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The night of Friday, March 6 to Saturday, March 7, was marked by an Israeli helicopter-borne intrusion into a village in the Beqaa Valley, the apparent objective of which was to search for the remains of Ron Arad, an Israeli airman who disappeared in 1986 after his plane was shot down. The inhabitants of several Lebanese regions, notably Mount Lebanon, heard the incessant noise of Israeli low-altitude aviation throughout the night from Friday to Saturday. The operation itself took place in a village in Baalbeck in the northern Beqaa, Nabi Chit, which was the scene of a commando unit's operation.

Yet another return to war, a war that is still not ours, one to avenge the death of a theocratic dictator. It is said that in times of misfortune, solidarity is in order, and that we should only settle our scores afterwards. This is, moreover, what moralistic voices advocated in 2023-2024. No! Today more than ever, we must once and for all denounce the causes of our misfortunes. Our misfortunes are obviously due to Hezbollah, but also to political complacency, to the acquiescence to a state of affairs, from all parties. Complacency to avoid 'civil war'; acquiescence which translates into unnatural alliances, for the sharing of positions or to preserve confessional quotas.

Should we mourn Ali Khamenei? Shall we join the procession of the grieving, or perhaps name an avenue in our capital after this martyr? In their complacency, our governments once even gave the name of Hafez al-Assad to a busy street, celebrating in sæcula sæculorum his so-called golden age on our land.* After all, the Iranian Supreme Leader did indeed shape Lebanon and rule it just as the usurpers Assad—father and son—did. And even if it was through intermediaries, he left indelible marks on our history, violating our institutions and tearing apart our uniquely fragile social fabric. For decades, our country was nothing more than a Syrian-Iranian condominium, a strip of land along the Mediterranean where Damascus and Tehran simultaneously exercised their joint sovereignty.

With the eruption of the second Israeli-American-Iranian war, questions and observations crowd around this great conflict that will, beyond any doubt, reshape the face of the region and the world, leaving in its wake profound consequences for the future of the Middle East and the nature of its political relations. The following are perhaps the most significant observations: — It is clear that this war was not well prepared. Despite the elimination of the Supreme Leader, Iran's Defense Minister, and the supreme command in the very first hours, Iran's command-and-control architecture is equally clearly decentralized — as evidenced by the uninterrupted volleys of missiles fired in every direction. The inability of the United States and Israel to strike Iran's Second Strike Capability confirms this impression. The wager on a wave of protests sweeping across Iran has likewise failed and cannot be relied upon. Nor can one overlook the fact that the Iranian fighter operates from a religious doctrine in which martyrdom is not feared but sought as both goal and gain.

Conflict is the father of all things, the king of all things. Heraclitus Now that Hezbollah has set its mind on avenging the assassination of Ali Khamenei, many Lebanese appear to be discovering both the party’s dependence on Tehran and its frankly suicidal disposition. To have believed that a possible “Lebanonization” — some measure of moderation — was genuinely within reach was to have ignored the very nature of the party: a paramilitary organization emanating from, and directly commanded by, the Revolutionary Guards and the wali al-faqih ; and, above all, a Gnostic millenarian sect animated by a mystique of violence. An esoteric militia, in other words — akin to the Ismaili Assassins of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries — whose entire universe is collapsing at this very moment… and which will no doubt persist in denying its own demise until its very last breath.

The Lebanese government undertook intensive diplomatic activity on Friday, March 6, in an attempt to put an end to the rampant degradation shaking the country, following the reopening of the South Lebanon front by Hezbollah, on the night of the 1 st to March 2, disregarding all warnings addressed to Lebanon on this plan in recent weeks. Faced with this new suicidal adventure by the formation allied with the Pasdaran, the paramilitary and security activities of the pro-Iranian party were banned on Monday by the government of Nawaf Salam. But Hezbollah remains completely deaf to official injunctions and remains deeply engaged, under instruction from the Islamic Republic of Iran, in a regional war to which Lebanon is completely foreign.