles, launch pads, ballistic missile production facilities, air defense systems and naval forces. Turkey Targeted by an Iranian Missile The most striking development on March 4 was the launch of an Iranian ballistic missile toward – of all places – Turkey. The missile was intercepted by a NATO unit before reaching its target. The immediate consequence: Ankara did not hold back in criticizing the behavior of the Iranian regime, going so far as to describe Iranian missile strikes against Gulf countries as a “serious mistake.” Another key development of the day was Qatar’s announcement that it had dismantled a subversive cell allegedly set up by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to conduct espionage and sabotage operations on Qatari soil. After Cyprus and the Gulf states – which have been, and continue to be, targeted by Iranian missiles – the attempted strike against Turkey clearly reflects the determination of the Revolutionary Guards to widen the scope of the conflict, in the hope of triggering international mobilization to halt the U.S. and Israeli offensive. Another major development over the past 24 hours has been the arrival of U.S. B-52 bombers. In practical terms, this signals that American and Israeli aircraft now exercise full control over Iranian airspace – particularly in the south of the country and over the Tehran region – a point confirmed Wednesday by the Secretary of War during a press conference. The B-52s are heavy bombers and therefore relatively slow-moving aircraft. They can be easily detected by radar and, as such, would ordinarily constitute vulnerable targets. The fact that the U.S. military has deployed B-52s confirms that American and Israeli forces now effectively control Iranian airspace. The entry of the B-52s marks a significant development in the course of the military operations, as these bombers can carry and deliver extremely large bombs with high precision. The Lebanese Front On the Lebanese front, the Israeli Air Force has intensified its raids and expanded them into new areas, targeting infrastructure, ammunition depots, and missile and drone stockpiles. On the morning of Wednesday, March 4, heavy and sustained strikes were carried out against the southern suburbs of Beirut. Over the past 24 hours, airstrikes have spread to new areas, with the Hazmieh district targeted for the first time. The Israeli Air Force struck the Comfort Hotel, where some reports suggest an Iranian diplomat had taken refuge. No information has emerged regarding the diplomat’s fate. Meanwhile, new areas have been targeted by the Israeli Air Force, including Saadiyate (on the Southern Route), Bchemoun, and Aramoun, where a senior figure from the military branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is reported to have been killed. In Baalbeck, a four-story building was completely destroyed in a raid that caused multiple fatalities. On the ground, Israeli forces continued their limited deployment inside Lebanese territory on Wednesday, reaching the strategically important town of Khiam, six kilometers from the border. At the same time, Israeli artillery units significantly reinforced their presence along the frontier. As airstrikes continue across multiple areas, a serious development occurred on Wednesday: the Israeli military called on residents in the entire region south of the Litani River to evacuate their villages and move north of the river. The warning has heightened concerns among local authorities and communities, who fear that Israel may be seeking to establish a broad buffer zone, potentially allowing it at a later stage to impose political and security conditions far beyond the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and the November 2024 ceasefire agreement. By taking the suicidal initiative of reopening the South Lebanon front at the instigation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah has effectively handed Israel a golden pretext to impose strategic agreements on the Lebanese state on its own terms in the near future.

The Salam government’s decision to outlaw Hezbollah’s military and security activities – and to prosecute those behind them – is undoubtedly historic. Yet, it remains insufficient given the sheer scale of the “descent into hell” that this Iranian proxy has, once again, forced upon Lebanon. It is historic because it shatters a long-standing Lebanese tradition of political self-effacement and complacency – a stance long dictated at times by a fear of an internal strife and at others by political opportunism toward a group that has, over the years, successfully imposed its grip on the country and built a security and military apparatus that surpasses the capabilities of the Lebanese state. It is insufficient because it does not empower the authorities to shield the country and its population from the danger posed by an organization whose leaders and members consistently prove that their Lebanese identity is a mere administrative formality. For Hezbollah is, and remains, one of the primary transborder paramilitary instruments of the Iranian clerical regime. The proof – as if any more were needed – lies in its predictable involvement in the war between Iran and the Israel-US coalition, as well as its reaction to the government’s decisions to outlaw its military activities. Its leaders were quick to go on the offensive. The group’s deputy leader, MP Mohammad Raad, denounced “intimidation measures” and “reckless decisions.” While he conceded the state’s right to decide on war and peace, he accused the Salam government of “attacking those who reject the Israeli occupation.” The deputy head of Hezbollah’s political council, Mahmoud Qomati, blasted the government for “remaining silent in the face of occupation,” for “seeking to weaken Hezbollah – Lebanon’s true strength,” and for “violating international law, which grants peoples the right to fight against occupation.” Yet this rhetoric no longer fools anyone. Neither do Hezbollah’s motivations and objectives. The suicide war in which the group is currently engaged – and from which it cannot emerge unscathed – falls strictly within the framework of the reprisals promised by the Pasdaran following the confirmation, on March 1st, of the death of the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who was killed during the large-scale Israeli-American raids on his Tehran headquarters on February 28th. It also aligns with Iran’s repeated warnings to the United States that any attack on the Islamic Republic would set the region ablaze. Tehran has made good on that threat, mobilizing its regional proxies to open multiple indirect fronts and transform a targeted operation into a generalized confrontation. How else can one explain the drone attack on a British military base in Cyprus during the night between Sunday and Monday? According to Western media outlets citing Cypriot officials, the two Iranian-manufactured drones were reportedly launched from Lebanon – striking just as London had authorized Washington to use its bases on the Mediterranean island as part of its offensive against Iran. It must be noted that this is indeed the first time Hezbollah – which has neither confirmed nor denied these accusations – has attacked Cyprus. Yet, it’s not the first time it has threatened the island. In June 2024, the group’s former Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah – assassinated by Israel in September of that year – had warned Nicosia of reprisals if the island allowed Tel Aviv to use its airports or military bases to attack Lebanon. Today, Israel has not attacked Lebanon from Cyprus, nor has Nicosia opened its bases to the Jewish state. In doing so, Hezbollah has once again confirmed its status as an Iranian vassal. Reinforcing Monday’s decisions Can the state realistically prevent Hezbollah from conducting its military operations? The answer is no. It can obstruct them – for instance by arresting those launching rockets, but it cannot halt them entirely, given the massive resources Iran has poured into its protégé and the very structure of the organization, which commands a significant fighting force. Above all, Lebanon is not yet prepared to launch a large-scale operation to dismantle Hezbollah’s entire paramilitary infrastructure. It can, however, bolster Monday’s decisions with further political measures. These would grant the government greater credibility in the eyes of skeptical Lebanese citizens and the international community, which is still waiting for Beirut to honor its commitment to asserting sovereignty over its entirety territory. To achieve this, however, the government must have the courage of its convictions and cease tolerating the terrorism – even in its verbal form – practiced by Hezbollah against the State and those Lebanese who do not share its agenda. Hezbollah’s activities and the bellicose rhetoric of its officials, under the pretext of defending Lebanon against an occupation they themselves provoked, are illegal because they lack State authorization. The State’s primary responsibility is to protect its citizens, not a paramilitary group that continues to arrogate to itself the right to drag Lebanon and its people into destructive wars, and which has long considered itself above the law while enjoying a galling level of impunity. Shifting the Balance The Lebanese authorities have a range of means at their disposal to shift the balance: – Legal recourse, first: What is to prevent the initiation of legal proceedings in response to the threats regularly issued by Hezbollah’s Secretary-General, Naim Qassem, or by the group’s senior cadres in opposition to its disarmament? In Lebanon, the Judicial Council – an exceptional tribunal whose decisions are final and not subject to appeal – was established to handle cases involving crimes against state security. Is there any assault more grave than which has been inflicted for years upon the Lebanese people by a militia whose sole purpose is to serve the interests of Iran? Is it acceptable for a country to be dragged into destructive wars it rejects by a group pledging its allegiance to a foreign state? – Political, next. It is paramount today that the Lebanese state does not repeat the monumental error of 2005. At the time, following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and the withdrawal of Syrian forces, the pro-Syrian political-security apparatus – of which Hezbollah was a core part – was not dismantled. The opposition, encouraged by the international community. had instead prioritized the legislative elections, scheduled for just a few months later. In doing so, Lebanon had just missed a momentum . The consequences of this miscalculation were devastating. A wave of bombings and political assassinations – the investigations into which stalled and in which Hezbollah was implicated – targeted opposition figures. Under the pretext of ensuring stability, an ill-fated electoral alliance known as the “quadripartite agreement” was struck between the Future Movement of Sunni leader Saad Hariri, the PSP of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Hezbollah, and its Shiite ally, Amal. While that alliance shattered a year later, it had in the meantime allowed Hezbollah to establish a powerful presence in Parliament and, for the first time, to enter the government. Following the Syrian withdrawal, Hezbollah’s strategy shifted. Anxious to preserve the grip of its axis over the country, the group was no longer content with indirect representation in the government through Amal ministers. It sought to become a partner in its own right within the executive. It achieved its goal – but for Lebanon and the Lebanese, this marked the end of an era of hope and the beginning of a new descent into hell. Today, a new regional dynamic is taking shape – one that is different and even more decisive than that of 2005. Much like then, however, it risks being costly for Hezbollah and could prove lifesaving for Lebanon. Will the authorities be able to seize this opportunity and cast off the fear of Hezbollah’s retaliations, in order to liberate the country from destructive Iranian influence? They are not being asked to declare war on a militia that would not hesitate to turn its weapons against the Lebanese people, as it did in 2008. They are simply being asked to stop stalling in the hope that the problem will resolve itself. Over the past few months, the disappointment of the Lebanese people – who had believed in the promises of President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam to disarm the militias and restore sovereignty under the rule of law – has been as profound as the hope they once harbored.