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Every time Hezbollah faces a political, military, or popular crisis, its leaders return to the same lexicon: resistance, victory, sovereignty, the rejection of any tutelage. Heavy words, charged with strong emotion, yet losing more of their persuasive power among the Lebanese with each passing day, as the gap between the rhetoric and the reality keeps widening. In his latest speech, Hezbollah's secretary general, Sheikh Naim Qassem, claimed that the Party remained faithful to the Taif Agreement and the Lebanese Constitution, that its weapons were aimed at Israel, and that it was facing projects of foreign allegiance and tutelage. A statement that appears coherent at first glance, but collapses the moment it meets the facts. For politics is not what is said from podiums, but what is practiced on the ground. And the facts the Lebanese have lived through over the past decades bear no resemblance to the account Qassem presented; they are, instead, very nearly its exact opposite. If Hezbollah remains faithful to the Taif Agreement, how then can one explain the persistence of a military force independent of the state, more than three decades after the agreement was signed? The Taif Agreement was not a mere political settlement to end the civil war, but a project of state-building. The essence of that project can be stated in a few words: one state, one army, one authority holding the monopoly on weapons and on security and military decisions. Has this been achieved? The answer is one every Lebanese already knows. A parallel authority to the state has emerged in Lebanon over the past decades — an authority possessing weapons, holding the decision, and capable of imposing political and military facts on the ground outside the constitutional institutions. And when the decision of war and peace escapes the Council of Ministers, the Parliament, and the Presidency, speaking of fidelity to Taif becomes closer to rewriting history than to describing reality. The problem does not lie in the existence of a political disagreement over the role of the resistance or the future of the weapons; that debate is legitimate in itself. The problem lies in the pretense of presenting matters as though Lebanon had lived, throughout all these years, under the full application of Taif, when everyone knows that one of the chief causes of the Lebanese crisis was precisely this duality of power and decision. As for the claim that the weapons are aimed solely at Israel, it is an assertion Lebanese memory can hardly take seriously. The Lebanese have not forgotten the seventh of May. They have not forgotten the years of political intimidation during which the balance of power was imposed by weapons, or by their mere shadow. They have not forgotten that the simple existence of a military force outside the framework of the state was enough to overturn political balances, block constitutional deadlines, and impose conditions on governments, presidents, and parliaments. Even when the weapons were not used directly, their mere presence remained a decisive factor in Lebanese political life. And this is where the core of the problem lies. Democracy cannot be established when a single party holds the capacity to impose its will by force, should it choose to. And a state does not deserve the name unless no political force knows that there exists, above the constitutional institutions, a higher decision still. Then comes the talk of rejecting foreign tutelage. This is where the paradox reaches its height. For what tutelage has Hezbollah actually rejected, all these years? And what autonomy of decision is it speaking of? For many years, the Party has never hidden its strategic bond with Iran. This was never an accusation leveled by its adversaries, but an acknowledged part of its own political literature. It has fought major regional battles, grounded in calculations that far exceed Lebanon's immediate interest. It entered the Syrian war. It engaged in the region's conflicts. It tied Lebanon's fate to an entire regional axis. And it turned the country, whether the Lebanese wished it or not, into an element of the equations of conflict between Iran and its adversaries. Today, as Qassem speaks of confronting tutelages, American-Iranian negotiations are underway over the region's files, Lebanon among them. And this fact alone is enough to expose the scale of the contradiction between the slogan and the reality. Had the decision been purely Lebanese, the future of the weapons and of Lebanon's security and political role would not appear on the tables of regional and international negotiations. And had the sovereignty they speak of truly existed, the Lebanese would not find themselves waiting, to learn the fate of their own country, for the outcome of arrangements concluded beyond their borders. But perhaps what most deserves pausing over is the notion of “victory” that Hezbollah offers the Lebanese. In Qassem's speech, as in those before it, holding on becomes victory, enduring becomes victory, and not collapsing entirely becomes victory. By this equation, it becomes possible to declare victory under any circumstance. But peoples do not measure victories this way. Peoples measure victory by their standard of living, their security, their stability, by their children's capacity to remain in their own country, and by their state's capacity to protect their interests. So what was the outcome, after so many years of these policies? A collapsed economy. A currency that has lost most of its value. A bankrupt state. Paralyzed institutions. A mass exodus of the young and the skilled. Growing Arab and international isolation. And destroyed regions that will need years to rebuild. Are these the signs of victory? Or are they rather the signs of a deep national crisis that some are trying to wrap in slogans? What is painful is that the Lebanese who paid the heaviest price no longer seek out speeches. The people of South Lebanon do not need more theories of victory so much as they need to rebuild their homes. Families who lost their children are not seeking political eloquence, but a rational explanation for the scale of what they have lost. And the young people leaving Lebanon by the thousands are not asking about ideological speeches, but about a future that no longer exists in their own country. This is why the language of repeated victories sounds, each day, more disconnected from the reality people live. Hezbollah has grown accustomed to winning in the narrative even as it loses on the ground. But today it faces a different dilemma. For the facts have grown too vast to conceal, the costs too heavy to justify, and the questions too pressing to be silenced by slogans. In the end, the Lebanese need no one to convince them whether what they lived through was victory or defeat. They already know it, from the details of their daily lives. They know it when they stand before their bankrupt banks. They know it when they search for work and find none. They know it when they see their children off at the airports. They know it when they wait for decisions made outside Lebanon to determine their country's future. This is why the real question is no longer: did Hezbollah win, or did it not? The question that imposes itself today is harsher still, and more essential: If everything that happened over the past decades was victory, as Naim Qassem claims, what then would defeat have looked like? This is precisely the question the keepers of slogans fear, for it is the question speeches cannot answer, flags cannot cover, and celebrations cannot hide. It is the question of facts. And facts, unlike speeches, do not lie.

The question, phrased this way, may come somewhat late in the day. Yet it has the merit of being asked in explicit terms. Under what rule of law or international convention does Iran interfere in Lebanese affairs? And how has it managed to do so with complete impunity for more than forty years? Taking advantage of the collapse of the state, this interference has taken the form of military, political, and financial support provided to Hezbollah, to the point of involving our country in conflicts and confrontations that were never on the agenda of its legitimate government. How does one flirt with a diplomatic incident without actually causing one? The ambassador of the mullahs already does not enjoy the status of persona grata, the diplomatic term certifying that an envoy has been accredited by — and accepted by — the state to which he is posted. Of course, Tehran was not about to wait for Mohammad Reza Shibani to present his credentials before trampling over our turf, encroaching upon our sovereignty, and, still less, deciding when to launch hostilities against Israel or when to halt them. With remarkable audacity, the Revolutionary Guards behaved as though they were at home; and our officials, when they were not complicit with them, were content merely to look the other way, as though unwilling to face the obvious. This situation was supposed to continue indefinitely, with Lebanon bearing the burden. But that was before the unexpected deviation of the head of state, who recently insisted on drawing a distinction between the assistance provided by the Islamic Republic and the interference it permits itself in our internal affairs. Such meddling, constituting a serious violation of a country's sovereignty, could only be conceived in the era of the “foreign tutelages to which it is forbidden to return.” Yet the improvement brought about by this departure from the norm may prove short-lived. For Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s Foreign Minister, the Lebanese file cannot be separated from the Iranian one. Claiming solidarity with our country and demanding an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in order to achieve peace in accordance with the Islamabad Agreement, Tehran is involving us more than ever in its political game and in negotiations concerning the future of the Persian Gulf. So our fate would be decided in Islamabad rather than Washington? According to Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Hezbollah’s rejection of the June 3 ceasefire agreement (1) can only be explained by Tehran’s desire to remind everyone that such a decision belongs to it: as the Iranian capital, Tehran cannot be excluded from the negotiations. According to one senior Iranian official, Iran has made far too many sacrifices on the Middle Eastern stage for a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel to be negotiated without its approval. Moreover, what did we really know about the memorandum of understanding drafted in Islamabad, whose various versions had until now been riddled with inaccuracies and omissions? And now that it has been electronically signed in its final form, who would wager on its implementation—or even its “durability”? (2) Did you say interference? Faced with rapidly approaching deadlines, Tehran nevertheless sought to reopen communication with Baabda through Abbas Araghchi. The very same minister who recently mocked President Joseph Aoun’s remarks by asking whether it was the Islamic Republic or the Jewish State that occupied one-fifth of Lebanese territory. Yet in saying so, Iran’s chief diplomat fell into his own trap. One could easily reply that it is his country that occupies a far larger portion of “useful Lebanon” than the area occupied by Israel (3). And this is without even mentioning the grip of Wilayat al-Faqih over the machinery of the deep state that governs us. All of this, of course, is exercised through its proxy, Hezbollah. Was it not Hezbollah, empowered by the Revolutionary Guards, that was able to drag Lebanon into devastating conflicts and trigger mass evacuations? (1) Lebanese-Israeli negotiations are due to resume on June 23. (2) Sina Toossi, “Even if Iran benefits from this deal with Washington, any peace is likely to be temporary,” The Guardian, June 16, 2026. (3) “Useful Lebanon” is a pejorative and cutting expression—but after all, people have also spoken of “Useful Syria.”

The renewed escalation of violence between Hezbollah and the Israeli military deployed in southern Lebanon, along with the simultaneous postponement of the American-Iranian talks that were set to open today, Friday, in Switzerland, confirms fears surrounding the terms of the memorandum of understanding reached between Tehran and Washington — terms widely seen as favoring the Islamic Republic. These concerns center on the risk of Lebanon being reduced to a mere mailbox in the context of the upcoming negotiations, which everyone knows will be lengthy and grueling, if not riddled with obstacles. The escalation raises, above all, the question of what strategy Iran is pursuing. This is a legitimate question given that Friday's outbreak of violence was triggered by a deadly Hezbollah attack — Iran's military arm in Lebanon — on an Israeli position overnight between Thursday and Friday. The fighting lasted nearly the entire day and ended thanks to yet another ceasefire between the two adversaries, brokered under pressure from Washington, but against a backdrop carrying a very significant Iranian political signal. For no sooner had the ceasefire been announced than Iran's Foreign Ministry reported contacts made by mediators to hold a first round of talks "within the coming days." It also implied that the Islamic Republic is in no rush to enter into them. "Now that the agreement with Washington has been signed electronically, the Switzerland meeting is no longer urgent," stated the Iranian Foreign Ministry communiqué, which also outlined the agenda for the discussions: clauses 1, 4, 5, 10, and 11 of the framework agreement — issues of direct interest to Tehran, as they relate to a ceasefire on all fronts including Lebanon, the lifting of the American naval blockade, the management of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of U.S. sanctions imposed on Tehran, and the unfreezing of Iranian assets. Washington, for its part, provided no specific indication of the content of the upcoming discussions, fueling fears that the negotiation process will unfold amid ongoing conflict in Lebanon and on terms dictated by the interests of the Islamic Republic, which continues to hold the Lebanese card as a bargaining chip. At the same time, Iranian officials insisted on the need to protect the Islamic Republic's national interests in the forthcoming talks with Washington. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of Parliament and chief negotiator with the Americans, affirmed that Iran would remain committed to its "red lines" during the upcoming nuclear negotiations. He warned that Tehran was prepared to respond firmly to any attempt at excessive pressure by the United States. This combination of factors lends Friday's escalation a political dimension that goes well beyond the Lebanese context, raising fears of similar episodes over the next 60 days. Forty-seven killed in a matter of hours Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon and in the Baalbek region killed at least 47 people and wounded 97, according to official figures. Hezbollah's overnight drone attack on an Israeli position near Nabatieh killed four Israeli soldiers, including one officer. The Israeli army responded by striking "150 Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa," military and political authorities of the Jewish state confirmed. The intensity of the raids triggered a massive exodus from southern Lebanon, compounded by the escalating threats against Lebanon from far-right Israeli ministers, even as Hezbollah fighters continued to target Israeli positions in turn. Washington quickly stepped in to prevent the exchange of fire from spiraling out of control. A ceasefire was set to take effect shortly after 4 p.m. Hezbollah indicated it would comply, provided Israel did the same. For its part, Israel reaffirmed its commitment to the truce, on the condition that the Iran-backed group refrain from violating it. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was expected to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who again struck a firm tone on Friday. The Israeli leader made clear that his military would remain in southern Lebanon "for as long as necessary" and pledged to continue operations to ensure the security of northern Israel. Rubio was also set to hold a phone call with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. Earlier, an Israeli military spokesman said at a press conference that Tel Aviv would continue its operations in the areas it occupies in southern Lebanon "in order to destroy Hezbollah's military infrastructure and neutralize any threat to its territory, until it receives new directives." "Recent events have demonstrated one thing: Israeli soldiers must stand between Hezbollah and Israeli civilians," he stated. He explained in particular that the Iran-backed group has established a large underground military headquarters in the area around Beaufort Castle, and that its relentless attacks against Israeli forces are aimed at "preventing them from destroying these facilities." Accusations that the Iran-backed group rejected. Its leader, Naim Qassem, was expected to reaffirm early in the evening the legitimacy of "resistance operations against the occupying Israeli army" and to accuse Israel of never having honored the commitments made under a first ceasefire agreement reached in November 2024. In his view, Lebanon is "going through one of the most dangerous periods in its history, because of the Israeli-American conspiracy, which we cannot bow to." "An attack on the truce" In the face of this fresh outbreak of violence, President Joseph Aoun condemned a "dangerous and reprehensible escalation," arguing that the Israeli strikes "directly undermined the diplomatic efforts undertaken in recent days, as well as ongoing efforts to consolidate the ceasefire and bring the war to an end." For Beirut, the timing of this escalation is particularly worrying. It comes just days before the resumption of direct peace talks with Israel, scheduled for June 23 in Washington and rejected by Hezbollah.

As Iran lies practically in ruins, the memorandum of understanding signed between Washington and Tehran on June 17 has left a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the Middle East. As long as the Iranian regime remains in place and its regional proxies survive — however weakened — the foreseeable dynamic will be no different from the one that has defined the region since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Tehran. Iran would thus continue to draw on a blend of ideology and pragmatism — first to ensure its survival, then to reassert itself regionally while keeping tensions alive. Operation 'Epic Fury' is undoubtedly a masterpiece of tactical execution, but so far it has yielded no clear strategic benefit, while Iran attempts to portray itself as the big 'winner' through a barrage of false propaganda, media manipulation, and state-sponsored disinformation. Geopolitical analyst George Friedman describes the current situation as a 'paradox of power in the Middle East' — in other words, a world in which the United States and Israel have achieved an unparalleled level of conventional military dominance, yet have still fallen short of all their strategic objectives. In the face of Iranian propaganda, it bears repeating again and again that the scale of destruction inflicted on Iran over 40 days has been immense. The United States and Israel carried out roughly 18,500 air sorties and struck 130,000 Iranian targets with surgical precision, according to Foreign Affairs, demolishing 85% of Iran's missile and drone production facilities and eliminating 70% of its missile launch infrastructure. Furthermore, the initial decapitation strike eliminated nearly 40 of Iran's top political and military leaders, including Ali Khamenei himself. They were replaced by a new generation of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers — more pragmatic and less ideologically driven — who acted swiftly to prevent the regime's collapse. A fragile memorandum of understanding The memorandum of understanding signed on June 17 by Donald Trump and Massoud Pezeshkian looks less like a peace treaty than a phase defined by a temporary ceasefire. The factors that catalyzed it stem from domestic political pressures within all three belligerents, rather than from the military situation on the ground. Indeed, internal tensions within the United States have become — as in every war since 1917 — a priority that overshadows broader geopolitical stakes. President Donald Trump is under pressure from all sides, particularly from a faction within his own party that is war-weary and sees the conflict as a betrayal of his campaign promises — even though American casualties in human lives have been minimal. His opponents across both parties are exploiting the economic fallout from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as a weapon against his administration. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party spares no effort to discredit him, whatever he does. There is also a growing divergence between Washington and Jerusalem: while the United States views the cessation of hostilities as a necessary pause to replenish certain components of its arsenal that have reached critically low levels and to address soaring oil prices, Israel remains in an existential posture. For his part, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a political storm and mounting pressure from the ultra-Orthodox community on his right flank over military conscription. These ultra-Orthodox groups are staging sit-ins outside prisons where those who refuse to report for military service are being held. On his left, he is challenged by those demanding his immediate departure, through protests and road blockades. Finally, he is caught in a vice between angering Trump and continuing the intensive war in Lebanon, or angering his security apparatus, which is determined to achieve a "total victory" that includes the complete dismantling of Hezbollah and a definitive end to Iran's nuclear program. Meanwhile, in Iran, the new generation of IRGC leadership has been facing an unprecedented economic crisis since the summer of 2025, greatly worsened by the war, and finds itself dramatically short of the resources needed to manage it. Some of Iran's new leaders fear a regime collapse if the war continues, while others want to keep using the Strait of Hormuz and exploit it as a lever of sustained pressure on the global economy. Washington, Tehran, and Jerusalem thus find themselves too preoccupied with their internal challenges to focus on geostrategic considerations. They ultimately agreed to a memorandum of understanding whose clauses can be interpreted "à la carte" as each party sees fit, viewing it as a necessary pause. Rebuilding the arsenals Iran's heavy arsenal has been largely destroyed. Tehran is left with only modest asymmetric capabilities, though sufficient to block the Strait of Hormuz and harass Gulf states — including roughly a dozen Ghadir midget submarines, thousands of Shahed-136 drones, hundreds of fast attack boats, and naval mines. For its part, Operation "Epic Fury" exposed a massive ammunition burn rate. Within a matter of weeks, the U.S. Navy fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, while the United States' current annual production capacity stands at only 90 to 100 units. The U.S. military budget for 2027 plans to purchase 950 next-generation missiles of this type, which implies funding the production line to accelerate manufacturing. Furthermore, the U.S. military expended 53% of its pre-war supply of THAAD interceptors — unique in the world — and 46% of its Patriot missiles to counter swarms of inexpensive Iranian missiles and drones. That said, the U.S. Department of Defense is pursuing an initiative to develop affordable, higher-performance anti-drone and anti-missile weapons in order to preserve costly, sophisticated munitions. The Pentagon was aware that it was winning the air war but losing on the balance sheet. In short, a pause to replenish stocks proved necessary for both Washington and Tehran. A new American doctrine for the region? An analysis in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs suggests a fundamental rethinking of American power in the wake of this 40-day war. The United States would use the ceasefire created by the memorandum of understanding to reorganize its presence in the region, where it can no longer afford to be the sole security guarantor — Arab countries having demonstrated an unwavering willingness to defend themselves against Iranian attacks. Some of these countries, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, activated diplomatic channels simultaneously. The development of an American military access route to the Persian Gulf from the west — specifically through Israel, Jordan, and western Saudi Arabia — known as the "Western Access Network," was put in place during the preparation phase for the 40-day war, as the sixteen American bases around the Persian Gulf (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE) were vulnerable to Iranian drones. U.S. forces had evacuated them in anticipation of the conflict. The same analysis in Foreign Affairs Le développement d’un accès militaire américain vers le Golfe Persique à partir de l’Ouest, notamment à partir d’Israël, de la Jordanie, et de l’Ouest de l’Arabie Saoudite, appelé «Western Access Network» ou «réseau d’accès occidental», a été mis en place pendant la phase de préparation à la guerre des 40 jours, les seize bases américaines autour du Golfe Persique (Koweït, Bahreïn, Qatar, EAU) étant vulnérables aux drones iraniens. Les forces américaines les avaient évacuées en prévision du conflit. La même analyse du Foreign Affairs It also suggests a "co-production" of ammunition with regional allies (already underway), particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which shifts Washington's role from security guarantor to security integrator. But this requires greater solidarity among Arab nations and the activation of the Abraham Accords. According to the article's author, this is a doctrine of necessity, not of choice — an acknowledgment that the era of unipolar military solutions is over. To navigate the coming decade, the United States must facilitate a regional security architecture that includes Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, while attempting to resolve the "non-issue" of a Palestinian state — a Gordian knot that has confounded every American administration for seventy-five years. Memorandum of Understanding… and Lebanon? Israeli-Lebanese negotiations in Washington appear to have been overshadowed by the memorandum of understanding. A "pilot zones" model had been proposed, aimed at testing the Lebanese state's capacity to reassert itself and empowering the Lebanese army to secure those zones and prevent Hezbollah from returning to them. Will these negotiations continue in light of Hezbollah and Nabih Berri's rejection of these pilot zones and their willingness to defer to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf? The "Yellow Line" and the demolition of homes preventing residents from returning have effectively turned South Lebanon into a permanent no man's land. This gives Hezbollah the latitude to raise its voice, reassert its resistance rhetoric, and refuse to hand over its weapons to the Lebanese state. Adding to all of this is Israel's self-defense doctrine authorizing its forces to fire on any "source of suspicion," which suggests that the risk of the ceasefire in Lebanon collapsing is significant. This June 17, 2026 ceasefire runs a strong risk of sharing the fate of the ceasefires of 1993, 1996, 2006, and 2024. There is only one hope in this situation: the resurgence of the Lebanese state, which has been long awaited since the new presidential term began. Perhaps one day?

Nuclear weaponry is no longer a mere military instrument. It has become the symbol of a deeper question, that of state security in a world where the effectiveness of international guarantees keeps eroding. The war in Ukraine, the persistent tension surrounding Iran, and North Korea’s survival despite its isolation all bring the same question back to the forefront: how can states still protect themselves within an increasingly unstable international order? Ukraine, or the Lesson of Abandoning Deterrence Ukraine represents the most debated case. Having relinquished its nuclear arsenal in exchange for international security guarantees, it found itself confronted with the Russian invasion. Since then, the question has resurfaced with even greater force: do political guarantees alone suffice to protect states against major threats? North Korea, the Strength of Deterrence Beyond Isolation North Korea, by contrast, offers an opposite model. Despite the sanctions and economic isolation weighing upon it, possession of nuclear weaponry has rendered the cost of any strike against it prohibitive. Nuclear deterrence has thus become a guarantee of survival for both regime and state, whatever the economic and political price. Iran in Search of a Deterrent Umbrella Iran, for its part, stands between the two models. It has not declared possession of nuclear weaponry, yet it seeks to strengthen its deterrent position within a turbulent regional environment. From its own perspective, the nuclear program forms part of a strategy meant to prevent any attempt to impose change by force or to threaten its national security. A Deterrence No Longer Confined to the Nuclear Recent developments show, however, that deterrence is no longer limited to the atomic weapon. Iran holds a strategic card through its capacity to influence the flow of global energy via the Strait of Hormuz. North Korea, meanwhile, has managed to leverage its military capabilities to extract economic and technological gains from Russia. Ukraine, for its part, has succeeded in developing advanced technologies in drones and electronic warfare, technologies that are now beginning to draw the interest of other nations. The Middle East at a Crossroads In the Middle East, this reality raises difficult questions about the future of regional security. Can the region continue to rely on shifting international alliances, or is it instead moving toward strengthening its own capacities for deterrence, in forms both nuclear and non-nuclear? Lebanon: When the Human Being Becomes the Source of Deterrence At the heart of this debate over instruments of power and deterrence, Lebanon stands apart as a different case. Its true wealth has never lain in the possession of nuclear weaponry, nor in control over strategic corridors, nor in the development of sophisticated military arsenals, but in possession of another form of power: that of the human being. The values of shared life, the capacity for solidarity in times of trial, and the creative energy that the Lebanese have carried across the world in economics, culture, medicine, education, and the arts, have always constituted a strategic asset granting Lebanon a presence far exceeding its geographic and demographic size. This soft power, even if it appears less resounding than missiles and fleets, remains one of the most essential elements of Lebanon’s survival and of its role in a region that needs, more than ever, models of coexistence and openness rather than division and conflict. The Open Question The essential question may not be whether nuclear weaponry constitutes the sole insurance policy of states, but rather whether the world is entering an era in which the forms of deterrence multiply, even as confidence in the capacity of international law alone to guarantee security and stability recedes little by little.

In the midst of the great transformations sweeping the region, the Lebanese front appears to be the only one still waiting for the final picture of what is unfolding between the United States and Iran to come into focus. The agreement that halted the war machine and redrew the lines of regional confrontation has yet to reveal the full extent of its repercussions on Lebanon, while the Lebanese watch and wait for the coming days to disclose which direction the forces bound to the Iranian project will take, after long years of wagers, wars and ventures. It is true that the ceasefire represents a gain for all Lebanese, after the country paid an exorbitant price in lives, economic resources, infrastructure and social cohesion. Yet this development cannot turn back the clock, nor erase the catastrophic consequences the war has left in its wake. Every party today seeks to present itself as the victor, but the question that matters to the Lebanese is not who won and who lost — it is what the Lebanese State has gained, and where are the achievements that consolidate legitimacy, institutions and national sovereignty. The war was, in its essence, a confrontation between the United States and Israel on one side, and Iran and its military proxies in the region on the other. The Lebanese State was neither a partner in the decision to go to war nor in the decision to end it; it played no role in defining the objectives of the confrontation or in managing its course. And yet it will bear the full weight of its consequences — politically, in security terms, economically, financially and in terms of its built environment. On the legal and constitutional level, no war, no settlement and no regional arrangement can alter by a single word the decisions issued by Lebanon's constitutional institutions. The war began on an Iranian decision and ended, in practice, on an Iranian decision. Hezbollah has never concealed its doctrinal, political, military and financial allegiance to Tehran, just as its leaders have never hidden their subordination to decisions emanating from the Iranian leadership. The repeated declarations of Iranian officials serve only to confirm the nature of this relationship, which goes far beyond political support to reach the level of an organic fusion with the Iranian project in the region. But whatever shifts the regional conjuncture may bring, a fundamental reality remains that cannot be circumvented: military and political developments cannot annul the decisions of the Lebanese government. A governmental decision can only be revoked by a governmental decision; one form of legitimacy cannot simply be substituted for another; the State does not fall to the benefit of any organization, party or militia, however extensive its influence may be. It is from this standpoint that the official Lebanese position remains unambiguously clear: any weapon not subject to the authority of the State and its legitimate military and security forces is an illegal weapon, and any attempt to confer legal status upon it remains a violation of the very concept of statehood, of sovereignty, and of the provisions of the Constitution and the laws in force. Even if Iran contributed, directly or indirectly, to bringing about the ceasefire, it did so in pursuit of its own interests and its own strategy, not out of any concern for Lebanese interests. States act according to their calculations, and Iran is no exception. The Lebanese interest can only be defined by the Lebanese themselves, through their legitimate constitutional institutions. It must also be recalled that the sole representative of Lebanon in any negotiation concerning its future, its sovereignty and its borders is the Lebanese State alone. Negotiating on behalf of Iranian interests or defending them is a matter that concerns Tehran. The President of the Republic has affirmed repeatedly that the State is the sole reference point in managing the country's major national affairs, and that all Lebanese are children of the Lebanese State and not of any external project or regional axis. The era of political and military mandates is over, and the illusions of tutelage that sought to control the Lebanese decision for long decades have collapsed. What the region is witnessing today — this redrawing of balances — confirms that it is States that endure, while cross-border projects recede, however powerful they may have appeared at any given moment. Before some rush to proclaim victory, it is worth pausing over facts rather than slogans. The data circulating about the American-Iranian agreement does not suggest a triumph for the Iranian axis; it points rather to a significant strategic retreat that could have direct repercussions on Hezbollah and on all the arms linked to Tehran. If the circulating data proves accurate, Iran will have been compelled to abandon one of the most prominent objectives of its strategic project — namely, the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon or approach its threshold — by accepting strict restrictions on its uranium enrichment operations. It will also have stepped back from using the Strait of Hormuz as a permanent pressure lever on the international community, allowing navigation there to resume its normal course without securing the political and financial gains it had long sought. The most sensitive loss, however, lies in the tightening of the financial stranglehold around the funding of its military proxies in the region. For the fundamental problem facing these organizations is not one of political or media discourse, but of their ability to preserve the sources of financing, armament and recruitment that have, for decades, constituted the essential spring of their power. In the Lebanese case specifically, the picture appears even more severe. The war produced no new liberation of territory, did not alter the balance of forces; it left behind ruined villages, tens of thousands of displaced persons, immense human and material losses, and an unprecedented exhaustion of Hezb's military and logistical structure. Any objective reading of the results makes it difficult to speak of victory, while the realities of the field, the economy and the social fabric point, before anyone else, to Hezbollah's own support base as the first to have paid this exorbitant price. The picture thus more closely resembles an attempt to repackage defeat as victory, and a search for exits that save face after years of wagers that ended in a shrinking of Iranian influence across multiple arenas, rather than the expansion that was so widely trumpeted. The most important question remains open: what place does Lebanon occupy in all these transformations? Where does it stand in the new Middle East that is taking shape? What are its ties with the Arab Gulf states? How will it build its partnerships with Turkey, the Arab world and the international community? Will it become once again a normal state, capitalizing on its geographical position, its openness and the energies of its people — or will it remain hostage to the projects of others and their conflicts? Lebanon's future begins on the day when the decision of war and peace becomes a purely Lebanese decision, when the State has recovered full authority over its territory and its institutions, and when all have understood that legitimacy is indivisible, that the State alone is destined to endure — and that militias, however long they persist, are condemned to disappear.