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By Antoine Menassa* A few days ago, the Beirut Indictment Chamber issued a dismissal ruling in favor of former Banque du Liban Governor Riad Salamé, in the case stemming from a complaint filed in June 2021 by businessman Talal Abou-Ghazaleh. The complainant had accused Salamé of issuing circulars that altered the liberal economic system, concealing the true state of the banks' finances, and conspiring with those banks to misappropriate depositors' funds. In its decision handed down on July 14, 2026, the Indictment Chamber found that the constituent elements of the alleged offense had not been established. Applying the principles of criminal law with impartiality and independence, it placed the case back within its strictly legal framework and brought the proceedings against the former Governor to a close. This decision has been welcomed as an illustration of the role of justice, which must be guided not by public sentiment or pressure, but solely by the law and the evidence. It also reflects the ability of the Lebanese judiciary, despite the crises gripping the country, to uphold the rule of law and the fundamental principles of justice. Beyond the specifics of this case, the decision averts the risk of a legal precedent that could have led to property-related offenses — such as theft, breach of trust, embezzlement, or fraud — being equated with constitutional violations, without any legal basis and in contradiction with the essential principles of criminal law. In legal terms, a dismissal ruling is neither an emotional exoneration nor a political statement. It is a judicial decision that ends proceedings when evidence is insufficient or when the legal elements of an offense have not been established. It represents one of the fundamental guarantees of a modern justice system. The media coverage of this case, however, raises serious questions. In 2021, when the accusations were made public, they received massive media attention. Television channels, newspapers, and news websites widely reported the story, generating countless headlines and fueling a debate that frequently led to Riad Salamé being prematurely condemned. Many seemed to forget that the presumption of innocence is a fundamental principle, one that can only be overturned by a final judicial ruling. Now that the courts have issued a dismissal for lack of constituent elements of the offense, the media response appears far more muted. It is as though decisions that restore the facts generate less interest than the accusations themselves. This contrast raises questions about the role of the media. Some outlets gave extensive coverage to the accusations, yet afforded far less visibility to the judicial ruling that dismissed them — as if news only acquires value through scandal, while court decisions that restore rights are pushed to the sidelines. Yet justice is not measured by the intensity of accusations, but by the strength of evidence and adherence to the rule of law. The Beirut Indictment Chamber's decision is a reminder that the primacy of law must always prevail over rumor, and that a person's dignity cannot be sacrificed by media verdicts rendered before those of the courts. One question ultimately remains: to what extent can a person reclaim their reputation after being cleared, when the media's condemnation has already left a lasting mark on public opinion? Justice only fulfills its true purpose if dismissal and acquittal decisions receive coverage comparable to that given to accusations. For the truth deserves as much attention as suspicion, and fairness as much focus as scandal. *Founding President of the Association of Lebanese Business People in France (HALFA)

For the first time since 2009, a Lebanese president walked through the doors of the White House this week not as a supplicant coming to beg for attention, but as the bearer of a plan. On Tuesday, President Joseph Aoun sat across from Donald Trump and handed him a written proposal: a roadmap to dismantle Hezbollah's arsenal, consolidate all weapons in the country under the exclusive authority of the Lebanese state, and in return, secure an Israeli withdrawal from the territory the Israeli army still occupies in the south. Trump, for his part, struck an almost paternal tone. "We feel very good about Lebanon," he told reporters, adding that the country had been "very badly treated" and deserved to be "treated with the respect it deserves." He acknowledged in the same breath that "there is a Hezbollah problem" — as if he were diagnosing, in a single phrase, both Lebanon's tragedy and its opportunity. It would be easy to see this visit as nothing more than symbolism dressed up as substance — a communications exercise for a president eager to show both Lebanese voters and Gulf donors that Beirut has friends in Washington again. It would be equally easy to see it as just another chapter in the long history of American envoys and framework agreements that promised much and delivered little. But that reading would miss what is genuinely new here — and what is genuinely at stake. For the first time in decades, it is the Lebanese state — not a militia, not a foreign patron, not a sectarian warlord — that is coming to the table with a plan of its own. Whether that plan succeeds or fails will determine whether Lebanon spends the next generation as a sovereign country, or remains, as it has for fifty years, a battlefield rented out for other people's wars. A president without a militia, but with an army Joseph Aoun's biography itself is inseparable from the moment now unfolding in Washington. He was elected president on January 9, 2025, ending a paralyzing two-year vacancy during which parliament had failed twelve times to elect a head of state. He arrived at the Baabda Palace not as a party leader or dynastic heir, but as the outgoing commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces — a choice engineered in large part by intense lobbying from Washington and Riyadh, both of which saw in Aoun a rare figure who enjoyed the trust of Lebanon's various communities and was untainted by the militia politics that had hollowed out the Lebanese state since the civil war. His election was itself a symptom of Hezbollah's diminished power: bloodied by fifteen months of war with Israel, deprived of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and much of its leadership, and with its Iranian patron consumed by its own troubles, the party could no longer do what it had done for two years — block a president it did not fully control. This context matters enormously for understanding what happened this week. Aoun did not go to Washington as a mediator shuttling between Hezbollah and Israel. He went as the elected head of state of a country that, for the first time in two generations, is attempting to act like one — asserting a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, a principle so fundamental to the very notion of statehood that it had scarcely needed to be stated in Lebanon for fifty years, its absence being taken for granted; and whose reassertion is today so remarkable that it has become the central fact of Lebanese political life. The trilateral framework agreement and the hidden clauses of sovereignty This visit did not take place in a vacuum. On June 26, following five rounds of indirect and direct talks held under Washington's auspices, Lebanese and Israeli representatives signed what is now known as the Trilateral Framework Agreement — the first agreement of any kind between the two states since the short-lived 1983 peace accord, which collapsed under Syrian and domestic pressure less than a year after it was signed. Signed by the two countries' ambassadors in Washington in the presence of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the fourteen-point agreement commits both parties, "with the full support of the United States," to work toward ending their state of conflict, to guarantee each other's sovereignty and security, and ultimately to normalize their relations. Lebanese officials were careful — and caution was warranted, given that the word "normalization" remains politically explosive in Lebanon — to frame it as a security and sovereignty framework rather than a peace treaty. But its logic points in only one direction. It is the agreement's mechanisms that deserve Beirut's closest attention, as they reveal both its promises and its limitations. The agreement does not require Israel to withdraw from the strip of Lebanese territory it has occupied since the ceasefire that ended the war in November 2024. Instead, it creates what are called "pilot zones": two limited perimeters — one south of the Litani River but outside Israel's initial security zone, the other a narrow strip north of the Litani, within that zone — from which Israeli forces would withdraw in exchange for a verified deployment of the Lebanese army and the dismantlement of any Hezbollah military infrastructure found there. It was into one of these pilot zones, the locality of Zawtar el-Gharbiyeh, that Lebanese troops entered on the very day of the Aoun-Trump meeting, alongside Froun and Srifa, the two other villages covered by this first phase. The deliberately calculated message was clear: the state moves when it says it will, and the army — not any armed faction — is its instrument. This is the plan Aoun brought to the Oval Office: a proposal aimed at accelerating and expanding this model, backed by a written proposal on dismantling Hezbollah's remaining arsenal, in exchange for Trump pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend the withdrawal beyond the two symbolic pilot zones and fully honor the original terms of the ceasefire. Trump notably indicated that he would be willing to engage directly with Hezbollah if Aoun asked him to — an offer that, whatever its practical value, signals a White House more invested in stabilizing Lebanon than it has been since the presidency of George W. Bush. Netanyahu's red line, and why it must not dictate Lebanon's terms If Lebanon's state ambitions have a ceiling, it is currently set in Israel. Visiting troops stationed in the occupied strip of southern Lebanon just weeks before Aoun's trip, Netanyahu left no room for ambiguity: Israeli forces "will not leave southern Lebanon until the threat is eliminated" — a formulation that ties withdrawal neither to a timeline nor to Lebanese sovereignty, but solely to Israel's unilateral judgment about when Hezbollah has been sufficiently disarmed. It has continued to authorize near-daily strikes on Lebanese territory, which Beirut regards as a blatant violation of the ceasefire, and Israeli forces continue to occupy what are now known as the "five hills" — heights located just inside Lebanese territory — which Hezbollah, and increasingly the Lebanese government itself, cite as the most concrete proof that it is Israel, not Hezbollah, that is today violating the very heart of the deal struck by the November 2024 ceasefire. That observation deserves careful scrutiny, because it exposes the uncomfortable asymmetry running through the entire disarmament project. The Lebanese state is being asked to carry out a concrete, verifiable, and sequenced task — collecting and destroying an entire non-state arsenal built up over four decades — on a fixed political timeline, while Israel's reciprocal obligation, withdrawal, remains hostage to an Israeli threat assessment that is subjective and indefinitely revisable. Amnesty International's assessment of the framework agreement was blunt on this point, describing it as a deal that "betrays the victims of war crimes" by failing to attach any accountability mechanism to the continued Israeli strikes on Lebanese civilians, even as it demands unilateral disarmament on the Lebanese side. None of this argues against disarmament — quite the contrary. It argues for the Lebanese state, and its friends abroad, to insist that the obligations of the framework agreement run in both directions, and that the leverage Washington holds over Netanyahu — which Trump proved this week he is willing to use — be generously employed to secure the withdrawal from the "five hills" and an end to the strikes, rather than simply lecturing Beirut about deadlines. The formulation Aoun used with his American counterparts — that only Trump has the leverage needed to move Netanyahu — is not a rhetorical flourish. It is an accurate assessment of where real power lies in this equation, and an implicit way of demanding that Washington use it. Hezbollah's refusal, and the ground shifting beneath its feet Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah has accepted none of this. In the days before Aoun's departure for Washington, Secretary-General Naim Qassem delivered one of his sharpest public statements, calling the June framework agreement "null and void," an "humiliation," and a deal written "entirely in Israel's favor." He urged Aoun to abandon it outright and pursue only indirect negotiations, insisting that "the priority is to restore sovereignty and end the Israeli presence" — a formulation that inverts the very sequencing the government has adopted, and that would, in practice, grant Hezbollah an indefinite veto over the state's monopoly on arms, by conditioning disarmament on an Israeli withdrawal that the very maintenance of its own weaponry gives Israel every pretext to delay. The double trap Hezbollah is attempting to construct here must be named, because it is the true rhetorical battleground of the entire disarmament debate. The party says it will not disarm as long as Israeli troops remain on Lebanese soil. Israel says it will not withdraw as long as Hezbollah remains armed. Both positions may be sincerely held, and both conveniently serve to indefinitely postpone the true test of sovereignty that Lebanon has been awaiting ever since the 1989 Taif Agreement promised — but never delivered — the dissolution of all militias. The Lebanese government's task — and it is to Aoun's credit that his government has begun to grasp this — is to break that cycle rather than referee it, by demonstrating through deployments in pilot zones that the state can extend its authority in good faith independently of Hezbollah's cooperation, and by using that demonstrated good faith to secure, through Washington rather than through Hezbollah's arsenal, real and verifiable Israeli reciprocity. There are signs that this cycle is already beginning to crack, and that Hezbollah knows it. When Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Beirut earlier this year reportedly carrying cash for the party, Lebanese authorities are said to have blocked the funds from entering the country — a minor but telling episode that would have been unthinkable in Lebanese political economy just three years ago, when the channels linking Hezbollah to Tehran operated with complete impunity. Araghchi has since stated diplomatically that Iran "supports whatever decision the party makes" but "does not interfere" — a calculated retreat from the days when Iranian officials presented Hezbollah's arsenal as a non-negotiable pillar of regional deterrence. Aoun, for his part, has been unusually candid in return, telling interlocutors that Hezbollah's decisions ultimately lie with Tehran, and declaring — in terms that would have been politically dangerous for any Lebanese president to utter a decade ago — that "no one negotiates on our behalf." The Axis of Resistance, weakened by the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, by Israel's decapitation of Hezbollah's leadership, and by Iran's own preoccupations with its domestic conflicts, is simply no longer the force it was when the last disarmament attempt collapsed in 2006. There is no guarantee of success this time. But the balance of constraints has shifted, for the first time in decades, in favor of the state. Hezbollah and its Iranian patron find themselves, more broadly, in a significantly weakened position across the region. The American-Iranian confrontation in the Gulf is straining the financial and military resources Tehran can direct toward its regional proxies, while the Syrian army has tightened its surveillance along the border, expanding its presence in frontier areas and shutting down the illegal crossings and smuggling tunnels that once served to resupply Hezbollah. This effort is squeezing the party from another angle: its stockpile of missiles, drones, and ammunition has already been substantially depleted by Israeli strikes and months of fighting, and the closure of the Syrian corridor is complicating efforts to replenish what has been lost, while also cutting off the financing pipelines that once ran through Damascus. Finally, the destruction visited upon southern Lebanon, and the hundreds of thousands of people it has displaced, has eroded support for Hezbollah within the very communities it claims to defend — a political and moral cost that may prove harder to reverse than any military loss. Gulf money, and the leverage it buys If Washington provides the diplomatic engine of this process, the Gulf provides its economic logic — with a directness that Lebanese elites of an earlier generation, accustomed to Gulf patronage that came with few strings attached, have found unsettling. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait have told Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam directly that reconstruction and investment funds will be contingent on a disarmament plan with a concrete timeline — not merely a vague aspiration. Tom Barrack, the Trump administration's envoy for the region, described this arrangement in nearly transactional terms: Gulf governments, he said, had signaled to Beirut that "if you do these things, we will come to southern Lebanon and finance an industrial zone, reconstruction, and jobs." Under this logic, Saudi Arabia and Qatar would invest directly in the south once Hezbollah's weapons are gone, turning the very territory that housed a militia's infrastructure for four decades into a showcase of what a disarmed, state-controlled Lebanon could look like economically. The scale of what is being held in reserve pending disarmament is not trivial. The World Bank's rapid damage and needs assessment puts Lebanon's total reconstruction and recovery needs from the 2024 war at roughly $11 billion, including $4.6 billion in damage to the housing sector alone and $3.4 billion in additional losses to trade, industry, and tourism. Lebanon's economy, already hollowed out since the financial collapse of 2019, contracted by a further 7.1% in 2024 as a result of the war. Washington is reported to have approved a $230 million package specifically intended to support disarmament operations carried out by the Lebanese army, and a broader international conference on support for the Lebanese armed forces — expected in the coming months — is meant to coordinate funding that will give the army the means to genuinely enforce the state's monopoly on weapons, rather than merely proclaiming it. This, in short, is the incentive package the Lebanese state has never had at its disposal before: a credible, well-resourced international coalition ready to concretely fund the benefits of disarmament, rather than simply demanding it in words. It gives Beirut something to offer the skeptical communities of the south — the Shia towns and villages that have hosted Hezbollah's infrastructure for a generation — who will need to see tangible development, not just foreign lectures on sovereignty, for the state's presence to be seen as a genuine improvement rather than occupation by another name. Money alone will not dissolve eighty years of sectarian mistrust. But without it, no Lebanese government could reasonably ask the south to trade a familiar armed patron for a promise of state protection that has never yet been tested. The UN steps back as the state steps forward Another structural shift deserves attention, as it will reshape the security architecture of southern Lebanon regardless of how the disarmament talks unfold: the United Nations Security Council has voted to end UNIFIL, the peacekeeping mission that has patrolled the Lebanese-Israeli border since 1978, with its mandate and operations set to conclude at the end of 2026. For nearly fifty years, UNIFIL has been both indispensable and insufficient — an observer presence without the mandate or firepower to actually disarm Hezbollah, yet one whose blue helmets provided a diplomatic buffer and an internationally recognized eye on a volatile border. Its withdrawal removes that buffer at precisely the moment the Lebanese army is being asked to take full responsibility for territory that UNIFIL once helped monitor. Read cynically, the decision could look like the international community washing its hands of a problem it managed without solving for half a century, leaving Beirut alone to face Israeli military superiority and Hezbollah's residual capabilities. Read with greater optimism — and it is this optimism that the Aoun government appears to have embraced — the UNIFIL withdrawal acts as a notice mechanism, a firm deadline that no longer allows the Lebanese army the option of remaining a subordinate partner in the south of its own country. Which of these two readings proves correct will depend almost entirely on whether the international funding and training promised alongside disarmament materializes on the timeline the army needs, rather than on the one that suits foreign budgetary cycles. What Restoring the State Actually Requires It is worth clarifying what "restoring the Lebanese state" means in this context, since the phrase is invoked by every faction in Beirut for different — and often contradictory — purposes. It does not simply mean deploying soldiers to villages once controlled by Hezbollah, even if that is a necessary first step — the very one currently underway in the pilot zones. More fundamentally, it means reestablishing the constitutional principle — enshrined in the Taif Agreement thirty-six years ago and never enforced — that the Lebanese state alone holds the legitimate monopoly on organized violence within its territory. Every other unresolved crisis in Lebanese governance — from the paralysis of successive governments to the country's inability to conduct an independent foreign policy, to the collapse of its banking sector — traces back in one way or another to the existence of a non-state armed actor more powerful than the army that is supposed to answer to elected civilian authority. The Aoun government, along with Prime Minister Salam's cabinet standing beside it, has made a calculated bet that the moment has finally come to enforce this principle — not through the kind of confrontation that plunged Lebanon into civil war in 1975 or brought Hezbollah's armed men into the streets of Beirut in May 2008, but through a negotiated, internationally guaranteed, and economically incentivized sequence that offers what remains of Hezbollah's base an honorable way out, and the Shia communities of the south a tangible stake in the state's success. It is a bet grounded in an honest reading of the regional balance of power: a Hezbollah stripped of its top commanders and much of its arsenal by the 2024 Israeli campaign; an Iran consumed by its own confrontations and unable to resupply or reconstitute the party as it once did; a Syrian regime that no longer provides Hezbollah with the logistical corridor it relied on for decades; and a US-Gulf bloc more willing than at any point since 2006 to invest genuine diplomatic and financial capital in building the Lebanese state, rather than simply managing Lebanese chaos. None of this makes success inevitable. Hezbollah retains a still-considerable arsenal, a devoted political base, and demonstrated in 2008 its willingness to turn its weapons on other Lebanese when it judged its position to be existentially threatened. Israel's own conduct — its continued occupation of the five hills, its near-daily strikes, and Netanyahu's open-ended conditions on withdrawal — lends Hezbollah's argument, that Lebanon is being asked to disarm unilaterally into a vacuum, genuine grounding rather than merely rhetorical traction, even among Lebanese who might otherwise support the state-building project. And the Lebanese army, however professional it may be and however much trust it commands across sectarian divides, remains underequipped and underfunded to simultaneously secure the south, hold the line against Israeli incursions, and maintain internal order — which is precisely why the donor conference and the American package of $230 million matter just as much as any statement coming out of the Oval Office. The Bet That Must Be Made on Beirut What must not be lost sight of, amid these very real obstacles, is how rare this kind of alignment is in Lebanon's contemporary history. It is difficult to identify another moment, since the Taif Agreement, when a Lebanese head of state traveled to Washington carrying his own written plan rather than receiving one dictated to him; when Gulf capitals made their aid contingent on sovereignty rather than simply bankrolling rival sectarian patrons, as they did throughout the 1990s and 2000s; when Hezbollah's regional backer was this constrained; and when an American administration proved willing, as Trump did this week by offering to engage personally with Hezbollah and committing to press Netanyahu, to invest political capital on behalf of the Lebanese state rather than treating Lebanon as a sideshow in the Israeli-Iranian confrontation. Our conviction is that Lebanon's friends — in Washington, in the Gulf, and among ordinary Lebanese exhausted by fifty years of living inside other people's wars — should treat this alignment for what it is: not a guarantee, but a genuine window of opportunity, and one that will not stay open indefinitely. Iran's regional position could stabilize. Gulf attention could shift to other priorities. American administrations change, and with them the personal investment any given president is willing to make in a small Mediterranean country of six million people. The Netanyahu government could decide that an indefinite occupation carries a lower domestic political cost than a negotiated withdrawal. Any one of these shifts could close the window that, for now, remains open. What Lebanese state institutions need most right now is neither a new framework document nor a new photographed handshake, welcome as both may be. They need the Lebanese army to be properly equipped to extend the pilot-zone model across the entire south of the Litani, on a timeline measured in months rather than years. They need Washington to treat Israeli reciprocity — a real withdrawal from the five hills, an end to strikes on Lebanese territory, genuine compliance with the terms of the ceasefire — as just as urgent an objective as Hezbollah's disarmament, not as a secondary consideration to be negotiated once Beirut has already surrendered its main point of leverage. They need the reconstruction funding promised by the Gulf to reach the south quickly enough that the communities living there experience the return of the state as a tangible improvement in their daily lives, not merely the substitution of one group of armed men for another. They need what remains of Hezbollah's base to be offered, consistently and credibly, a place within a functioning Lebanese state, rather than being treated solely as a security problem to be solved by force. And, finally, they need a radical reform of Lebanon's confessional political and legal system — a system that has failed them — a reform that plants the seeds of a nation placing national identity above the sectarian allegiances and divisions enshrined in its constitutional order since 1943, and that allows for the emergence of a new political class committed to making Lebanon a functional state at home and a reliable partner abroad. None of this is guaranteed by a handshake in the Oval Office. But for a country that has spent half a century being told its sovereignty was hostage to others' agendas — Syrian, Israeli, Iranian, and often those of its own factions — seeing a Lebanese president walk through the doors of the White House with his own plan, rather than waiting to be handed one, is no small thing. This is the first genuine test in a generation of whether the Lebanese state can finally become the sole armed actor in its own home. Lebanon, and the region watching it, will spend the coming months finding out whether the state is at last capable of passing that test.

The threats issued by the Houthis in Yemen against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and maritime traffic serving its ports have neither political nor military prospects. It is simply impossible for the Houthis to carry out their threats to impose a blockade on Saudi ports. In reality, through their grandiose but hollow rhetoric, the Houthis have squandered the opportunity to become a full participant in Yemen’s political process, a process aimed at reaching a political settlement that excludes no party. By openly aligning themselves with the Islamic Republic, they have effectively removed themselves from that political process. They have demonstrated, quite simply, that they are Iranians rather than Yemenis, and that any hope they might regain even a minimum sense of national consciousness was always misplaced. Such expectations amounted to nothing more than a waste of time. Over the past few years, particularly since the Saudi-Iranian agreement brokered by China in March 2023, the Houthis had exercised a measure of restraint, projecting an image of neutrality. They sought to maintain dialogue with Riyadh while avoiding any form of provocation. Those exchanges, whether direct or indirect, were intended to establish a framework for coexistence between the two sides. Then, almost overnight, when the Islamic Republic in Iran, or more precisely the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), decided to escalate militarily, the Houthis, through their leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi, revealed their true nature: they can be nothing other than an instrument of Iran. They chose to become part of Iran’s offensive against the Arab Gulf states and Jordan, an offensive that reflects an unprecedented level of Iranian bankruptcy. In doing so, the Houthis demonstrated that they are nothing more than another branch of the IRGC, much like Hezbollah in Lebanon. To be sure, they are capable of disrupting shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, with the help of Somali pirates who can be hired to carry out specific missions. But that is a far cry from possessing the ability to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the indispensable gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. The reason is straightforward: the Houthis do not control the Yemeni port of Mokha, which commands maritime traffic through Bab el-Mandeb. They lost Mokha in the autumn of 2014, when Yemeni forces drove them out of the country’s south, including that strategic port. It is no secret that those local forces, which also expelled the Houthis from Aden, Mokha and several positions in Shabwa province, enjoyed the backing of the United Arab Emirates, whose Yemen policy was clear from the outset: to prevent the Houthis from taking control of the entire country, and particularly the south. Sooner or later, the international community and regional powers will have to return to Yemen, a country of exceptional strategic importance for at least two reasons. The first is that Yemeni territory could provide a corridor for oil pipelines that would bypass the Strait of Hormuz. The second is that, unless such pipelines can carry oil across Yemen to the Red Sea or the Arabian Sea, neither the countries of the region nor the wider world will be able to tolerate Iran’s continued presence in Yemen indefinitely. Put simply, the international community cannot afford to allow Iran to keep disrupting navigation in the Red Sea from Yemeni territory. It is no secret that the Islamic Republic is determined, through the Houthis, to maintain its presence in Yemen and use it to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and strike vessels transiting the passage on their way to the Suez Canal. That is indeed the Houthis’ intention. Yet their loss of control over the port of Mokha deprives them of the means to carry out those threats. It should also be recalled that the Houthis have controlled Sanaa and a substantial part of Yemeni territory since 21 September 2014. Nothing better illustrates Iran’s determination to preserve its presence in Yemen than its recent insistence on violating the restrictions imposed on Sanaa International Airport. Tehran dispatched a civilian aircraft there under the pretext of transporting a Yemeni delegation to attend the funeral of the late Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Nor did Iran stop there. The Houthis suddenly launched a campaign against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, accompanied by explicit threats, after a long period of calm and dialogue with Riyadh. During that period, the Houthis had obtained certain gains, either directly or through the mediation of the Sultanate of Oman. The question today has two dimensions. The first concerns the Houthis’ actual ability to carry out their threats against Saudi Arabia and maritime traffic in the Red Sea. The second concerns the bankruptcy of the Iranian regime. As for the first, the Houthis remain capable of targeting merchant vessels and oil tankers transiting the Red Sea, particularly because they control the strategically vital port of Hodeidah on its coastline. Iran, meanwhile, has chosen to direct its aggression against the Arab Gulf states and Jordan rather than confront the United States or Israel directly. Tehran targets Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and the Sultanate of Oman, while assigning the Houthis the task of attacking Saudi Arabia. Yet it does not dare lay a finger on a single American warship sailing in the Gulf. Ultimately, the Houthis’ threats are nothing more than a manifestation of Iran’s bankruptcy, a bankruptcy beyond which there is no deeper collapse. These threats, made at the expense of Yemen and the Yemeni people, reveal that the end of the Iranian regime is inevitable. It is now only a matter of time, after the Houthis exposed the weakness of the Islamic Republic and the depth of its bankruptcy.

Since the end of the July 2006 war, Lebanese observers and foreign analysts alike have tended to measure Hezbollah’s strength by the number of missiles it possessed, the size of its arsenal, or its ability to threaten Israel. Today, however, events call for an entirely different yardstick. The question is no longer how many weapons the group still retains, but whether it remains capable of rebuilding the military strength it spent more than four decades constructing. This lies at the heart of the current phase. Following the meeting between Lebanese President General Joseph Aoun and U.S. President Donald Trump, the sustained U.S. diplomatic engagement that preceded and followed it, the negotiations underway in Rome, and the increasingly persistent discussion surrounding the expansion of the Lebanese Army’s deployment and the linkage between reconstruction and the restoration of the Lebanese state’s authority over security decisions, it has become increasingly clear that the international approach no longer seeks simply to disarm Hezbollah through political agreement or military action. Instead, it aims to make the reconstitution of its military capabilities increasingly difficult, if not impossible. In other words, the strategy has shifted from destroying military capabilities to preventing their reconstitution. This is the context in which what might be described as “structural erosion” should be understood: a process affecting five interconnected dimensions simultaneously, namely territory, weaponry, the social base, state institutions, and regional depth. First: The Loss of Territory as a Military Environment The villages of southern Lebanon were never merely places where Hezbollah fighters were stationed. They formed part of a sophisticated military infrastructure comprising tunnels, weapons depots, command centers, and fortified launch positions. The latest war targeted that infrastructure on an unprecedented scale. At the same time, the deployment of the Lebanese Army and international monitoring mechanisms have made any attempt to rebuild it far more difficult and far more vulnerable to detection and attack. Control of territory is no longer simply a matter of physical presence. It is measured by the ability to exploit that territory for military purposes. That ability is now eroding rapidly. Second: The Erosion of Military Capability Hezbollah still possesses weapons and retains the ability to carry out limited operations should it choose to do so. But there is a fundamental difference between possessing the capacity to conduct tactical harassment and being capable of sustaining a prolonged strategic war. Its arsenal of precision-guided missiles has suffered significant losses. Its command-and-control structures have become more vulnerable, while its supply lines no longer function as they once did. At the same time, the transfer of weapons through Syria and Iraq has become considerably more complex as a result of political and security developments in both countries, compounded by increasingly stringent regional and international monitoring. As a result, Hezbollah now appears more capable of using what remains of its arsenal than of replacing what it has lost. Third: Hezbollah’s Constituency Is Changing This may well be the most sensitive factor. Southern Lebanon has emerged from the war burdened by widespread destruction, displacement, and severe economic losses. Faced with the urgent need for reconstruction, growing segments of the population have become increasingly dependent on the Lebanese state, as well as on Arab and international assistance. At the same time, Hezbollah’s social and financial institutions no longer appear capable of playing the role they assumed after the 2006 war, whether because of mounting economic pressures, logistical constraints, or the changing regional environment. This does not necessarily point to a political shift within the Shiite community. It does, however, suggest that priorities are beginning to change. The desire for stability and the restoration of normal life is gradually taking precedence over the logic of open-ended confrontation. As this transformation unfolds, securing the social support necessary to rebuild Hezbollah’s military infrastructure becomes more difficult than ever before. Fourth: The State Is Reclaiming Its Role For the first time in many years, the Lebanese state, backed by clear international support, is moving to reassert its security role in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese Army is no longer viewed simply as another force deployed alongside other actors. It is increasingly regarded as the only legitimate institution entitled to exercise the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force. In this light, the ongoing negotiations appear to be more than temporary security arrangements. They represent an effort to consolidate a new reality in which areas under the Army’s deployment fall exclusively under state authority, with reconstruction assistance and international aid conditioned on preserving that reality. Consequently, Hezbollah’s military freedom of action is gradually shrinking, not only on the battlefield, but also in legal and political terms. Fifth: Regional Depth Is No Longer What It Once Was Since its founding, Hezbollah has relied on a regional support network provided by Iran through Syria and, later, through Iraq. Today, however, that network faces mounting challenges. Borders are subject to tighter surveillance, the political landscapes in both Damascus and Baghdad have evolved, and the United States is seeking to embed these constraints within a long-term regional security architecture designed to prevent the reconstitution of military capabilities in exchange for reconstruction and stability. In other words, the objective is no longer to eliminate every weapon, but to make any future rearmament project politically, economically, and militarily prohibitive. Beyond Weapons: The Battle for Regeneration The significance of these developments lies in the fact that they do not target a single component. Rather, they undermine the entire ecosystem that once enabled Hezbollah to regenerate its strength. The territory is no longer as secure as it once was. Supply lines have become more fragile. The social fabric has grown increasingly strained. The Lebanese state is steadily reasserting its presence. And international backing for this process has become clearer than ever. The central question, therefore, is no longer whether Hezbollah still possesses missiles. It is whether, five years from now, it will still be capable of recovering the level of strength it enjoyed before the war. The answer to that question, far more than the number of missiles remaining today, will shape Lebanon’s future. Toward a New Model If Washington, together with its regional and international partners, succeeds in consolidating the gains achieved through the Rome process in the coming months, Lebanon may be on the threshold of a historic transition, moving from the balance of arms to the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Such a transition will neither be swift nor free of obstacles or attempts at obstruction. Yet current indicators suggest that the international strategy is no longer centered on defeating Hezbollah militarily, but rather on gradually containing it within Lebanon’s political system while, step by step, stripping it of the foundations that enabled it to emerge as a regional military power over the past decades. This is where the concept of structural erosion acquires its full meaning. History teaches that armed organizations do not disappear when they lose a battle, but when they lose the ability to replace their losses and regenerate their strength. That may well be the greatest challenge confronting Hezbollah today. It is also, perhaps, the defining challenge of the new phase now opening for both Lebanon and the wider region.

For more than 11 consecutive days, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been subjected every night to intensive U.S. strikes and raids targeting Revolutionary Guard positions, military infrastructure, and communication routes across several parts of the country. At the same time, the maritime blockade imposed by the U.S. military on Iranian ports is severely choking an economy that was already in an especially critical condition. To top it all off, the regime itself appears to be beset by deep internal divisions that threaten its very survival. Faced with such an increasingly entropic situation – one in which it has become mired as a direct result of its own expansionist and hegemonic policies, which recognized no limits – the authorities in Tehran are now seeking to “export” the conflict by extending it across the region, while carefully avoiding Israel. At the same time, they are attempting to exploit to the fullest a card they wield through methods characteristic of militias and organized crime: the threat of paralyzing international shipping lanes, thereby placing a substantial portion of the global economy at risk. This strategy of exporting its own crisis has translated into drone and missile attacks not only against the Gulf states, as has been the case since the conflict began in June 2025, but increasingly against Jordan, Iraq – where Iranian opposition groups have been targeted – and, most recently, Syria. The latest move by the mullahs’ regime in this campaign has been to reactivate the Houthi card. The Tehran-controlled Yemeni militia has, in recent days, renewed and escalated its threats against Saudi Arabia. It has also claimed to have imposed a maritime blockade on Saudi ports. Tehran’s maneuver is clear: to extend its campaign of blackmail and intimidation to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea in an effort to relieve the U.S. military pressure on Revolutionary Guard infrastructure. Except that Wednesday saw a series of forceful statements likely to neutralize Iran’s Houthi card. President Donald Trump first reiterated Wednesday – as he had during his meeting with President Joseph Aoun – that the United States would not stand idly by if the Houthis were to threaten freedom of navigation in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea. Echoing that position, Syria and, unsurprisingly, the secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council on Wednesday strongly condemned the Houthis’ threats against Saudi Arabia. But the most significant reaction undoubtedly came from Pakistan, despite its role as the principal mediator between Iran and the United States and, above all, as one of the Islamic Republic’s principal allies, at least to a certain extent. Islamabad sharply denounced the Houthi attacks against the Saudi kingdom, stressing its commitment to Saudi Arabia’s security and sovereignty – a reminder that the two countries are bound by a defense and security pact. The Pakistani government further warned that it would respond forcefully – “if necessary by the use of force,” it specified – to any attack against a Pakistani vessel transiting the waterway in question. In parallel with the neutralization of Iran’s Houthi card, President Trump raised the stakes on Wednesday in his efforts to ensure freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. He declared unequivocally that, from now on, any Iranian attack – whether by drone, missile, or any other means – against a vessel transiting the Strait of Hormuz would prompt the U.S. military to immediately destroy a bridge or power plant inside Iranian territory, including in Tehran or its outskirts. This stern warning builds on the neutralization of the Houthi card and should, at least in principle, temper the Revolutionary Guards’ belligerent posture regarding the Strait of Hormuz. Even so, Iran’s chief negotiator said Wednesday that “the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will not return to what it was before the war,” confirming the Islamic Republic’s determination to assert control over the waterway and collect transit fees there, despite the categorical rejection of such a move by the United States, the European Union, the Gulf states, and even China. The steadily mounting tensions point to the possibility of a large-scale U.S. attack against the Iranian regime. Two developments, among others, are indicative of such a course of action: the new British prime minister’s decision to authorize U.S. aircraft to be stationed at British military bases, and the Bulgarian Parliament’s approval on Wednesday evening, by a large majority, of a government request authorizing U.S. combat aircraft to refuel in Bulgaria. Iran had warned the Bulgarian authorities against such a decision. To conclude this regional chapter, it should be noted that Iraq’s new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, is due to visit Tehran shortly. Under the present circumstances, the visit carries particular significance in light of the policies pursued by the current Iraqi government, which has multiplied initiatives and measures aimed at countering Iranian influence in Iraq. This new direction in Iraqi policy was at the heart of Mr. al-Zaidi’s visit to Washington a few days ago, where he signed a series of economic agreements with U.S. officials. Those agreements were viewed with great suspicion by the Iranian regime, which denounced a strategic shift in Baghdad, one that is moving toward closer ties with the West, at the expense of the Islamic Republic’s influence. The Lebanese Chapter The strategic shift aimed at curbing Iranian expansionism is clearly visible as well on the Lebanese chessboard. It has been further consolidated in the wake of President Joseph Aoun’s official visit to Washington at the beginning of the week and his widely covered meeting with President Trump at the White House. This strategic option, which could be described as sovereigntist and pro-Western, is particularly evident in the beginning of the implementation of the framework agreement signed by Lebanon and Israel on June 26. Under the terms of this U.S.-sponsored agreement, the Israeli army withdrew on Tuesday morning from Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, where the Lebanese army immediately deployed and began its mission of ensuring that Hezbollah was no longer present in the area. And, in order to underscore the significance of the process initiated by the signing of the Lebanese-Israeli framework agreement, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam sought to lend the process a solemn character by making an unannounced visit to Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh. The implementation of the Lebanese-Israeli agreement and the prospects for its next phase will be the subject of a new round of talks between the two countries, scheduled to take place on August 4 in Rome, once again under U.S. auspices. Much to the dismay of the Iranian camp...

Was Patriarch Elias Howayek’s vision of a pluralistic Lebanon ever a viable historical project, given that the forces reshaping the Arab world throughout the twentieth century – decolonization, the rise of nationalism, the growth of political Islam, and the backlash against Western modernity – were largely moving in the opposite direction? Is Lebanon an “error of history,” as some have claimed while doing everything they could to make us lose faith in ourselves? Was the patriarch’s pluralistic vision a prescient recognition of the Middle East’s diversity, or a bold historical gamble gradually undermined by the major developments of the twentieth century? To answer these questions, the patriarch’s decision to embrace a pluralistic Lebanon must be placed within the long arc of Middle Eastern history, rather than evaluated solely through the lens of Lebanon's domestic crises. Seen in that light, his project stands out as a rare attempt to give institutional expression to religious diversity at a time when the region’s dominant political currents favored rigid, homogenizing models. The enduring tension between these two competing logics helps explain many of the structural challenges Lebanon has faced over the past century, while also highlighting the historical distinctiveness of its political experiment. One can go a step further by shifting the analysis from geopolitics to the history of religion and ideas. This approach raises the question of the relationship between a Christian theology of universality and the political conception of religious pluralism as it is recognized and practiced in Lebanon. It is therefore necessary to acknowledge that Patriarch Elias Howayek’s decision to champion a pluralistic Lebanon stemmed not only from political calculation but also from a Christian understanding of the human person. The “Lebanese project” thus constituted – perhaps less clearly than it appears today – the political expression of a universal Christian anthropology, with its own defining characteristics: the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal; the centrality of civic citizenship; the separation of powers; respect for religious freedom; and the recognition of diversity and pluralism as normal features of society. More broadly, Patriarch Howayek’s project emerged at the dawn of a century during which Christianity as a whole underwent a far-reaching movement toward greater openness. Several converging developments can be identified: the expansion of missionary activity, which emphasized Christianity’s universal vocation rather than its national roots; the affirmation of human rights in the Church’s social teaching initiated by Leo XIII; and the growth of the ecumenical movement, which sought to overcome the confessional divisions among Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants. The Second Vatican Council, in the 1960s, would ultimately enshrine this evolution. It echoed many of the very intuitions that Patriarch Howayek had articulated forty years earlier: religious freedom; interfaith dialogue and recognition of the values present in other religious traditions, particularly Islam; openness to the modern world ( aggiornamento ); openness to the laity and to ecclesial apostolic movements; openness to ecumenism and reconciliation with the Orthodox world; common Christological declarations, and so on. The contrast between these orientations and those that would shape the Arab world and the Middle East is not difficult to discern: genocide and ethnic cleansing in Turkey; cruel and bloody totalitarian regimes in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt; the creation of an apartheid “Jewish state”; the rise of political Islam (the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian Islamic Revolution), and so on. This argument certainly opens a debate that must be approached with nuance: Christianity should not be portrayed as inherently pluralistic in all times and places. Christian history, including in Lebanon, has also witnessed episodes of confessionalism, intolerance, and close alliances between political power and religion. Howayek’s originality stands out all the more clearly. His choice in favor of pluralism allowed Lebanon to escape the determinisms that shaped totalitarian states. Let us repeat the point: Lebanon’s history should not be judged solely through the lens of its internal crises or through the demonization of political confessionalism as the source of all its ills. On the contrary, from our acknowledged, moderate, and protected diversity emerged one of the most profound and original human experiences of the twentieth century – an experience that we must equip with institutions capable of ensuring its flourishing and stability. A fortunate “error,” one that has given us such a homeland. Read also: Howayek and the Elevation of Lebanese Women’s Role (3/4) “Love of the Homeland,” Patriarch Howayek’s Spiritual Testament (2/4) Patriarch Howayek, Prophet of Coexistence (1/4)