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On a scale of 1 to 10, optimism regarding a breakthrough in the US-Iranian talks in Islamabad remains below average, with Tehran and Washington still at the stage of exchanging conditions and demands. The official Iranian agency, IRNA, revealed on Friday that the Islamic Republic submitted a new proposal for resuming negotiations to the United States on Thursday evening via the Pakistani mediator, which are supposed to bring a lasting end to the war. IRNA did not give details on the content of the Iranian offer while the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, got in touch with his Saudi, Qatari, Turkish, Egyptian, Iraqi, and Azerbaijani counterparts.

In a forthcoming series of articles, we intend to shed light on the current situation through the lens of history, steering clear of impassioned, ideological, or romanticized narratives that overlook the realities on the ground. Our aim is to give readers the tools to draw their own conclusions. In this context, it is high time to seriously challenge the sterile rhetoric of “resistance” – not with counter-rhetoric, but through a deeper approach that champions the rule of law, which can only be built on sovereignty. The first three articles presented a reinterpretation of the events surrounding Hezbollah's rise to power, from the Taif Agreement through Operation “Settling of Accounts” and the “July Agreement” (1993), up to the eve of its second war with Israel.

It is striking to observe the persistence with which the “Islamic Republic” insists that it negotiates on Lebanon’s behalf and claims credit for the ceasefire in that country. This is attested by the declaration of Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi who, in a phone call to President Nabih Berri, stated that “the cessation of Israeli aggressions against Lebanon is covered by our agreement with the Americans.” It is no coincidence that Araghchi chose to call Berri specifically, as if to signal that the Speaker of Parliament has become Iran’s last remaining refuge in Lebanon. This Iranian stance toward Lebanon reveals a bankruptcy without precedent, all the more so since there is in reality no genuine ceasefire. All that is happening is that Israel continues its war against Lebanon, a war that Hezbollah itself originally provoked. In this phase, Israel is concentrating its operations on territories south of the Litani River, occasionally extending them to the western Bekaa with targeted strikes. In short, what exists is not a ceasefire but the ongoing prosecution of a war that the Hebrew State is conducting while accommodating certain American demands.

When Israeli officials threaten to treat southern Lebanon like Gaza, the statement is not only reckless but politically revealing, exposing the extent to which regional escalation has become entangled with domestic calculations inside Israel while simultaneously reflecting Lebanon’s own structural paralysis. Such rhetoric should be dismissed for what it is—electoral posturing dressed as strategic doctrine—yet it cannot be separated from a far more consequential reality: Lebanon has once again been dragged into a war it did not choose, by an actor that does not answer to the state and does not bear the costs of its decisions in any accountable way.

The United States and its Israeli ally threatened yesterday to resume strikes against Iran in order to force the Islamic Republic to return to the negotiating table. Despite the truce and initial talks on April 11 in Islamabad, diplomacy is still struggling to prevail. According to the American site Axios , President Donald Trump was to be briefed by Centcom (US Central Command) commander Brad Cooper on possible new military operations against Iran. The goal is to carry out a decisive military action. The options presented to him by the Centcom chief include a wave of strikes targeting infrastructure, but also the possibility of taking control of the Strait of Hormuz, possibly with the participation of US ground forces, according to the site, which cites two sources close to the matter.

Lebanon did not collapse because of a flaw in the numbers, but because meanings and values fell apart. Suddenly, the money stolen from ordinary people was no longer called theft, but a “financial gap.” There were no longer any responsible parties, only “losses.” And there were no longer any victims, only “depositors” who were being asked to understand the circumstances and share in bearing the cost. This is not merely a matter of language. It is the very heart of the battle. When a crime is reduced to an accounting term, the debate becomes technical rather than ethical and legal. The issue is removed from the arena of justice and transferred to that of management, shifting from “who stole?” to “how do we distribute the loss?” And here begins the great slide: the victims gradually transform from rights holders into actors in the solution, rather than bearers of rights.