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— What happened? — Something is going to happen. — They said something would happen. — Who said that? — I don’t know. But something will. This exchange, in its apparent simplicity, recurs in innumerable variations across the textures of everyday life. It condenses into a mode of being, one that does not so much transmit the event as it reproduces it in the form of a perpetually deferred anticipation, sustained by its own repetition, carried forward by language without requiring the stabilizing force of realization. Sentences no longer arrive to report what has taken place; they work instead to suspend possibility, to keep it in circulation, as though their function were no longer to refer to the real, but to shape our relation to it—drawing us toward it even as they disperse it. It is precisely this language, its insistence, its circularity, that lies at the heart of The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin (Arabic version, Dar Al-Rafidain, 2023). The novel relinquishes narrative authority altogether, abandoning the structuring presence of a narrator in favor of a proliferation of voices that drift alongside one another, without hierarchy, without convergence. What unfolds is not a story but a surface of utterances: fragmented, overlapping, momentary. A queue extends, though toward what remains unknown; those who stand within it speak, yet what they say does not accumulate into knowledge. Meaning is neither revealed nor resolved. It lingers, dispersed across adjacent phrases that never quite meet. Composed in a Soviet context in which queues marked the rhythms of daily life, where scarcity and power were inscribed in the act of waiting, Sorokin’s text exceeds its historical frame. It radicalizes the experience to the point where its referent begins to dissolve, leaving in its place a linguistic condition. To read it is not to follow a plot, but to endure a temporality. The reader, drawn into the queue, becomes subject to the same repetitions, the same slow accrual of voices, the same fatigue that arises from a movement that does not lead forward. The text offers no promise of arrival, no threshold beyond which it might resolve. Reading becomes an act of inhabitation, an exposure to a time that does not open. In the Lebanese context, the queue does not appear as a borrowed metaphor so much as a lived form, sedimented in memory, almost inscribed in the body itself. It reaches back to the years of the Lebanese Civil War, when standing in line outside bakeries in search of bread constituted a familiar scene—an ordinary submission to a time stretched by uncertainty. There, waiting unfolded without measure. Duration lost its contours, extending unpredictably, suspending those within it between the possibility of obtaining and the risk of absence. This temporality has not receded; it has re-emerged, reconfigured, during the economic collapse, in the long lines at petrol stations, where bodies, now enclosed within cars, remain aligned and immobilized, subject to the same indeterminacy. Hours pass without guarantee. Under heat or darkness, time thickens once more, and with it, language proliferates: voices exchanged between drivers, messages relayed across screens, rumors reformulated and set back into circulation. Waiting becomes saturated with speech, a dense verbal field that fills the void left by the absence of certainty. From this accumulation, historical and affective, it becomes possible to read the present in Lebanon as a collective immersion in a suspended temporality. The present ceases to function as a point of passage between past and future, and instead extends into a field continually reproduced through language and through the circulation of expectations. Discourse moves forward, occupying the foreground, becoming almost the sole means through which the real may be approached. The event, in turn, recedes, not absent, but mediated, encountered only through successive layers of speech that reshape it even as they defer it. Within this space, the sentence that gestures toward imminence multiplies, yet never resolves. News promises turning points, but these fail to consolidate into outcomes. The future is consumed in its hypothetical form, endlessly anticipated, never actualized. A temporality emerges that no longer leads toward the event, but folds back upon itself, sustained by the repetition of its own signs. In this movement, the individual is not external to the structure but implicated within it, participating in the production and circulation of meaning through acts of commentary, interpretation, and reformulation. What unfolds across social media, this incessant proliferation of voices, belongs to this same economy, in which speaking becomes a form of presence. One remains within the structure even while experiencing participation in an event that does not arrive. Will the war continue? Who has the authority to negotiate and on whose behalf? What remains of the state? What does it mean to persist? These questions do not seek resolution so much as they sustain their own reiteration, binding subjects to a movement in which language holds the real in place even as it renders it inaccessible. Meanwhile, what is imagined as “the front”, or what some persist in imagining as such, remains elusive. It disperses into a multiplicity of mediations: political discourse, media narration, continuous commentary. Statements accumulate, oscillating between information and chatter, producing competing accounts without ever stabilizing a single point from which the real might be grasped. In this proliferation, a distance takes shape between those who experience events in their material immediacy and those who encounter them through their circulation, generating parallel modes of experience that intersect in language without converging in reality. Waiting, in this sense, no longer appears as an interval between two moments, but as a structuring condition of the present itself. It absorbs uncertainty, redistributing it across successive anticipations, rendering time inhabitable through deferral. It becomes the basis of a fragile equilibrium, sustained through the capacity to remain within postponement. The question, then, is no longer one of duration, nor of proximity to an end, but of form: what is this time that persists without advancing, that neither stops nor progresses, but folds inward, renewing anticipation while exhausting every possibility? Within this expanse of voices, where chatter is not excess but constitutive, the question remains suspended, passing from sentence to sentence without settling into an answer. It concerns the possibility of imagining a time in which something might, finally, take place. In a horizon where such a possibility can no longer be assumed, the act of thinking it becomes, in itself, a displacement, an attempt, however tenuous, to step out of the queue, if only through language.

On 16 April 2026, a ten-day cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon entered into force. It was, by any measure, the weakest agreement Lebanon had ever accepted. Where the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of 2006 imposed binding and symmetrical obligations on all parties, and the November 2024 ceasefire created a robust monitoring mechanism and precise implementation timelines, the April 2026 instrument imposed an immediate, total, and unconditional obligation to disarm Hezbollah while giving Israel explicit pre-emptive self-defence rights it had never formally possessed before. Something had clearly gone wrong, not in the drafting rooms of Washington or Paris, but in the decades of strategic paralysis in Beirut. The Binding Letter of Resolution 1701 Resolution 1701 was, on paper, a serious instrument. Adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council on 11 August 2006 to end the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah, it set out clear and unconditional obligations for all parties. Israel was required to immediately halt offensive operations, withdraw from southern Lebanon in parallel with Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) deployment, respect the UN-demarcated Blue Line at all times, and hand over remaining landmine maps. Lebanon was required to deploy its army to the south, exercise full sovereignty over its entire territory, prevent unauthorized arms flows, and, most consequentially, pursue the disarmament of armed non-state actors. Hezbollah, which was not a formal signatory but whose leader Hassan Nasrallah publicly pledged to honor the ceasefire, was required to cease all attacks against Israel, withdraw from the area south of the Litani River, and submit to the authority of the Lebanese government. The Art of Non-Implementation What followed was a near-comprehensive failure of implementation, though not an equal one. Israel halted its major operations and eventually withdrew most of its ground forces, but continued airspace violations for years and provided only partial mine map disclosure. The Lebanese government deployed the LAF to the south in a limited capacity but never once seriously pursued Hezbollah's disarmament, deferring it through political dialogue, sectarian sensitivity, and quiet calculation that the cost of confrontation outweighed the cost of inaction. Hezbollah, the group that had publicly committed to the ceasefire, spent the next eighteen years building an arsenal eventually estimated at 150,000 rockets and missiles, constructing tunnels into Israel, and establishing what amounted to a parallel state in southern Lebanon, all in direct violation of a binding Security Council resolution. The Shebaa Fiction To counter Israel's justification of self-defence, Lebanon and Hezbollah invoked the unresolved Shebaa Farms dispute, a small strip of territory whose status remained cartographically ambiguous, as grounds for tolerating Hezbollah's armed posture as a "national resistance." This argument had a fatal flaw. Syria privately acknowledged in 2011 that the territory was Syrian rather than Lebanese, meaning the central political premise of Hezbollah's armed existence in southern Lebanon rested on a claim that even Damascus did not support. None of this had legal validity under the text of the resolution, which contained no escape clause permitting non-compliance on political grounds. A Second Chance, Better Drafted After Hezbollah opened a "support front" after the Hamas attacks of 7 October, and the war escalated into Israel's full ground invasion of southern Lebanon in autumn 2024, the international community convened again. The result was the November 2024 cessation of hostilities, mediated by the US and France. This time, the drafters tried to close the loopholes. The language shifted from the aspirational to the mandatory. Lebanon was no longer merely asked to work toward Hezbollah's disarmament. It was required to "prevent" Hezbollah operations as a binding outcome. A sixty-day implementation timeline was set for the coordinated Israeli withdrawal and LAF deployment to the south. A US-chaired monitoring mechanism was established to verify compliance. The word "parallel" appeared explicitly — neither side's obligations were to be treated as sequential. Cautious Progress, Familiar Shadows The initial results were cautiously encouraging. By April 2025, Hezbollah had transferred control of approximately 190 of its 265 military positions south of the Litani to the LAF. Lebanese and US military officials reported the seizure of thousands of rockets and hundreds of missiles. For the first time since 1990, the president of the republic pledged to enforce a state monopoly on arms, and the government formally criminalized Hezbollah's military activities. These measures represented tangible — but still limited — progress. History Repeating, Faster Nonetheless, the same failures reemerged. UNIFIL documented more than 7,500 Israeli airspace violations and nearly 2,500 ground violations through October 2025. Israel retained troops at five positions in Lebanon well beyond the sixty-day deadline, publicly stating its intention to hold them indefinitely. The LAF was not formally tasked with confiscating Hezbollah's weapons until nearly a year after the agreement. Lebanon repeatedly conditioned its own disarmament efforts on Israel first withdrawing completely, a conditionality with no basis in the agreement's text. Hezbollah quietly rebuilt its arsenal. And on 2 March 2026, the group fired projectiles into northern Israel, citing the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei and continued Israeli occupation, justifications with no legal weight under any of the agreements it had effectively committed to comply with. The Price of Accumulated Failure The April 2026 agreement was agreed upon in this context of repeated failures. Its architecture is a reflection of Lebanon's accumulated leverage deficit. Israel's obligations are narrower than at any point since 2006, essentially a ten-day abstention from offensive operations, framed explicitly as a "gesture of goodwill," rather than a binding legal commitment. More significantly, Israel's self-defense right has been formally expanded to cover not only ongoing and imminent attacks but also "planned" ones. This means that Israel retains the explicit right to conduct pre-emptive strikes on the basis of intelligence assessments, without waiting for a strike to materialize. This was not a concession Israel extracted through aggressive diplomacy. It was the logical endpoint of a process in which every prior agreement had been violated, and every compliance deadline had been missed. Ceded, Not Seized Lebanon's obligations in 2026 are framed in notably stricter language than in 2024. Where the previous agreements required Lebanon to "prevent" Hezbollah operations as a mandatory outcome, or to gradually disarm non-state actors, the 2026 text invokes Lebanon's "exclusive" responsibility to defend its territory, with no monitoring mechanism or timeline for weapons confiscation. In a single instrument, the entire architecture of international oversight that had been painstakingly assembled since 2006 has been dissolved in favor of direct bilateral negotiations that Lebanon is entering from a position of structural weakness. The pattern across all three agreements is not difficult to identify. Each successive framework has imposed stricter disarmament demands on Lebanon and Hezbollah, while simultaneously formalizing and expanding Israel's recognized latitude for military action. This is not a coincidence. Where a state fails to establish exclusive control over its territory, tolerates a non-state actor maintaining an independent military arsenal, and allows its borders to serve as conduits for weapons transfers in violation of its own international commitments, the legal and political space available to a neighboring state invoking self-defense inevitably expands. Israel's operational latitude in 2026 was not seized unilaterally. It was ceded incrementally, through decades of Lebanese inaction. This does not excuse Israel's continued occupation of Lebanese territory beyond agreed timelines, the killing of hundreds of civilians since November 2024, or repeated strikes on civilian infrastructure. These are serious violations that carry legal liability, an advantage that any government would have sought to leverage had it fulfilled its own obligations. In practice, however, the overall trajectory of negotiations between Israel and Lebanon remains predictable. The political and legal conditions that render Israeli military action defensible, both domestically and internationally, were largely shaped by what Lebanon and Hezbollah failed to do over more than two decades. The trajectory from Resolution 1701 in 2006 to the ten-day gesture of April 2026 is not one of great-power manipulation or diplomatic betrayal. Rather, it reflects the choices of a state that permitted a parallel military authority to operate within its borders, attempted to outmaneuver the international community, and gradually discovered — agreement by agreement — that international patience had been exhausted. As a result, Lebanon enters direct negotiations with Israel in April 2026 as a sovereign state that has formally acknowledged it cannot guarantee control over its own territory. This is an exceptionally difficult position from which to reach a fair deal.

There is in the Lebanese-Israeli ceasefire concluded under American auspices a promise. But this promise is at once tenuous and taut, so fragile — like the thread of the Fates — that it seems capable of snapping at any moment. Lebanon has long learned to live on little and to transform the scraps of stability into the raw material of survival. So it welcomes this truce as a remission — though one knows, from experience, that it may in reality be nothing more than the prelude to a relapse. This is the whole of the Lebanese tragedy in its most harrowing expression. The ineluctable recurrence of misfortune, and its cyclical return, which the collective memory has never truly ceased to anticipate. For Lebanon knows ceasefires. It knows them all too well. Since the war of 1975, it has lived through enough of them to know that their lifespan owes less to the will of the parties than to regional circumstances, to the internal balances of the sponsoring powers, and to a series of variables that no one in Beirut truly controls. The Lebanese people have consequently developed a kind of bitter wisdom — that of the child who has learned, at its own cost, that the teacher's intervention stops the "bully" only for the briefest of pauses. The moment the schoolyard is left unsupervised, violence reclaims its rights. Inevitably. But what truly weighs today, beyond the immediate uncertainty, is the temporal depth of this déjà vu. The memory of 1982 or 2006 returns like a curse, accompanied by something more structural: the interminable reign of the ephemeral. In Lebanese time, compromise drags on and the anguishing in-between labors slowly until it becomes a condition of existence. One has consequently learned to internalize a paradoxical message — almost unbearable through sheer repetition — one that has not been without provoking a latent schizophrenic state: that of living ceaselessly in hope while always expecting the worst simultaneously. Like a fatality. This survival reflex was forged by decades in which the worst, precisely, came to pass each time one had begun to believe that the best was possible… Yet this paradoxical message, this contradictory injunction that has structured the Lebanese collective psyche since 1975, today reaches a hyperbolic degree of intensity — precisely because the actors involved have not changed in their deeper logics, even if their operational capacities have been severely diminished. Hezbollah, riven by internal divisions between a pragmatic current and an intransigent fringe that certainly reflect the split between doves and hawks within the Iranian regime itself, possesses a considerable capacity for procrastination. It knows how to feign playing the game of the Lebanese state — through Nabih Berry or by preserving its ministers in government — while continuing to outbid all others and working to rebuild its military capabilities… awaiting the propitious moment to reverse the balance of power, as it did by force of arms in May 2008… or, with more "classical elegance," by toppling the Hariri cabinet in 2011, precisely as Hariri was visiting Barack Obama at the White House. The path chosen by Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam — that of negotiation and the gradual assertion of sovereignty — proves, in this context, as necessary as it is perilous. The Lebanese state finds itself caught in a vice between two adverse wills that converge, paradoxically, in their effect of undermining: Israel, which seeks to weaken the state sufficiently to keep it malleable while maintaining it solid enough to serve as a useful interlocutor; and Hezbollah, which cannot survive the disappearance of its arms and the severing of the existential link between its Lebanese branch and its Iranian patron, and which knows that the peace dynamic, if it succeeds, spells its strategic obsolescence. A movement that has built its entire identity on armed violence and the rhetoric of "resistance" cannot convert itself into an ordinary political force without ceasing to be what it claims to be. It would be condemned to disappear by the very logic of its own hubris — like a sect whose doctrine collapses — were it to enter the political game and agree to lay down its arms. This is moreover equally the case of the Pasdaran in Iran, which is why the truce with the United States will in all likelihood fall through. War as a way of life… and as a device for tightening cohesion and relentlessly re-legitimizing itself. External hostility in the service of exterminating enemies within. From this standpoint, there is little doubt that Hezbollah will do everything in its power to re-embed itself in the Lebanese state and reduce it once again to the puppet-like, cadaverous subaltern of its satrapal mini-state. To return to Lebanon — accustomed to the sinister shadow of ancient curses hovering over the City — the precedent of 1982 ought to weigh more heavily on the collective memory. A genuine window of opportunity, however fiercely contested, had opened between Beirut and Tel Aviv, backed by American resolve then embodied by Secretary of State Alexander Haig. The fall of Haig and the collapse of Menachem Begin were sufficient to reverse the dynamic and turn the May 17 agreement into the most bitter symbol of diplomatic illusion, before it was abrogated under pressure from Hafez al-Assad and part of the Lebanese political establishment. History in Lebanon — far from being farce, even a tragic one — repeats itself, but always as wound. And the slightest change in Washington — the midterms — or in Tel Aviv — the fall of the current cabinet — would suffice to send this fragile truce, along with the entire negotiating dynamic and its protagonists, down the same path. Lebanon cannot afford to wait for history to finish repeating itself. This is why, independently of external dynamics, what must be built — and quickly — is a Lebanese roadmap endowed with sufficient political and popular legitimacy to withstand internal pressures and the vagaries of the capitals of influence, whose priorities can shift within weeks, and whose interests are certainly not those of Lebanon, whatever the best (or less than best) intentions in the world may be. Peace with Israel is not a panacea, but Lebanon cannot remain forever — and alone — in a state of war. Moreover, Hezbollah, which claims to be resisting, never ceases to drag Lebanon — paradoxically, through its disastrous escapades and its delirious "victories" — into a peace of the vanquished. By weakening the state and positioning itself as the sole interlocutor with Tel Aviv to negotiate deals, it erodes, each time, whatever sovereignty and authority still remain. And it does so deliberately, subversively. Successive nails in Lebanon's coffin. Yet one must acknowledge that the institutions of the current state — as in the aftermath of the Cedar Revolution of 2005 — are incapable of purging themselves of an ideological and political gangrene, the Syrian-Iranian axis, that has been eating away at them since 1990. What the United States demands of Lebanon amounts to asking a cancer patient to heal himself despite the gravity of his condition. The patient can barely strive to survive and remain functional with whatever strength he still possesses. This too must be borne in mind, whatever the profound desire of a large part of Lebanese society to be done with Hezbollah's hegemony. Lebanon can no longer bear this regime of permanent emergency — this perpetual movement from crisis to war and from war to crisis which, since 1967, has literally devastated its institutions and its people, and indefinitely defers the elementary right to something resembling a normal life. The Lebanese deserve to live. Not heroically. Simply humanly. If only from time to time… Can the international community — while calling upon Lebanon to display courage even as it is caught between the hammer and anvil of the "double enemy" — offer the Lebanese state and its population durable guarantees of stability alongside the ongoing negotiating process, in order to prevent a return to this tragedy, made of precariousness, uncertainty, and ultimately chaos? Given the current state of the world, it is legitimate to doubt it. In this senseless maelstrom, it is far more likely that the Lebanese can, in the end, count only on themselves. And it becomes imperative for them to work, in so doing, to consolidate a united domestic scene grounded in clear and non-negotiable constants — the republican values and the spirit of coexistence, under the sole guarantee of the Lebanese Constitution — far from the triumphalist outbidding of all sides. And if Hezbollah persists in refusing to be part of this consensus, as usual, it will be Hezbollah that has chosen, once again, the path of deadlock and irrationality over the measured and salutary choice of rational legitimacy. The moira of Lebanese hope against the suicidal hubris of Hezbollah. No one can save, against his will, someone who has truly decided to perish. To save oneself, however, in such a case, is a duty.

Direct Lebanese-Israeli negotiations, unprecedented since 1983; a precarious ceasefire in South Lebanon; the Strait of Hormuz still at the center of Iranian-American tensions; a summary of an eventful week in the Middle East ending with two crucial developments. The past week ended this Sunday, April 19, with a double announcement of the highest importance. In a firm tone that contrasts with his traditional statements, President Donald Trump indicated Sunday afternoon (Levant time) that his representatives would travel to Islamabad Monday evening for a final round of talks on Tuesday, during which the Iranian regime would have to endorse a 'very fair and reasonable' agreement proposed by Washington. Failing that, the White House chief affirmed, the US army 'will destroy every power plant and every bridge'. 'Kindness is over,' President Trump declared. 'If they don't accept the deal, it will be an honor for me to do what should have been done by other presidents over the last 47 years. It's time to end the Iranian killing machine.' Second important announcement closing the week: the Elysée indicated in the afternoon that President Emmanuel Macron would receive Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Tuesday. Ahead of these two major developments, Lebanon experienced a week as eventful as the previous ones, but punctuated by a historic event, in every sense of the word: the launch of direct negotiations with Israel, a first since 1983. Certainly, the meeting in Washington on April 14 between the ambassadors of Lebanon, Nada Hamadé Mouawad, and Israel, Yechiel Leiter, under the aegis and in the presence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and also in the presence of the American ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, was planned. The resulting photo, which went viral worldwide, nevertheless had a colossal effect, both on the Lebanese scene and in the capitals concerned. What emerged from this meeting lays the groundwork for longer-term negotiations. While Marco Rubio stressed the importance of the moment while acknowledging that the process 'will take time,' it was Israel's ambassador to Washington who was the most talkative, assuring that the two countries 'discovered they were on the same side,' speaking of border demarcation and a future of peace. Lebanon's ambassador merely described the meeting as 'constructive,' specifying that she had requested a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon. In the joint communiqué, the United States expressed hope that the talks would continue and lead to a peace agreement. In Lebanon, the talks provoked diametrically opposed reactions, in line with deep political divisions. Unsurprisingly, Hezbollah called them a 'capitulation,' with its circles saying they preferred Lebanon to 'benefit from Iran's support' within the framework of its own talks with the United States. The sovereignist camp welcomed these talks with Israel, not only with a view to lasting peace but also for the Lebanese state to definitively separate from the Iranian axis, by enshrining Lebanon's right to negotiate its own future. In this uproar, one voice remained silent, that of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berry, who is also the head of the Amal movement, the other component of the Shiite duo with Hezbollah. In a gesture that many are still trying to decipher, he sent his second-in-command, former minister Ali Hassan Khalil, to Saudi Arabia, in parallel with the Washington meeting. While this first meeting concluded with assurances of future contacts, no new appointment was officially announced. But this step was expected to cause a snowball effect, as the ceasefire requested by Lebanon to continue the dialogue was to take place two days later. On Thursday, President Joseph Aoun had a day marked by crucial telephone conversations. While Secretary of State Marco Rubio proposed putting him in direct contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Aoun refused, maintaining his position of demanding a ceasefire. This attitude remained unchanged even when the occupant of the White House himself was on the other end of the line. With his usual fervor, Donald Trump announced that he would bring Aoun and Netanyahu together in Washington 'soon'. Firmness of tone in Baabda A ten-day ceasefire was to be the result of the contacts of the past week. It came into effect at midnight on Thursday night to Friday. According to information leaked in international media, President Trump reportedly somewhat forced the Israelis' hand to obtain this calm, which he considered necessary on the Lebanese and Iranian fronts. Although clearly announced by the American president following his phone call with his Lebanese counterpart, the Hezbollah camp was quick to try to claim credit, as a good champion of opportunistic recovery, a propaganda whose stars were cadre Mahmoud Qomati and MP Hassan Fadlallah. The latter even went so far as to say that it was the Iranian ambassador, the very one the Lebanese state considers persona non grata, who announced the ceasefire to him... One more sign of the party's absolute allegiance to Tehran, which prefers to attribute paternity to its patron rather than to the Lebanese government. On the ground, as usual, Hezbollah proclaimed 'divine victory,' with celebratory gunfire and rockets in the Beirut sky, causing at least two casualties. The familiar scenes of cars returning south on broken roads, Hezbollah flags in hand, were repeated, despite warnings about the fragility and provisional nature of this truce. Faced with this growing belligerent rhetoric from Hezbollah and its Iranian patron, it was a message addressed to the nation by President Aoun on Friday evening that was to set the record straight. Without including Iran in his thanks, Joseph Aoun assured that he would go wherever necessary to save his country and his people, in a clear allusion to the direct negotiations that would continue, emphasizing that these were neither a sign of weakness nor a surrender. In this speech with a firm tone, he clearly endorsed the separation from the Iranian axis, while reiterating the Lebanese state's determination to extend its sovereignty over the entire country, by negotiating the Israeli withdrawal from the newly (re)conquered territories. This speech was widely praised by those who were delighted to find the same vein as the president's inauguration speech in January 2025, while others remain circumspect, pointing to the inaction of the Lebanese authorities towards Hezbollah over fifteen months, the direct consequence of which was the opening of a new front against Israel in March 2026. On Hezbollah's side, the speech definitively sealed the break between the two parties, as vociferated by the inescapable Qomati, who threatened to bring down the government in the streets. But the confrontation is not limited to verbal accusations of betrayal and threats: on Saturday, a French UNIFIL peacekeeper was killed, and three others wounded, by direct fire in South Lebanon. Even if Hezbollah denied any involvement in the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron and UNIFIL itself immediately pointed the finger at them based on elements from the preliminary investigation. The French Minister of the Armed Forces spoke of an 'ambush'. The other surprise of the week was the 'reappearance' of Hezbollah Secretary General Naïm Qassem, in a recorded speech broadcast on April 13, on the eve of the direct negotiations in Washington, in which he rejected direct contacts with Israel and called them 'submission'. In another message broadcast on April 18, Qassem continued his attacks against the talks, but highlighted his party's openness to 'full cooperation with the Lebanese authorities'. Is this a division of roles within the party or real divergences between a harder line and a more conciliatory one? In Iran, uncertainties about the truce On the Iranian front, the week was punctuated by untimely and contradictory statements from the American president and Iranian leaders who continue to blow hot and cold. The mediating countries, led by Pakistan, are working to keep the direct negotiation process alive, which began two weeks earlier. Now, all eyes are on next week, which should be decisive in the sense that the truce decreed by Washington ends on Wednesday, and a new round of talks is expected to be held in Islamabad. Will it take place, and will the truce be extended in the absence of an agreement? The situation should clarify in the coming days, but the possibility of a renewed conflict is far from ruled out. At the center of concerns this week was the Strait of Hormuz, sometimes 'open,' sometimes 'closed,' in a saga that continues to weigh on oil prices and the global economy. As part of an ongoing American blockade on Iranian ports, Iran declared the strait open in the wake of the ceasefire in Lebanon, with strong statements on the cause-and-effect relationship between the two events, Tehran wanting to give the impression of reacting to an achievement it attributes to itself. However, the week ended on a distinctly more negative note, as the Revolutionary Guards resumed targeting merchant ships, justifying this new 'closure' of the strait in communiqués published via Iranian state media by the American refusal to end the blockade.

The essential point of the bold address that President of the Republic Joseph Aoun delivered to the Lebanese remains that relating to the attainment of "permanent agreements" with Israel in the light of a ceasefire. The head of state deliberately affirmed Lebanon's complete exit from the Iranian game by passing over in silence any role for the "Islamic Republic" in reaching the ceasefire. He instead underscored the role of "friend" President Donald Trump and the Arab group, "at the forefront of which the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." This has undoubtedly drawn the wrath of Iran and Hezbollah upon a president who is working to end the occupation and restore the displaced to their villages. The ceasefire in Lebanon was achieved after Presidents Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam came to understand that a half-exit from the Iranian game was worthless. Either a complete exit from that game, or Lebanon would remain yet another victim of the Iranian expansionist project and the dead end it has reached. Iran's problem with Lebanon appears to be of extreme complexity. It stems, at root, from the Iranian inability to grasp Lebanon's composition and its intricate formula on the one hand, and from the refusal of most Lebanese to see their country fall under direct Iranian domination immediately after freeing itself from Syrian tutelage on the other. But Iran's overriding predicament remains its discovery that its investment in Hezbollah, an investment spanning more than forty years, was misplaced. Every billion poured in by the "Islamic Republic" has gone up in smoke, whether in Lebanon or in Syria. One must understand Iran's situation and the predicament that Lebanon has caused it. That predicament lies in the "Islamic Republic's" inability to adapt to the transformation the region has undergone. The best illustration of this transformation is that the war currently under way is playing out within Iran itself. Not far off is the day when this war will lay bare the failure of the regime that Ayatollah Khomeini established in 1979, a regime whose founding watchword was "the export of the revolution." Forty-seven years after the birth of the "Islamic Republic," the slogan Tehran once brandished has rebounded against those who brandished it. Lebanon, in its majority, refuses to be dragged down by this same Iranian recoil. The Iranian regime has ultimately proved incapable of continuing to defend itself by exporting its crises beyond its borders. A game at once grotesque and dangerous was bound to come to an end. It rested on the naivety of successive American administrations since the Jimmy Carter era, and on Israeli complicity. Israel played every role Iran required of it in order to serve its own interests, grounded in the fragmentation of the region. The rules of the regional game have changed. That game rested primarily on American permissiveness toward Tehran and on Israeli complicity. The region has changed, Israel included, since October 7, 2023. The "Islamic Republic" did not even grasp the meaning of no longer being the party that decides who becomes president of the Republic in Lebanon. One cannot forget that Hezbollah imposed Michel Aoun as president of the Republic on October 31, 2016. Nor can one overlook that Joseph Aoun reached the Baabda Palace in early 2025 against the will of Iran and Hezbollah. The fact remains that reality is one thing, and illusion quite another. Michel Aoun, along with his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, was a mere instrument in the hands of Hezbollah, itself an instrument of Iran. The different regional circumstances, especially with the major transformation that has occurred in Syria, now allow the current president of the Lebanese Republic to break free of Iranian hegemony and to be a genuine president for Lebanon, despite the occasional absence of clarity in Baabda's vision... The whole issue is that Iran does not know how to lose, unlike Germany and Japan in their time. The "Islamic Republic" appears not to know how to lose today, just as it did not know how to win during the period when it believed it controlled four Arab capitals, Beirut among them. What matters for a country like Lebanon is knowing how to lose and extricating itself definitively from Iran's grip. The options before a country that will have to pay the price of "a war imposed upon it," in Nawaf Salam's words, are few. Through Joseph Aoun's address, Lebanon showed that it genuinely intends to go further than a mere ceasefire with Israel, which will require inevitable concessions. The sooner Lebanon accepts the terms capable of leading to a permanent ceasefire, the better for the South and its people. Just as Iran negotiates with America, Lebanon must negotiate with Israel without any complex of any kind. When the "Islamic Republic" shows no mercy toward the people of the South, nor toward the Southern villages and towns, Lebanon has no choice but to place its own interest above all others, above Iran's most of all. It must take note that in the face of a monster named Benjamin Netanyahu, the country holds no card to play other than direct dialogue with "Bibi." Such dialogue could prove useful at a certain stage, with a view to going beyond a ceasefire and exploring whether there exists a means of ending the occupation in exchange for a price that cannot be avoided. It is the price of Hezbollah's total subordination to the "Islamic Republic"...

Suddenly, in less than 24 hours, what could be perceived as signs of panic manifested themselves on Saturday, April 18, within the Iranian camp, in the form of belligerent behavior and equally aggressive and hateful statements. The most serious development of that Saturday was undoubtedly the ambush laid by Hezbollah militants against a French UNIFIL unit conducting a patrol in the area of ​​the town of Ghandourieh, in the Bint Jbeil district, within UNIFIL's deployment zone south of the Litani River. One French peacekeeper was killed and three others wounded, two of them seriously. President Emmanuel Macron reacted strongly to this attack, clearly placing the responsibility for the shelling on Hezbollah and urging the Lebanese authorities to quickly identify the perpetrators and take the necessary measures against them. This attack against the French peacekeepers was strongly condemned by President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and even the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri. President Aoun and the Prime Minister indicated that they had ordered the judiciary to conduct an investigation to arrest the perpetrators. Faced with the gravity of this attack, Hezbollah denied responsibility for the ambush targeting the French peacekeepers that evening. This denial fooled no one, especially those in official circles. In parallel with this militia incident, Hezbollah did not hesitate, on Saturday, to issue direct death threats against the centers of power, particularly the President of the Republic, whose televised address on Friday provoked the ire of the pro-Iranian party. Senior officials within this group have notably gone so far as to warn the head of state against continuing the process of direct negotiations with Israel, emphasizing that the president risks suffering the same fate as former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, assassinated after Egypt signed the peace agreement with Israel. These same Hezbollah sources also criticized President Aoun for not having "thanked Iran" (!) for its (alleged) efforts to establish a ceasefire. Amidst these boundless threats, one of the pro-Iranian party's officials demanded that the government reverse all decisions taken against Hezbollah, or, failing that, "a popular movement will bring down the government!" A Yellow line The fact remains that these apparent signs of panic do not change the reality of the situation. An official Lebanese source indicated late Saturday that President Aoun and the Prime Minister held a meeting to review preparations for the upcoming Lebanese-Israeli talks. On the ground, the Israeli army reported the establishment of a "yellow line" south of the Litani River – similar to the one in Gaza – which represents a de facto "demarcation line" separating the buffer zone established by Israel from the rest of Lebanese territory. This demarcation line would allow the Israelis to prevent Lebanese residents from accessing the buffer zone, which encompasses more than fifty villages and towns, some of which have been completely razed. In this context, the Israeli army is continuing its military operations and targeted bombings south of this "yellow line" in order to prevent the re-establishment of Hezbollah militants in this area under the guise of the return of "residents." A Standoff Over the Strait of Hormuz The clearly perceptible escalation in Lebanon, driven by Hezbollah, is in line with a parallel escalation in Iranian positions—or rather, those of a (radical) Iranian faction—focused primarily on the Strait of Hormuz. In this context, significant disagreements appear to characterize the relations between the various factions within the Iranian regime. This division emerged on Saturday following a statement from the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announcing the complete reopening of the Strait of Hormuz as a gesture of goodwill aimed at facilitating negotiations with Washington. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' initiative was apparently not appreciated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Deputy Foreign Minister (not the Minister himself) immediately reversed course regarding the strait, and later that day the IRGC announced the complete closure of the maritime passage to protest the continued US naval blockade. Later in the afternoon, sources within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were expected to release a flurry of statements, indicating that Tehran had informed the Americans that it rejected holding a new round of negotiations under Pakistani auspices, which impliesThis appears, at least on the surface, to be a rejection of Pakistani mediation. Indeed, the Pakistani army commander, who had been leading the mediation efforts, left Iran on Saturday after a three-day visit. Sources within the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) also emphasized that Iran refuses to relinquish its ballistic missiles and opposes any concessions on the nuclear issue. This hardening of Iranian positions has been accompanied by a military escalation. IRGC fast attack craft opened fire on three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament to declare that disagreements with the Americans over Hormuz had led to "armed clashes, and Washington backed down." Faced with this Iranian escalation and the radicalization of Tehran's positions, the US military announced at the end of the day its intention to seize all Iranian commercial vessels starting Sunday. The question at this stage is whether the hardening of the Iranian camp's stance, both in Lebanon and Iran, reflects a sense of panic in the face of current developments or is simply a desire to raise the stakes on the eve of a possible resumption of bilateral negotiations next week. On this point, President Trump stated late last night that "very positive discussions are underway with Iran." However, a senior US official asserted that "war with Iran could resume in the coming days."