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In Lebanon, the ceasefire proclaimed by Donald Trump, which came into effect on Thursday night to Friday, and President Joseph Aoun's message to the nation on Friday, applauded by sovereignist leaders and many editorialists alike, have rekindled public hope. Hezbollah was quick to vehemently criticize the presidential speech, even resorting to threats, although its name was not explicitly mentioned once. This speech, commendable in itself, however, recalls the inauguration speech of January 9, 2025, which has still not been implemented. Donald Trump will invite President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House for direct negotiations. Talks between belligerents always begin with contradictory positions, generally followed by a compromise. This is usually in favor of the stronger party but provides guarantees to the weaker party, when a true will for a solution exists. Before engaging in the exercise of predicting the results of the planned Lebanese-Israeli negotiations, it is appropriate to recall previous regional peace talks. Egypt has been at peace with Israel for 48 years and Jordan for 32 years. At the time of signing the peace treaties, both states were accused of all evils by countries claiming to be part of the “front of refusal.” The Palestinian-Israeli Oslo Accords have been stalled for 33 years, due to a lack of Israeli will and Palestinian divisions. The Abraham Accords for normalization, signed by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco with Israel, are working very well despite the Gaza war triggered by the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. Following this war, however, Saudi Arabia has frozen the opening of normalization talks with Israel. Bashar al-Assad's Syria had calculated that it was in its interest not to sign peace agreements with Israel, to maintain an extremist posture, and to ally with Iran. Assad had two priorities: first, to preserve his regime and ensure its succession for the benefit of his son; second, to maintain his grip on Lebanon. He had estimated that the only way to secure these objectives was not to engage in a peace that could threaten his regime, which, deprived of the state of belligerence with Israel, could no longer justify either its hold on Lebanon or its internal repressions. The will to reach a peace agreement on both sides is therefore the key to the success of future Lebanese-Israeli negotiations. This peace would deprive Hezbollah of its “resistance” rhetoric and the legitimization of its militia structure. The pro-Iranian group would have to change its discourse and perhaps abandon its raison d'être. Consequently, it should not be expected to make concessions. Moreover, it clearly states that it wants neither negotiations nor peace. So what will the Lebanese state do during the Washington talks? It is absolutely clear that there is a common point between Lebanon and Israel: the dismantling of the Hezbollah militia. In geopolitical terms, this means the end of Iranian hegemony exercised for 44 years over the Eastern Mediterranean. But this will not be easy. In this case, how will the Lebanese authorities solve this problem? Sheikh Naim Qassem has already shown his hand, stating bluntly that he will continue the resistance until his last breath, and will continue to refuse to hand over his weapons before Israeli withdrawal and the implementation of a national security strategy (to keep his weapons under a different label). Have the president and his advisors, and/or the Council of Ministers, put the Hezbollah problem on the discussion table with a multidirectional approach? Have they developed a military, security, diplomatic, economic, social strategy… a compact strategy as required by any action of this magnitude? Is there collective work in this regard? Or will they hide behind our army, as they have been doing since August 2025? It should be known that the war triggered by Hezbollah to support Iran, which has just been interrupted by the current ceasefire, is the fifth between this group and Israel since 1993. Hezbollah therefore has 33 years of experience in how to take advantage of truces to reorganize, rearm, and renege on its commitments to hand over its weapons, as it did for UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of 2006 and the ceasefire of November 27, 2024. If the Lebanese-Israeli peace talks falter, we must unfortunately prepare for a sixth war of its kind, always as devastating, if not more so. President Elias Hraoui's mandate was unable to confront Hezbollah. Those of Emile Lahoud and Michel Aoun granted all favors to this group. Only President Michel Sleiman proposed a roadmap to restore state sovereignty, with the Baabda Declaration (June 2012) as a starting point, which was very quickly circumvented and paralyzed by Hezbollah, the Free Patriotic Movement (Michel Aoun), and the Lebanese Democratic Party (Talal Arslane). President Sleiman was accused of all evils by his detractors, amidst a media and social media campaign. Hezbollah has always regarded the state as a shell, serving as a legally cosmetic cover, but remaining at its mercy. Lebanese negotiators in peace talks should propose credible solutions to this 44-year-old problem, which several current powerful figures have helped to maintain. Without this, solutions will come from abroad, as has been the case for 50 years. A minimum of seriousness and credibility should emerge, otherwise the presidential speech of April 17, which is promising and a source of hope, risks not being followed by actions and ending up like the inauguration speech.

Delivered at a critical moment, following the entry into force of the ceasefire with Israel, the speech by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun stands out as one of the clearest in tone and most ambitious in its political aspirations. Neither an ordinary speech of appeasement nor a ceremonial statement of thanks, it amounted rather to a sweeping declaration of intent: to redefine Lebanon’s position, recover the State’s decision-making authority, and engage in a negotiation process supposedly different from everything that has come before. But between the force of the speech and the reality of the balance of power, the real questions arise: are we witnessing a genuine turning point, or a speech that runs ahead of the State’s actual capabilities? The Structure of the Speech — From Gratitude to the Announcement of a Course The speech opens on a point of convergence: expressions of thanks. Thanks to various states, and foremost to “friend Donald Trump,” to Saudi Arabia, and to all the parties that contributed to the ceasefire. This opening is not incidental. It aims to anchor an image of international support and to lend external legitimacy to the course that will subsequently be proposed. But the speech quickly moves from thanks to the essential: the announcement that Lebanon is entering “the phase of permanent agreements.” It is precisely here that the true political dimension begins. The president does not merely describe what has happened — he sets out what is to come: negotiations, agreements, a long process that goes beyond a simple ceasefire. The Central Message — “We Have Recovered Lebanon’s Decision” The key formulation of the speech is the following: “We have recovered Lebanon and Lebanon’s decision, for the first time in nearly half a century.” This sentence encapsulates the essence of the speech, yet at the same time it carries the highest degree of complexity. What does it mean concretely? That Lebanon did not previously command its own decision, that the current period represents a qualitative turning point, and that the State is now the sole instance that decides and negotiates. Yet this is precisely where the major challenge emerges: is this a realistic assessment, or a declaration of objectives? For the recovery of sovereign decision-making in Lebanon is not achieved through a speech, but through a profound transformation of internal power dynamics — and in particular on the question of the State’s monopoly over arms and security decisions, a question that has not yet been resolved, either politically or practically. This formulation can therefore be read more as a “statement of intent” than as a description of an accomplished reality. The Defense of Negotiation and the Breaking of a Political Taboo One of the most striking features of the speech is the boldness with which negotiation is presented as a legitimate — indeed necessary — choice. The president left no room for ambiguity, insisting that negotiating is neither a sign of weakness, nor a retreat, nor a concession. This passage targets directly the environment hostile to any negotiation process with Israel, which has always equated negotiation with capitulation. What the president is attempting here is an operation of “redefinition”: transforming negotiation from an accusation into a sovereign instrument, linking it to the protection of the people rather than to the abandonment of rights, and placing it within the framework of the State rather than within external backroom dealings. This proposition, despite its clarity, runs up against a divided political and social reality, where a large part of Lebanese opinion continues to regard any negotiation as crossing red lines. The Discourse Against “Absurd Wars” — An Indirect Confrontation In several passages, the president attacks the logic of repeated wars, using striking formulations: “absurd, gratuitous, and periodic death,” “dying for something that is not Lebanon,” “between suicide and prosperity.” These are not ordinary phrases. They carry an implicit indictment of a course maintained for years, built on anchoring Lebanon within regional conflicts. For the first time with such clarity, two options are placed before the Lebanese: to persevere in the logic of wars, or to shift into the logic of the State and of life. But here again, the problem lies not in the diagnosis but in the capacity to change this reality. Arms and the State — The Most Sensitive Formulation Among the most serious and significant passages in the speech is the affirmation that the authority of the State must extend across the entire territory “by its own forces exclusively,” and that a “single armed force protects us all.” These formulations, without explicitly naming any party, are unambiguous in their import: they point to the monopoly of arms by the State. Why does this matter? Because it is precisely here that the crux of the Lebanese crisis lies — the presence of arms outside the State’s framework, the duplication of security decision-making, and the anchoring of these arms within regional calculations. The president places this issue at the heart of the coming phase, without however proposing a precise mechanism for achieving it. And this is where the true challenge lies: moving from the slogan of the “monopoly of arms” to an implementation plan requires an internal consensus that does not yet exist. The Popular Dimension — A Speech of Rational Mobilization The speech was not addressed solely to political elites — it turned resolutely toward public opinion, with an explicit call to reject accusations of treason, to resist being swept up by slogans, and to allow reason to prevail over instinct. This dimension reflects an awareness that any political change in Lebanon requires popular backing, or at the very least a reduction in public tensions. But in return, Lebanese society remains deeply divided, which exposes any unifying discourse to contradictory readings. The International Dimension — Anchoring the Partnership By thanking the United States and Saudi Arabia, the president seeks to establish an international umbrella for the new course. Two objectives emerge: to reassure the outside world that Lebanon is moving toward stability, and to secure political and economic support for the coming phase. But this also raises a question: is this course genuinely autonomous, or tied to external conditions? Between Boldness and Risk-Taking There is no question that the speech carries a manifest political audacity: publicly raising the question of negotiation, speaking of the monopoly of arms, refusing proxy wars. But this boldness carries with it a considerable risk — that of raising the threshold of expectations without guaranteeing the capacity to meet them, of opening an undeclared internal political confrontation, of placing the State before a difficult test. Are We Facing a Founding Moment? The speech presents itself as a decisive turning point: the end of “Lebanon-as-arena” and the beginning of “Lebanon-as-State.” But Lebanese history is strewn with similar moments that never came to fruition. What will determine the outcome is the convergence of several factors: genuine political will, the State’s capacity to impose its decisions, the position of the essential internal forces, and international and regional support. If these elements converge, the speech may prove to be the beginning of a turning point. Otherwise, it will remain in the realm of aspiration. In Conclusion — A Speech That Founds a Larger Question President Joseph Aoun’s speech goes beyond a simple political stance — it is an attempt to repose Lebanon’s fundamental question: do we truly want a State? The president offered a clear answer: yes, one State, one decision, one armed force, and a negotiation process that protects the country. But the real challenge lies not in formulating this project, but rather in the capacity to impose it on a complex reality, where domestic interests are intertwined with regional calculations. The speech charted the direction, without deciding the path. And it is here that the judgment on this address depends on what follows: either it will be the opening of a genuinely sovereign process, or it will join the pantheon of the most powerful speeches… that changed nothing.

This country—ours, after all—deserves better than your “resistance”! But what curse hangs over us, in this Orient given over to the whims of warmongers and would-be martyrs? Every time Arab leaders indulged in incendiary rhetoric and were swept into wars, we were headed for disaster. Thus, on the eve of June 1967, the provocations of the Syrian Baath regime in Damascus dragged Egypt and Jordan into a six-day war. On one side, Egypt lost the Sinai, control of the Gaza Strip, and mastery of the Suez Canal; on the other, Syria lost the Golan, while the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was stripped of the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem (1). To this day, neither Damascus nor Amman has recovered from that misstep; the territories Israel had “taken” from them were never to be regained. Only Lebanon, which had kept its distance, escaped the debacle and managed to preserve the entirety of its 10,452 km². But neither the Palestinians, nor the Haraqa al-Wataniya , nor the Iranians—who arrived last—saw it that way. They were determined, at all costs, to drag us into a conflict lost in advance, in order to demonstrate Arab and Islamic solidarity. That same Haraqa al-Wataniya , relying on the PLO, believed it could achieve its aims in 1975 by storming the “Lebanist” and legalist strongholds. Misled by its own insurrectionary rhetoric, it rejected the “isolationist” policy of the regime in place—a policy that had nevertheless preserved southern Lebanon from an Israeli invasion. But what could we do? It was written that sooner or later we would be occupied by foreign forces. With this difference: today we are in a state of belligerency not out of Arab solidarity, but to avenge the martyrdom of the Iranian Supreme Leader. Bravo—“twenty years later” Being in the eye of the storm, let the numbers speak for themselves, and let us admit that Hezbollah has surpassed its 2006 score. During the 33-day war, 1,200 deaths were recorded; today, over the same span of time, there are already 1,400 victims (2). Bravo, Hezb! Let us continue: if twenty years ago more than 100,000 housing units were destroyed, this time systematic destruction has pulverized entire neighborhoods, and border villages have been wiped off the map (3). And to complete the comparison, note that while the one million displaced in 2006 were able, as soon as the fighting stopped, to return to their homes, they will not be able to do so under the current circumstances: the displacement, since last month, of 1.2 million people risks becoming irreversible. We must now expect, as one observer puts it, a lasting transformation of the territory and a spatial reshaping—a geographic reconfiguration of the South aimed at “disarticulating Shiite areas” by cutting lines of communication. The idea is to establish a buffer zone, a prelude maybe to a creeping annexation. Bravo again, Hezb! The West, our mihrab! From independence, Lebanon chose to set itself apart and to detach from the neighboring countries mired in their anachronisms and nationalist rhetoric. Without denying our Eastern origins, and even less our Arab brotherhood, we looked—boldly—toward the West, which we took as our model and our mihrab. Our state distrusted disruptive ideologues as much as it did overexcited tribunes and warmongers. It was this gap between us and the neighboring Arab countries that defined us, and ensured on our soil the flourishing of formal freedoms and free enterprise—things strictly banned under Nasser, under the Assads (father and son), and under Saddam Hussein. Yet this Lebanese idiosyncrasy was seen as high treason by certain political parties and a good part of our people. In 1956, President Chamoun could refuse to sever diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom and France, which had gone astray in the Suez expedition. But from 1990 onward, we no longer had the means to resist: we would align ourselves definitively with Damascus… And since then, despite the fall of the Baathist regime, we have been struggling to get out of the rut. And to tell you the truth, we are not yet done with Hezb. From one confrontation to another, it outdoes itself—it hurtles from catastrophe to catastrophe! 1—Moreover, Golda Meir did not fail to tell King Hussein: all this would still be yours had you not intervened on June 6! 2—As of today, we have surpassed two thousand dead, not to mention the wounded and those permanently disabled. 3—There will be plenty of time to take stock.

The spirit and legacy of the Ulama Mohammed Hassan al-Amine, leading authority of Lebanese-centered, statist, and Amelite Shiism, remain more relevant than ever, five years after his passing. Five years ago, on 10 April 2021, the Shia scholar Mohammed Hassan al-Amine died in Sidon of COVID contracted at the age of seventy-five. Lebanon had long been collapsing before his eyes — and it continued inexorably to come apart after him. Perhaps paradoxically magnanimous on this occasion, the Grim Reaper granted this wise and gentle man — as it had, nearly a decade earlier, to his friend Hani Fahs — the opportunity to be spared further suffering in the face of the appalling spectacle of the continuing agony of the Land of the Cedar, and, with it, of the Shia community. No doubt finitude made him a gracious and final bow by removing him from this world before his darkest prophecies began to be fulfilled with such precision. Or perhaps this is simply that ultimate consolation which allows us to survive the disappearance of the fundamental landmarks that had gradually underpinned an entire vision of politics founded on moderation, coexistence and peace. Five years later, the ruins of the country bear exactly the contours that Mohammed Hassan al-Amine had drawn. Rereading his texts today thus produces a form of belated gratitude for that courage of clairvoyance he had been compelled to deploy within his own community, against the praetorian guard that had appointed itself its protector, and in the name of an idea of his community that those guardians were methodically working to disfigure. The Man from Najaf and Saida Born in 1946 in Chakra, deep in Jabal Amel, into a family whose religious lineage stretched back several generations — the great Mohsen al-Amine, author of the Ayan al-Shia , counted among his ancestors —, he left at fourteen his outlying corner of the world for the scholarly alleyways of Najaf, where he spent twelve years absorbing fiqh, philosophy and tradition, without ever ceasing to read in parallel what the champions of prohibition rarely read: the history of religions, the great texts of the European Renaissance, Averroes revisited from the margins, or Jamal al-Din al-Afghani as an inexhaustible source of questioning. He returned in 1972 carrying a subtle blend of fertile doubt, of the capacity to separate the divine from the human without denying one in favour of the other, and of the conviction that fiqh without a deep knowledge of history amounts, in reality, to nothing more than an infinite extension, a tragic perpetuation of the past. A religious court judge in Tyre, then in Saida, an intellectual presence in a predominantly Sunni city where he lived without retreating into communal insularity, Mohammad Hassan el-Amine convened the Multaqa al-Thulatha , Tuesday evening gatherings at his home where poets and politicians, clergy and lay intellectuals mingled, where Archbishop Salim Ghazal would come to spar with the sayyed in a friendship that nothing — neither confessional divisions nor political fractures — would ever manage to break. From Saida, Mohammed Hassan al-Amine thus built a singular intellectual figure within the Lebanese Shia landscape, one that upheld, within an increasingly lethal and totalitarian communal environment, moderation, justice, freedom and a culture of life, and refused to sacrifice any of these in the name of doctrine, ideology or hollow populist pseudo-rhetoric. The man had understood perfectly that the question Lebanon has faced for centuries lies in this very dialectic: freeing religion from the politics that constantly seeks to confiscate it. A reformist to the marrow, in the spirit of the Lebanese Amelite tradition of which he was, in the wake of Imam Mohammed Mahdi Shamseddine, one of the most eminent authorities in Lebanon. The brown tide that was ravaging his surroundings? He was perfectly immune to it. A Resister Against the Confiscated Resistance Yet the sayyed was a resister. No one could call his legitimacy on this point into question. He had sheltered Ragheb Harb in his Saida home. He had hidden Abdel Latif al-Amine through the dark years of the Israeli occupation. He had been arrested in July 1984 and expelled to Beirut by Israeli military intelligence. But he believed unshakeably in the principle of a Lebanese national resistance, which he carefully and consistently distinguished from armed communal resistance. This distinction rested on an architectural conviction, grounded in both anthropology and theology, according to which resistance has real value only when it is carried by a people and inscribed within a state project — rather than surrendered to a party-militia that always ends up, having monopolised war, monopolising peace, representation, and the life and death of those it claims to defend. He said as much without equivocation, in an interview given to Sandra Noujeim of L’Orient-Le Jour in July 2015, at the moment when Hezbollah’s militia involvement in Syria was finishing the work of revealing its true nature beneath the layers of rhetoric that had concealed it: “The resistance in Lebanon cannot fulfil the conditions of its success without Lebanese unity, without an army capable of confronting the enemy and without state institutions that serve as a reference point for the Lebanese people.” And further on, with a frankness that, coming from a respected Shia sayyed, amounted to exemplary courage: “By becoming a prop for the Syrian regime, which is in no way different from the other repressive dictatorships of the region, the resistance is being progressively denaturated.” The moumanaa, that celebrated axis of resistance which Hezbollah’s propaganda brandished as a sacred standard? “Where is it exactly? I don’t see it.” The response, perfectly calm, shattered the founding Hezbollah myth of struggle on behalf of the oppressed. The Diagnosis and Its Fulfilment Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian war was further proof that the party had transformed the Lebanese Shia community into fuel for a project that had ceased to be Shia in the sense of the Jabal Amel tradition, becoming instead Persian in its eschatological ends and mercenary in its earthly means. The summer of 2006 had already cost an enormous price, and the verdict remained highly debatable on the “divine victories” proclaimed by the Hezb. The Syrian decade had already begun to sign the true beginning of the end… before the missiles of September 2024, then those of March 2026, came to write its most brutal and most tragic chapter. Mohammed Hassan al-Amine possessed that singular gift of formulating, without acrimony, truths that his interlocutors refused to hear, and of placing the diagnosis on the table without taking any pleasure in the wound it caused. That lucid sadness of the physician who watches the illness progress because the patient refuses treatment, and who nonetheless continues to repeat, day after day, the prescription, even knowing that those who listen are becoming ever fewer. Such was his philosophical stance, and such is what ran through his texts. The wilayat al-faqih as the foundation of political legitimacy? He had spent an entire life demonstrating that government, in the Islamic tradition properly understood, falls within the realm of human affairs and not of divine mandate, that the dawla arises within the field of mubahaat , of permitted things, and that confusing sharia with the architecture of political power is to commit precisely the betrayal Muawiyah committed in his time: stealing justice in the name of justice. Democracy as the antithesis of Islam? He had taken care to show that democracy functions as a mechanism, that the Quranic principle of shura awaits only translation into institutions, and that fourteen centuries ago Muslims missed a historic opportunity to invent democracy before the Europeans. Karbala Against Martyropathy The sayyed is no longer here to witness the suicide of the warrior sect, which destroyed the whole of Jabal Amel along with itself, ceded it to the enemy and shamelessly provoked, for the greater glory of the faqih , the displacement of its entire population. Hezbollah today emerges from the ashes of its own military implosion. And yet, amid the still-smouldering ruins of this catastrophe, martyropathic rhetoric continues to function, as though the very gravity of the disaster were incapable of breaking the diabolical circle of the ideology of death — an ideology that al-Amine had fought all his life, in the name of a superior dignity of life, convinced that Shiism, as he conceived it from his readings in Najaf to his final conferences in Saida, presents itself first as a project of human liberation, before being instrumentalised as a programme of ritual sacrifice in the service of Tehran’s imperial ambitions. Martyropathy — that structural cult of death which transforms defeat into spiritual victory and destruction into founding sacrifice — occupies the theological heart of Hezbollah’s logic, without anyone inside the system possessing the conceptual tools to escape it. This is what al-Amine had grasped in rereading Karbala as a call never to tolerate injustice, to refuse submission to the tyrant, and to distinguish testimony ( shahada ) from the compulsive pursuit of martyrdom ( istishhad ) erected into an end in itself. In his conferences of 1992 and 1993 in Teyr Debba, he turned the slogan “Every day is Ashura, every land is Karbala” against the dominant reading that the militia and its eulogists had made of it. This slogan, he explained, means that the struggle for justice arises in every age and in every place, and that the true homage paid to Imam Hussein is to build the world he called for. And therefore, that repeating the scene of his immolation without end betrays precisely what he wished to transmit. But how to convince a crowd nursed from birth on the fixed and anaesthetising idea that true life passes through martyrdom? The Legacy and the Compass What makes al-Amine’s thought irreplaceable in the Lebanon of today lies in the quality of the alternative he proposed and which remains to be built. A Shiism freed from the tutelage of a military apparatus that confiscated the decision of war and peace from an entire society without ever seeking its consent, and that imposed its fate on a community by establishing an armed hegemony in the service of a foreign project. The legacy of Mohammed Hassan al-Amine, now more than ever, is that of a luminous, radiant Lebanese Shia identity, whose primary anchor is Lebanon and the heritage of Jabal Amel, read anew without the political servitude that the wilayat al-faqih has imposed upon them since 1979. A vision of the State as a common project of justice and freedom, transcending sectarian allegiances, capable of embracing Lebanese plurality within a civil architecture founded on law and democracy, far from weapons, drug trafficking and the Mephistophelian practices inherited from the Assassins. This Lebanese vision, Mohammed Hassan al-Amine — religious dignitary, philosopher, writer and poet — had built in the daily practice of a simple, austere, warm-hearted man who lived in a predominantly Sunni city, sat on interconfessional councils, welcomed with open arms, in the spirit of coexistence of Greater Lebanon, Maronite priests and lay intellectuals, who read Mohammed Arkoun with as much interest as Shahid Sadr, and who refused to allow his religious position and beliefs to dictate his relations with his fellow citizens. The closeness, the hand-to-hand grappling with otherness, the conviction that Islam constitutes the heritage of human civilisation in the broadest sense — all of this made him a kind of scholar-cleric, a moujtahed -humanist, whose deep tradition could never impede his freedom to think and to be with and for others. Shia al-ʻaql wal-damir — the Shia of reason and conscience. This is the path that Mohammed Hassan al-Amine, following in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors of Jabal Amil, offers to Lebanese Shia. It is a project for the future — for the Shia community, but equally for all Lebanese communities, currently disoriented and in the grip of the most violent identity convulsions, as is always the case in times of crisis. Like his friends Mohammed Mahdi Shamseddine, Hani Fahs, Nassir al-Assaad and Mohammed Hussein Shamseddine, and so many others, the legacy of Mohammed Hassan al-Amine is there to remind us that the compass is the State of Greater Lebanon as a definitive homeland for all its sons and daughters, sovereign, free, independent and plural. In the silence of eternity, he still waits — now more than ever — to be heard.

The first part of this analysis established that neither the United States nor Iran emerged from six weeks of war with a strategic victory. This second part examines what that non-outcome means for the actors who must now live with its consequences: Israel, Lebanon, Türkiye, the Gulf states, and the broader Western alliance. What follows is an overview of the contradictions and dangerous calculations now shaping the region's next chapter. Israel: The Permanent Disruption Doctrine The Israeli prime minister entered the Iran campaign as its chief architect and advocate. He exits it under pressure from both directions simultaneously. On one side are military and political hardliners who wanted to continue operations despite the American ultimatum to stand down, and who believe that the ceasefire, like the Yemen deal before it, has left Israel more exposed, not less. On the other side is a reinvigorated opposition that has always described Netanyahu's strategy of permanent escalation without a political horizon as a formula for endless war rather than lasting safety. Underlying these political pressures is a security doctrine that has undergone a fundamental shift since October 7th. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, Israel shifted from deterrence to prevention, assuming that pre-emptive military action, rather than the credible threat of retaliation, represents the only reliable guarantor of Israeli security. Gaza was the first full-scale application of this doctrine, and its results exposed a core limitation. Overwhelming force can destroy infrastructure and eliminate leadership, but it cannot produce sustained political control, nor can it prevent gradual reconstitution. Hamas has survived as a political actor. Israel maintains uncontested military dominance over the Strip but does not govern it, which means that while the immediate threat to surrounding settlements has been neutralised, the conditions for Hamas's eventual rebuilding have not been. The adapted doctrine now combines demilitarised buffer zones with sustained efforts to keep hostile actors consumed by internal strife. The goal is not to govern these territories but to prevent any coherent military threat from reconstituting within them. It is a doctrine of permanent disruption rather than decisive, one-off victory. Recent surveys indicate that only around 22% of Israelis believe their country or the US has won this war, while just 32% express satisfaction with the overall outcome. At the same time, 79% continue to support ongoing military operations in Lebanon. Israel's 2026 legislative elections are likely to sharpen these tensions rather than resolve them. Political leaders will face pressure from constituencies demanding security guarantees, not abstract strategic benchmarks. That pressure is likely to sustain continued military operations in Lebanon until Hezbollah is fully disarmed, complemented by heavy diplomatic pressure on the Lebanese government, sustained targeted strikes, and demilitarised buffer zones designed to prevent Hezbollah from returning to its pre-2023 military posture. A word on territorial expansion is warranted here. Israel's stated military objective is the establishment of security buffers in the form of forward-positioned perimeters designed to push threats farther from existing borders. Therefore, Israel can’t possibly look into extending sovereignty over new territory. Permanently annexing southern Lebanese land would place Israeli civilians closer to Hezbollah's remaining capacity, not farther from it, which is the precise opposite of what the prevention doctrine requires. The historical record supports this reading. Israel withdrew from Sinai in the 1980’s, from southern Lebanon in 2000, and from Gaza in 2005. The single exception is the Golan Heights, formally annexed and subsequently recognised by the US under Trump's first term following sustained lobbying by pro-Israel groups in Washington. As for the broader 'Greater Israel' project, it has never coalesced around a single agreed map even within Israel's hard-right constituencies. Were territorial maximalism genuinely driving Israeli policy, the withdrawals from Gaza and southern Lebanon, both of which appear in at least some versions of the Greater Israel map, would be inexplicable. Lebanon: Between Vanished Hope and Suspended Catastrophe Inside Lebanon, the picture that was cautiously optimistic a year ago has darkened considerably. The Nawaf Salam government that took office in early 2025 was genuinely promising, being the first Lebanese government in three decades to remove the famous 'People, Army, and Resistance' formula from its ministerial statement, stripping Hezbollah of its official political cover. The Lebanese Army began deploying south of the Litani River for the first time in decades. Hezbollah, severely weakened by the 2023–24 war with Israel and the killing of its senior leadership, appeared, for a moment, to be genuinely contained. However, the party's performance since it decided to join the war on March 2nd clearly demonstrates that it had been constantly reconstituting and adapting, shifting toward a more dispersed, guerrilla-style posture. More importantly, it is now seeking to leverage the US reversal on Iran to rebuild domestic legitimacy, using the current moment to forestall any return to pre-war arrangements or to the military-political conditions that had previously stripped it of formal governmental cover. The group is actively assessing ways to sideline and weaken its political opponents, initially through legal and parliamentary means, and if those avenues prove insufficient, through assassinations and targeted killings of the kind Lebanon endured between 2005 and 2013. Lebanon's consociational system, rooted in rigid sectarian power-sharing, renders decisive action against any single actor exceptionally difficult. Into this tense context comes a displacement crisis involving more than a million uprooted people, the majority from communities aligned with or dependent on Hezbollah. Israel is determined to prevent the return of these villagers to Southern Lebanon before Hezbollah is fully disarmed. Potential donor governments continue to condition support on disarmament benchmarks that Hezbollah refuses to meet. More specifically, Gulf governments are reluctant to finance a state coopted by Hezbollah; that is, if we assume that the economic aftermath of the war in their own countries will still allow them to donate generously as they did before. The result, already visible, is a protracted displacement crisis in a country lurching toward the same suspended catastrophe as Gaza: too broken to recover, too armed to be governed, too divided to find a way forward on its own. Türkiye: An Indispensable Power in a Regional Vacuum A weakened Iran does not automatically stabilise the region. It creates a vacuum. Before the Iran war began, Ankara was already the dominant external actor in post-Assad Syria. Iran's degradation has accelerated Türkiye's centrality to whatever regional order emerges in Syria, in Iraq, and most importantly in shaping Muslim political opinion. This growing strength is placing Türkiye on a more direct collision course with Israel. Israeli officials have been increasingly explicit about viewing Türkiye as an emerging strategic threat, especially in Syria, where Türkiye holds more cards than any other actor. Why Turkey will be a key regional powerbroker after the Iran war is no longer a question, it is a reality. The Gulf: Triple Pressure on a Weakened Social Contract The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have absorbed the most immediate economic shock from this war. The GCC's social contract, the implicit promise of quasi-unlimited prosperity in exchange for political loyalty to ruling dynasties, depends on a stable, wealthy, interconnected regional economy, and is now under stress. The GCC faces three simultaneous challenges, each of which would be demanding on its own. First, it needs to restore confidence in the economic model it has built since the 1970’s, which depends on predictable oil exports, safe transit routes, and foreign investment that is sensitive to regional instability. Second, it must decide how to handle an Iran that is wounded but not broken, and that will, under almost any ceasefire scenario, retain the capacity to threaten Gulf infrastructure again. Accommodation risks emboldening Tehran; confrontation risks another round of economic devastation. Third, and perhaps most urgently, the Gulf states need to kick-start an express economic recovery programme. The Absent West: A Lasting Strategic Error Throughout this crisis, the most striking feature of European and broader Western policy has been its absence. While the US was fighting a regime that did not spare any Western interest, European governments were mostly watching from the sidelines, using the Iran crisis as an opportunity to settle political accounts with the Trump administration rather than engage with the strategic reality that Iran's threat is not limited to US interests. This will be remembered as a profound strategic error. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump's methods, the underlying reality remains that an emboldened Iran is emerging out of this conflict alongside a Gulf whose economic foundations are under sustained pressure. By choosing not to join, or at minimum not to support, the US-led effort to weaken Iran, reluctant Western actors have effectively fostered a more dangerous balance of power, one in which Iran's leverage grows, deterrence erodes, and the cost of eventual confrontation becomes far higher. The Grey Zone as a Strategic Horizon Iran's remaining asymmetric capabilities will not sit idle while diplomatic negotiations proceed. Short of a satisfactory deal for President Trump, both the US and Israel have strong strategic incentives to maintain an active pattern of targeted operations. Nonetheless, all three parties — and the GCC — cannot afford a return to full-scale war as it was in March and early April 2026. The purpose of the emerging grey-zone strategy is to disrupt Iranian nuclear and ballistic rearmament, degrade surviving proxy infrastructure, and signal through action that the cost of reconstitution will remain high. Grey-zone operations (precision strikes, cyber disruption, intelligence operations) have proven more durable in their effects than spectacular military campaigns, precisely because they deny adversaries the stable environment they need to rebuild. Strategic restraint premised on the hope that negotiations will resolve structural issues would, on current evidence, simply offer Iran and its proxies the breathing space they need to reload. The pattern has repeated itself too many times to assume a different outcome this time. The scenario of a comprehensive diplomatic breakthrough that resolves the nuclear file, constrains Iran's proxy network, and produces a stable, enforceable new order would genuinely change the regional equation. But it is the least likely outcome on current evidence. It would require a level of sustained US political investment that Washington has consistently failed to deliver after military campaigns. It would require Iran's post-war leadership to make concessions that its predecessor explicitly refused. It would require a Hezbollah willing to disarm as a condition for Lebanon's recovery, something the group has already signalled it will not accept. Regional actors are more desperate and less predictable, and the trust required for a durable settlement has been eroded by decades of broken agreements and bad faith posturing on all sides. Conclusion The new phase of the Middle East's never-ending crisis is not defined by a clear victor or a clear loser. It is defined by uncertainty, in Israel, in the United States, throughout the Gulf, and in Lebanon; and by a general consensus among regional actors that the safest operating posture, for now, is to advance interests through low-intensity confrontation, back-channel pressure, and strategic ambiguity rather than open confrontation. The stakes are higher than ever and the actors more desperate than before.

For the first time since February 28, Lebanon experienced a day of calm: no Israeli raids, no exchanges of fire on the southern border, and no fighting in the border villages where the Israeli army maintains a presence. The only exception was the Israeli drone attack that killed one person in Kunin, in southern Lebanon. The focus is now on assessing the casualties—who continue to be recovered from the rubble—and the material damage in the southern suburbs of Beirut, as well as in accessible southern towns, to which displaced people have returned en masse. The ten-day truce between Tel Aviv and Beirut, brokered by US President Donald Trump, appears, at first glance, to be a respite in a war that is far from over, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted on Wednesday, since the underlying causes of the armed conflict remain. Lebanon has certainly taken a significant step by announcing a series of measures aimed at a lasting resolution to the problem posed by the presence on its soil of an autonomous armed militia, entirely subservient to the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, the authorities continue to proceed with extreme caution on this front, for various reasons, primarily related to the desire to preserve the sacrosanct internal balance and avoid upheavals in stability. Mixed Statements The remarks of President Joseph Aoun, the first since the establishment of the truce, those of Interior Minister Ahmad Hajjar, and especially the tone they both used, reflect this concern. Lebanese leaders remain uncompromising on the broad outlines of the new policy they have defined and much more discreet about the implementation mechanisms, which ultimately depend on the bilateral discussions taking place in Washington, as well as the US-Iranian talks in Islamabad. Joseph Aoun and Ahmad Hajjar, as well as the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, sought to reassure the public regarding their priority of internal cohesion, avoiding contentious issues such as the direct negotiations with Israel, currently being prepared under Washington's auspices, and the disarmament of Hezbollah, which is nevertheless essential to free Lebanon from Iranian hegemony and the risk of new wars. The process is indeed underway, Joseph Aoun reaffirmed in a message to the nation, just hours after virulent criticism from the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc against the new Lebanese political direction. "Today, we negotiate for ourselves and we decide for ourselves. We are no longer a pawn in anyone's hands, nor a battleground for others." “We will never return to that state of affairs,” he declared from the outset, noting the support of the majority of Lebanese for these policies. The head of state attacked Hezbollah without naming it, criticizing its rhetoric that presents “resistance” as the only bulwark for Lebanon: “To those who jeopardize the future of the country and its people, I say: enough is enough. Only the project of the state is the strongest, the most sustainable, and the safest for all.” He continued: “We are all in the same boat. Either we reach port together, or we all sink, but no one has the right to commit such a crime, under the cover of any slogan, out of suicidal impulse or loyalty to a foreign power,” in a clear allusion to Iran, to which Hezbollah belongs. Moreover, Joseph Aoun did not mention Iran, which had been quick to claim credit for establishing the truce, when he praised the "tireless" efforts of Lebanese officials, Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, Western states, and President Trump to impose a ceasefire on Israel. Still addressing Hezbollah, he emphasized that the planned negotiations are "neither a sign of weakness nor a concession," but rather are motivated by the desire to protect Lebanon "by all means and, above all, by our refusal to die for anyone other than Lebanon." In this context, he stressed that Beirut will not make any concessions on its rights, particularly territorial rights, thus dispelling fears of the entrenchment of the "security zone" established by Tel Aviv in southern Lebanon to protect the towns north of its territory. While President Aoun reaffirmed earlier the importance of the upcoming "delicate and decisive" talks with Tel Aviv, he merely outlined the Lebanese state's objectives in this dialogue as "consolidating the ceasefire, withdrawing Israeli forces from areas where they maintain a presence in the south, extending state authority throughout the country, and releasing Lebanese prisoners." "Amal with Israel and the settlement of disputes between the two countries regarding certain border points." Not a word on the disarmament of Hezbollah, which is nevertheless at the heart of the upcoming discussions. The head of state only promised a deployment of the army and security forces in the south, "after the Israeli withdrawal," assuring that they "will put an end to the armed demonstrations and will be the only forces present on the ground." In any case, Lebanon is preparing to embark on a path fraught with obstacles. In this context, it is still unclear what precise agenda the Lebanese negotiator, Simon Karam, will take with him to Washington, and who will establish it. All attention is currently focused on this element, in light of reports that the matter is being handled exclusively by the Presidency of the Republic, based on contacts established with the Amal-Hezbollah tandem, which, as is well known, is hostile to direct dialogue with Tel Aviv. Full Reopening of the Strait of Hormuz A dialogue that, if it begins under favorable conditions, would extend the truce by ten days, the US State Department promised on Tuesday. The truce began on two significant notes: first, Iran announced the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, in what Tehran presented as a sign of goodwill linked to the announcement of the ceasefire in Lebanon. According to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, this maritime passage will be open to all commercial cargo ships for the duration of the truce in Lebanon. Welcomed by President Trump, the Iranian initiative actually serves two tactical purposes: it signals an openness toward Washington in the context of the ongoing efforts to revive bilateral US-Iranian negotiations. The United States, however, made it clear that it would not lift the blockade imposed on Iranian ports, at least not before a serious agreement with Tehran, which immediately reiterated its threat to close the Strait of Gibraltar, though without following through. The Iranian decision also reflects Tehran's desire to demonstrate its continued control over the Lebanese situation, to the detriment of local authorities. President Joseph Aoun responded bluntly to this in his address to the nation. Donald Trump, in turn, took care to reiterate on Wednesday, when discussing the Iranian issue, that it is separate from the Lebanese one. The American president made this point when he announced on his Truth Social network that the United States intended to recover all the nuclear "ash" caused by American B-2 bombers in Iran, without any financial compensation. He clarified that this agreement, like the one concerning the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, “is not linked to Lebanon” and that Washington “will work separately with Beirut to resolve the Hezbollah issue.” Exchange of Threats The second significant point relates to the exchange of threats between Hezbollah and Tel Aviv, at a time when a discord appears to be emerging between Israel and Washington regarding the handling of the two issues: Lebanon and Iran. President Trump stated categorically that Israel would no longer attack Lebanon, while Israeli leaders insisted that the war against Hezbollah was not over. The pro-Iranian group announced that it remained vigilant and “kept its finger on the trigger,” warning Israel against violating the truce or assassinating members of the group. For their part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Israel Katz, asserted that the war is not over and that Tel Aviv remains committed to achieving Hezbollah's disarmament through military or diplomatic means. Both also affirmed that the Israeli army will maintain a presence in the area it now controls along the border and will continue dismantling Hezbollah's military infrastructure there. In this context, Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that the road to peace remains long. "We began this journey with one hand holding a weapon and the other outstretched toward peace," he said, before announcing that his country had "for the first time established a security zone along its entire northern border." This now extends to Mount Hermon, as the Israeli army revealed in the evening that it had conducted a last-minute military operation in Lebanon, just before the ceasefire came into effect at midnight on Thursday night, in order to seize control of a strategic position on Mount Hermon. This position is located 12 kilometers from the Israeli side of the mountain, which is shared by Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, and 30 kilometers from the Beirut-Damascus road. It overlooks the entire Bekaa Valley and remains far from the Lebanese villages in the region still according to the Israeli army.