Articles

The moment is, without a doubt, historic in more ways than one: symbolically, first; and in terms of the political impact and strategic dimension of the event, secondly. The symbolic aspect, first, is of particular importance in the local and regional context that no one ignores: Lebanon's Ambassador to Washington, Nada Hamadé Moawad, meeting face-to-face at the State Department in Washington with Israel's Ambassador, Yechiel Leiter, under the auspices of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with the Lebanese, Israeli, and American flags side by side in the background… The image would have been political fiction just a few months ago.

In Lebanon, education is meant to liberate minds, but Iran’s proxies weaponize it. Lebanon has long prided itself on something rare in this region: a belief that education is not a privilege, but a pathway. A country where, despite war, collapse, and political decay, parents still scrape together what little they have to send their children to school. A country where classrooms have historically produced doctors, engineers, writers, and thinkers, not martyrs for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The numbers tell part of that story. Lebanon boasts one of the highest literacy rates in the region, hovering near 98 percent. For years, it ranked among the top countries globally in the perceived quality of education. Mathematics and science are not taught as luxuries but as necessities, often delivered in English or French from an early age. Education here is not simply about acquiring knowledge; it is about mobility, dignity, and escape, from sectarianism, from violence, from the suffocating limits of geography.

This is the first direct consequence of the failure of the Islamabad negotiations last weekend between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. On Monday, at 5 p.m. (Beirut time), the naval forces of the American army implemented a total blockade of all Iranian ports and the Strait of Hormuz. Several warships have been deployed to enforce this blockade, which applies to all ships expected to use Iranian ports, whether departing or arriving. Only ships carrying humanitarian aid will be allowed to dock in ports, but after being thoroughly searched. As for vessels not involved in maritime traffic with Iran, they will be able to cross the Strait of Hormuz unhindered.

Hundreds of images, every day. Grey as the dominant tone, at times interrupted by a flash of orange, a coloring book, a doll. At other times, images reach us stained with memories, those of strangers we do not know, who do not know us, and who may no longer recognize their own. Memories held in suspension. Fleeting flashes across phone screens. Fragments scrolling on television beneath a red ticker hastily composed, saturated with approximations, where a place name is thrown in as a token of precision. Or brief sequences designed to sustain the continuity of an endlessly renewed flow. Within this flow, the image ceases to emerge as an event.

A “Shia question” has now forcefully emerged within Arab reality — a reality that is not isolated from its regional environment or from the policies of the major powers. Some argue that the “Shia question” reveals, in certain of its manifestations and circumstances, a weakening or a wavering of Arab Shia loyalty toward their national states, owing to an Iranian centralism that seeks to extend its influence throughout the Arab region by exploiting existing vulnerabilities and creating new ones in the foundations of those states. Those Shia targeted by this accusation respond collectively, arguing that their movements in their respective countries arise either from the raising of grievances and a demand for political and social justice — Iraq and the Gulf countries being cases in point — or from a commitment alongside their compatriots to the duty of resisting Israeli aggression, as in Lebanon and Palestine.

While American and Iranian negotiators step back from the negotiating table, Hezbollah circles, despite the manifest contradictions within their directorate, are delighting in hurling wholesale accusations of treason at Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam. The timing of these attacks is not fortuitous. It is not without revealing a panic that one strives to conceal beneath the habitual garb of resistance rhetoric. For the first time since the 1990s, the Lebanese card has slipped from Hezbollah's grasp—and, by extension, from Tehran's. Which is not good news for the Hezb. Certainly, it retains the capacity to ignite hostilities in the country's streets, but it is increasingly isolated. In 2006, after 14 March 2005, it had resorted to a war, then to a coup de force to offset this handicap. But we are no longer in 2005, and this time the Hezb would be taking a risk by becoming mired in internal conflict. The result will be to plunge Lebanon into violence. The pacifist logic of 14 March has disappeared, and, unfortunately, the party will collide with grave tensions. Perhaps it is even seeking this. But no one ever emerges victorious from such a game with fire.