Artículos

The entire region finds itself today before great transformations that are redrawing the political and military balances and equations. The war that erupted between America and Israel on one hand, and Iran and Hezbolla on the other, cannot be reduced to a passing confrontation or a limited skirmish, but constitutes a pivotal event whose profound repercussions will be felt across all states, and singularly in Lebanon, which finds itself once again at the heart of the storm. Experience has repeatedly demonstrated that great wars do not stop at the borders of the belligerent states, and that their consequences spread to fragile and torn entities, to states incapable of consolidating their sovereignty and of concentrating their decision-making power within their legitimate institutions. It is for this reason that maintaining Lebanon bound to regional axes and leaving it as an open arena for the conflicts of others places the Lebanese before existential dangers that it would be unwise to underestimate.

“Even if a preliminary agreement is reached, it will not alter Iran’s perception of America.” In just a few words, the Iranian news agency Tasnim – which reflects the positions of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – indirectly pointed to the root cause of the existential crisis that has destabilized countries across the Levant and threatened several Gulf states for decades. The remark underscores a profound underlying problem: the divine ideological dimension that dictates the conduct of the mullahs’ regime, a dimension that some Western leaders consistently ignore – or at times fail to fully grasp.

In this same day of the year 1948 there came to pass what we have given the name of Nakba… then elapsed a time when Palestine was no more than a worn record spinning on repeat in the Arab pavement cafés… then came a time when Palestine became once more the intonation of a people that had recovered its voice and felt its muscles reawaken… then came a time when the Palestinian cause became a spreading oil slick upon the waters and a gaping well drained of its substance, around which all the buckets jostled in an endless tumult… then came a moment when fear arose for the Palestinian body of a new wandering, more terrifying still than the first, for the Palestinian mother had become like a cat bearing her kittens from one place to nowhere… The ages succeeded one another and dissolved into each other… until Palestine finally appeared upon its own land as an epic composition…… but a solo played upon living flesh!!

On this Monday, May 25, the mood was a far cry from Saturday’s apparent enthusiasm over what had been described as an imminent regional breakthrough, driven by an Iranian-American statement of intent expected to kick-start a second round of negotiations between Washington and Tehran. To be sure, talks have picked up pace, with the various parties involved in mediation reporting progress. Yet, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details – and those details remain many. As of Monday, officials are still only speaking of a deal that “could be concluded in the coming days.” On Saturday, Washington and Tehran had presented it as almost imminent.

CENTCOM's account of the war on Iran is impressive. The blanks it leaves are the ones that will matter. On 14 May 2026, the Commander of US Central Command stood before the Senate Armed Services Committee and described a war that, in his words, "rolled back 40 years of Iranian military investment" in 38 days. Admiral Charles Bradford Cooper II's account of Operation Epic Fury is impressive by any measure: 85 percent of Iran's ballistic-missile, drone, and naval-defence industrial base damaged or destroyed, 82 percent of its air-defence systems disabled, over 90 percent of its naval-mine stockpile eliminated, 161 vessels sunk across 16 classes, 1,450 strikes on weapons facilities and 2,000 more on command-and-control nodes. "Iran can no longer project power across the region," he concluded.

This series of articles is intended to shed light on the current situation through the lens of the past, far removed from passionate, ideological or romantic narratives that overlook the underlying realities. It is up to the reader to draw the appropriate conclusions. The previous six instalments offered a reassessment of the events surrounding the rise of Hezbollah’s power, from the Taif Agreement to the withdrawal of the Israeli army from South Lebanon in May 2000, and the establishment of a Hezbollahland in the South. Death of Hafez al-Assad and the Growing Iranian Influence in Syria and Lebanon