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The 60-day truce during which Tehran and Washington were supposed to pursue talks toward a lasting peace ended Monday on a bellicose note, with both sides maintaining their positions. Tensions have flared anew between the two sides, who agree on just one thing: neither intends to give ground. Applying the old adage that the best defense is a good offense, Iran has apparently opted for an “entirely” offensive strategy, going so far as to give Washington an “ultimatum” (!) of “a few weeks” to “honor the terms of last June’s memorandum of understanding,” Reuters reported Monday, citing a senior Iranian official. According to Reuters, Tehran intends to act if diplomatic efforts with the United States fail. “Iranian entities should stand ready for escalating tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and the wider region, because Iran will be prepared to make decisions and act on difficult choices,” the official said, adding that his country would carry out a “timely and precise” military strike to break the American naval blockade. Going even further in its arrogance and in its typical “victor” behavior of imposing its terms on the defeated (!), the Islamic Republic “demands that, within the short deadline of a few weeks that has been set, the United States implement all the provisions of” the June agreement. “That is a precondition for continuing negotiations with Washington,” the Iranian official told Reuters, adding that mediators would relay Tehran’s deadline to Washington and to states in the region. This “warning” in fact illustrates just how severely U.S. economic sanctions and the naval blockade are suffocating Iran, which is grappling with serious economic and financial difficulties and is therefore ready to do whatever it takes to pull through. It came just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump gave an interview to Fox News, in which he reaffirmed his determination to tighten the sanctions further, reiterating the war’s primary objective: “Preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” The president said he was not “pressed for time,” an allusion to November’s midterm elections. He nevertheless made a surprising move, threatening Oman with military strikes should it “get in the way” of a deal over the Strait of Hormuz, another source of conflict between Tehran and Washington. An Iranian official again said on Monday that his country was on the verge of reaching an agreement with Muscat on navigation through the strategic maritime passage, but the United States fears that such an agreement could come at the expense of freedom of navigation for ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which is part of international waters. In his phone interview with Fox News, Donald Trump nevertheless said that a diplomatic resolution with Tehran remained possible, while noting that “the Iranians do not appear to want a diplomatic solution at this time.” He nonetheless called on Tehran to “raise the white flag of surrender,” before reiterating that an indirect channel of communication existed with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The ICRG were quick to deny it. Their spokesman, Hossein Mohammadi, said there was “no form of contact” with the Americans, accusing Trump of “rambling.” According to Axios, Kurdish leader Nechirvan Barzani is said to be the link between the ICRG and Washington and to have worked to arrange a meeting between the two sides. Tensions on the Ground The verbal escalation, which has in fact been building for several days, is being matched by real tensions on the ground, all of them stoked by Iran’s allies in the region. It is against this backdrop that the Houthis have carried out near-daily strikes – two of them on Monday alone – against Saudi targets, as well as Saturday’s explosive drone attack by Hezbollah on Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon, which triggered a fierce retaliation from the Israeli military. Overnight Sunday into Monday, two booby-trapped drones targeted, without causing casualties, the office of Iraqi Kurdistan’s prime minister, Masrour Barzani, as well as the residence of the region’s intelligence chief, near Erbil. Suspicion immediately fell on Tehran, which did not respond to the accusations. Iraqi Kurdistan, an ally of the United States but a neighbor of Iran, has come under repeated attack since the regional war began. While the Iranian file remains stalled, those concerning Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon are inching forward. On a visit to Israel, President Trump’s envoy, Jared Kushner, held a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a day after speaking with Hamas representatives in Egypt. At the heart of the discussions: the second phase of the American plan, which calls in particular for Hamas’s disarmament and an Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza – terms Tel Aviv disputes. Israel is demanding “genuine” disarmament of Hamas, which for its part wants the weapons placed in storage depots. Against this backdrop, Israel is insisting that this pro-Iranian faction play no role in the enclave. According to several converging sources cited by Western and Israeli media, Kushner is said to have secured a commitment to that effect from Hamas representatives and relayed it to Netanyahu. According to the Jerusalem Post , Hamas’s weapons would be handed over to the Americans, who would destroy them. The Israeli prime minister reportedly assured his guest that Israel would withdraw from Gaza once that process is complete, the Jerusalem Post also reported. That points to Lebanon, where Hezbollah still rejects the very principle of its own disarmament, even though that disarmament should take place sooner or later, given the shifts underway across the region. When, and how? It remains to be seen how Lebanese authorities will handle the matter. For now, Beirut wants to see the mandate of UNIFIL, which expires at the end of the year, extended – or, at the very least, an international force put in place to take over from the U.N. mission. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam both echoed that wish on the eve of a U.N. Security Council meeting on Lebanon. A petition to that effect, signed by 86 Lebanese MP’s and addressed to the Security Council, was handed to Salam on Monday. Finally, in a separate matter, Donald Trump announced he wants to “significantly reduce” American participation in joint military exercises with South Korea. The exercises nonetheless began as scheduled on Monday. The American president justified the decision by citing the cost of the exercises and his “very good relationship” with Kim Jong-Un.

In April 2026, Wissam Saadé delivered four lectures at the University of Bologna. The first, given at the invitation of Professor Giovanni Giorgini and entitled “The Prophet and the Philosopher: The Hierarchy of Knowledge between Avicenna’s Falsafa and al-Kirmānī’s Ismaili Neoplatonism,” is presented here in a revised and expanded version, published as a series of ten articles. This series explores the intellectual landscape of Islamic Neoplatonism through a comparative reading of Avicenna and al-Kirmānī. Although both thinkers share a broadly Neoplatonic horizon, shaped by a metaphysics of emanation, a hierarchy of being, and a synthesis of Aristotelian and Platonic thought, they develop distinct philosophical projects: Avicenna within the tradition of Peripatetic falsafa , and al-Kirmānī within the framework of Ismaili theology. Despite these different intellectual settings, their systems remain in sustained dialogue over the nature of knowledge, the relationship between reason and revelation, and the ascent of the soul. Their respective projects also embody contrasting conceptions of the political, illuminating different ways of understanding the place of philosophy in relation to authority, law, and the organization of the community. This article is the sixth installment in the ten-part series. VI - Islamizing Platonopolis, Platonicizing Islam Both al-Kirmānī and Ibn Sīnā belong to a long intellectual tradition that conceives philosophy not merely as theoretical inquiry, but as purification ( catharsis ). Within this horizon, the perfection of the human soul and its ascent toward felicity are achieved through the apprehension of truth. The aim of philosophy thus ceases to be the simple understanding of the world; rather, it becomes a means of detachment from it, in view of union with the Absolute. What emerges is a dense synthesis in which Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Islam are interwoven with residual Hermetic and Gnostic motifs, all of which contribute to structuring knowledge as a form of salvation. Within this broader constellation, Gnosticism manifests itself in both radical and moderated forms. In its radical expression, the world is conceived as a prison, and liberation is attained through contact with the Logos. In its moderated form, the world is understood as a domain of mixture or as the site of the soul’s descent, without necessarily positing matter as intrinsically evil. Ismaili thought, in particular, oscillates between these two poles, between ascetic radicalism and metaphysical moderation. Al-Kirmānī occupies a decisive position within this tension, seeking to regulate ʿ irfān (gnosis) so that the bāṭin (esoteric) does not dissolve the ẓāhir (exoteric). His project may thus be described as one of controlled interiority, informed, implicitly, by the reactivation of Stoic motifs such as ataraxia and apatheia , namely the attainment of serenity through mastery over the passions. Salvation, within this framework, is at once gnostic and eschatological. Yet its ultimate aim is not speculative excess, but the attainment of rāḥat al- ʿ aql , the repose of the intellect. For al-Kirmānī, the intellect attains peace precisely when it ceases to strive beyond its proper rank, recognizing the ontological impossibility of directly comprehending the First Origin. By acknowledging these boundaries, the soul refrains from transgression and constructs, through the synthesis of knowledge and action, a spiritual body destined to endure beyond the dissolution of the material world. In the afterlife, it abides in the light of the first intellects, transcending all veils in a state of final tranquility. A central structural principle shared across esoteric traditions is the doctrine of ẓāhir and bāṭin . Every revealed text possesses both an outward surface and an inward depth; in Islamic terms, this corresponds to the duality of sharī ʿ a and ḥaqīqa . This duality is further reinforced by the notion of divine concealment: God is not absent, but veiled behind a succession of ontological curtains. The very existence of the world presupposes mediation, hierarchy, and graded manifestation. Divine light, in its intensity, cannot be received directly; it must be refracted through successive levels of being, lest it annihilate its recipient. This metaphysics of mediation often finds expression in symbolic systems of number and correspondence. Pythagorean resonances are particularly evident in Ismaili numerology, where numbers acquire cosmological and hierarchical significance. Numerical sequences are used to map the structure of the universe, the ranks of spiritual authority, and the stages of emanation from the First Intellect down to the material world. Number thus becomes a language through which metaphysics is both expressed and concealed. Closely related to this are the traditions of ʿ ilm al-jafr and ḥisāb al-jummal . The former, often associated with esoteric Shiʿi knowledge, designates a science of symbolic interpretation in which hidden meanings are extracted from sacred texts, sometimes through cryptographic or combinatory methods. The latter refers to a system of assigning numerical values to the letters of the Arabic alphabet, analogous to Hebrew gematria, thereby allowing words and phrases to be read as numerical configurations. Through this procedure, language itself becomes a field of correspondences, where letters, numbers, and metaphysical realities intersect. These various traditions converge upon a shared conception: the cosmos is structured as a network of intelligible ratios, in which letters, numbers, and beings mirror one another across different ontological levels. The world is thus not a mute aggregate of things, but a legible order, one that can be deciphered by those initiated into its symbolic grammar. This idea reaches its most comprehensive formulation in the notion of the Lawḥ Maḥfūẓ (Preserved Tablet), a Qurʾānic concept referring to the divine register in which all things are inscribed. Here, the cosmos appears as a kind of primordial archive: every event, form, and being exists first as an intelligible inscription within a divine memory before manifesting in time. The world, in this sense, is the temporal unfolding of a pre-written intelligible order, a visible transcription of an invisible script. The Intelligible Human and the Metaphysics of the Imamate Within this framework, one can discern both a recapitulation and an amplification of several late antique and late Hellenistic anthropological motifs, most notably the Neoplatonic notion of the anthrōpos noētós (the intelligible human). In Neoplatonism, particularly in Plotinus, this figure designates an intelligible archetype situated within the realm of Nous , of which empirical humanity constitutes only a diminished and derivative instantiation. Alongside this tradition stands the Hermetic conception of the primordial human ( Anthropos ), depicted as a luminous being who descends into the material cosmos, thereby instituting the dual condition of humanity as simultaneously rooted in transcendence and immersed in corporeality. In several Gnostic systems, this same figure is reformulated as the “Primal Man,” whose fragmentation accounts for the dispersion of divine sparks throughout the structure of the cosmos. From this broader constellation of ideas emerges, in later Islamic intellectual history, the doctrine of the insān al-kāmil , the “perfect human being.” In its most general formulation, this figure designates a microcosm that reflects the macrocosm, a condensed and integrative image of the totality of the universe. In later comparative discourse, it is often associated with the Kabbalistic notion of Adam Qadmon (אָדָם קַדְמוֹן), the primordial and luminous archetype of humanity. Across these traditions, the human being is thus not conceived as a merely partial constituent of the cosmos, but as its symbolic totalization and metaphysical recapitulation. The tension inherent in al-Kirmānī’s thought lies in his effort to systematically intellectualize the figure of the Imam while presenting him as the historical actualization of a primordial, celestial Anthropos . His project was to conceptualize a philosophical-imperial mediator, a ruler who could embody absolute metaphysical truth within a concrete historical form. Ultimately, al-Kirmānī’s system seeks to bind cosmology and the Imamate into a single, unified architecture of meaning. In this framework, the higher and lower worlds are structurally continuous; every metaphysical level finds its political and historical counterpart. The Imamate thus becomes the terrestrial reflection of the cosmic order, grounding political hierarchy in metaphysical necessity. Within this schema, the Universal Intellect corresponds to the speaking Prophet, while the Universal Soul corresponds to the foundational Imam. Salvation is redefined as the realization of a “luminous anthropology,” in which the Imam possesses both a corporeal presence and a subtle, radiant form inaccessible to ordinary perception. Yet beneath this grand metaphysical edifice lies a more urgent, pragmatic impulse: the desperate need to philosophically secure an Imamate-Caliphate in crisis. Al-Kirmānī’s elaborate intellectualism served as a defensive shield, attempting to provide an unshakable ontological foundation for a Fatimid authority increasingly threatened by internal dissent and external pressure. Al-Kirmānī attempted to solve on a theoretical plane a problem for which no theoretical solution exists: the construction of a Neoplatonic empire. The project he sought to systematically rationalize was, in the end, an ontological impossibility. To envision a “Neoplatonic empire” is to attempt to confine the “One” or the “Universal Intellect” within the strictures of time and space, draping the Absolute in the robes of an imperial institution. While al-Kirmānī addressed this dilemma through a staggering intellectual architecture, it remained fraught with irreconcilable contradictions. By elevating the Imamate into a cosmic necessity, his theoretical solution rendered the empire increasingly a prisoner of its own idealism. Every political failure on the ground threatened to destabilize this coherent cosmic edifice. Al-Kirmānī was essentially attempting to “nationalize” the Unseen for the sake of History, an ambition that, however philosophically brilliant, carried the seeds of its own historical undoing. He constructed a “Virtuous City” of concepts, yet imperial reality was always too narrow to contain such transcendental engineering. Plotinus without Plotinus The true marvel lies in the fact that this monumental Neoplatonic legacy unfolded not merely as a philosophical exercise, but as a totalizing synthesis of the philosophical, the religious, and the imperial, achieved by men who had no direct, formal acquaintance with the preeminent Neoplatonist himself, Plotinus. The most influential figure from the late antique pagan tradition among Islamic philosophers remained, paradoxically, largely unnamed in direct transmission. When he was explicitly distinguished, he was often referred to simply as “the Greek Sage” ( al-Shaykh al-Yūnānī ). Yet it was in fact Plotinus, mediated through Porphyry’s summaries and subsequent reworking, and despite a partial Aristotelian conceptual filtering, who exerted one of the deepest and most enduring influences on the architecture of Arabic-Islamic philosophy. The Enneads (notably IV–VI), as reorganized and reframed in the Arabic tradition, circulated not under Plotinus’s name but under the misleading title The Theology of Aristotle . This misattribution was not a simple error of transmission; it was structurally enabled by Porphyry’s strategy of rendering Neoplatonic doctrine in an Aristotelian conceptual idiom, using concepts such as substance, potentiality, and actuality, thereby making it legible within Peripatetic discourse. Given the authority accorded to Aristotle as al-Mu ʿ allim al-Awwal (“the First Teacher”), the Islamic philosophical tradition received this text as an esoteric extension of Aristotelian metaphysics. The result was a striking historical irony: Plotinian Neoplatonism was assimilated as the “deepest layer” of Aristotle himself. Alongside Aristotle, Plato was also elevated within falsafa , often under the epithet “the Divine Plato,” forming a dual canon in which Plato supplied metaphysical vision and Aristotle methodological rigor. Plato’s reception was, however, highly selective and refracted. Islamic philosophers privileged especially the Republic and the Laws as political blueprints, and the Timaeus as a cosmological foundation. In this configuration, Plato was effectively reconstructed as a thinker of both ideal governance and metaphysical order. The Platonic ideal of the philosopher-king was reinterpreted by al-Fārābī as the figure of the virtuous ruler or prophet-legislator, while the tension between politeia and nomos was resolved through the concept of a divinely grounded political order, the Madīna al-Fāḍila . The Timaeus , in particular, became the most consequential Platonic text in the Islamicate world, though rarely in its original philosophical form. Frequently mediated through Galenic summaries, it entered Arabic intellectual culture as a hybrid of cosmology, medicine, and metaphysics. Galen’s physiological readings of the dialogue contributed to a blurred boundary between cosmological order and bodily structure, allowing the universe itself to be read as an organism whose rational proportions are mirrored in human physiology. Creation, Harmony, and the Greek Synthesis The Platonic demiurgic model posed a further theological problem: how to reconcile a world shaped from pre-existing order with the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo . Philosophers such as al-Kindī and, later, Avicenna reinterpreted the demiurge not as a temporal craftsman but as a metaphor for divine intellection, whereby eternal forms reside in God’s knowledge and ground the intelligibility of creation. The result was a mathematical and harmonic cosmology in which metaphysical necessity and monotheistic creation could coexist. This cosmological Platonism was further developed in traditions such as the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, who elaborated the doctrine of the macrocosm and microcosm: the universe as a “Great Man” and man as a “small universe.” In this framework, the harmonic ratios governing celestial motion were extended to ethics, medicine, and music, forming a unified vision of cosmic order. Aristotle, by contrast, functioned primarily as the guarantor of method. His Organon supplied the logical architecture of demonstration, classification, and inference, allowing philosophical discourse to acquire demonstrative rigor. In combination, Plato provided ontological and cosmological vision, while Aristotle provided epistemic discipline. Within this synthesis, Plotinus introduced a decisive interiorization of metaphysics. Unlike Plato’s Republic , which requires the philosopher’s return to the civic order, Plotinus shifts the center of gravity toward the interior ascent of the soul. The goal of existence becomes henōsis , union with the One, and political life is relegated to a secondary status within the hierarchy of being. His famous motif, the “flight of the alone to the Alone,” expresses this radical reorientation toward interior transcendence. Nevertheless, Plotinus does not entirely reject civic virtue. In the Enneads , he distinguishes between levels of virtue: civic virtues that regulate embodied life, purificatory virtues that detach the soul from corporeality, and intellectual virtues that orient it toward the divine intellect ( nous ). Politics thus becomes preparatory rather than final: necessary for order, but not constitutive of the highest human end. An anecdotal tradition even attributes to Plotinus an unrealized political project, the foundation of Platonopolis under imperial patronage, suggesting at least a tension between philosophical withdrawal and civic aspiration. Whether historical or symbolic, the episode highlights the ambiguity of his position within later political philosophy. The transmission of Platonism into falsafa was further complicated by the absence of direct access to Plato’s corpus, unlike the relatively complete translation of Aristotle. As a result, Plato and Aristotle were often read as complementary moments of a single, unified wisdom tradition. This “harmonizing assumption” reached its most explicit formulation in al-Fārābī’s project of reconciling the opinions of Plato and Aristotle, which presupposed their underlying agreement. Modern scholarship, notably that of Peter Adamson, has shown that the so-called Theology of Aristotle is far from a faithful rendering of Plotinus. It is, rather, a heavily reconfigured text in which Plotinian metaphysics is systematically reframed in Aristotelian terminology. Even critical arguments against Aristotle’s psychology are softened or redirected so as to preserve doctrinal continuity. In effect, Aristotle is not refuted but absorbed into a Neoplatonic framework. This transformation had profound consequences. Aristotle’s definition of the soul as the entelecheia of the body, which in its original form implies mortality, was reinterpreted to preserve its compatibility with immortality. The soul was thus reconceived not as a bodily function but as a transcendent principle of perfection. Within this intellectual constellation, falsafa came to operate on what may be described as a foundational myth: the unity of Greek philosophy. Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus were integrated into a single coherent lineage of truth, despite their historical divergences. Al-Fārābī’s Harmony of the Opinions of the Two Sages can thus be read as a programmatic articulation of this synthetic vision. From “Greek Theory” to Platonopolis Ultimately, the metaphysical outcome of this tradition was the reconfiguration of the soul as an immaterial, self-subsisting substance oriented toward the Active Intellect. Eschatology itself was reinterpreted through an intellectualist and imaginal register: rather than a purely corporeal afterlife, the soul’s destiny unfolds within a non-material domain (ʿ ālam al-mithāl ), in which scriptural imagery is transposed into intelligible form. In this way, falsafa constructed a philosophical eschatology capable of mediating between demonstrative metaphysics and revealed description. The falāsifa effectively curated a “fantasy of consensus,” treating the discordant voices of the Greek tradition as a singular, monolithic “Greek Theory.” This mirrors the way 20th-century American academia distilled the friction between Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan into the unified brand of “French Theory.” While the American “French Theory” was often about deconstruction, the “Greek Theory” of the falāsifa was about reconstruction, building a massive, unified metaphysical system capable of explaining everything from the stars to the soul. Within this Islamic reimagining of “Greek Theory,” catharsis was axiomatic. For thinkers such as al-Kirmānī and Avicenna, this tradition conceives philosophy not merely as an exercise in theoretical inquiry, but as a transformative process of purification. Within this framework, the perfection of the human soul and its ascent toward ultimate felicity are realized through the active apprehension of truth. From this perspective, the aim of philosophy shifts: it is no longer simply to understand the world, but to be purified from it, achieving union with the Absolute while remaining firmly present within the temporal realm. While Plotinus sought Platonopolis as a retreat in Campania for the contemplative life, Ibn Sīnā and al-Kirmānī aimed for a Total Order. For al-Kirmānī, this Platonopolis was to be nearly synonymous with the Fatimid da ʿ wa , a rigid and beautiful hierarchy. Just as the heavens are ordered by ten Intellects, the Fatimid state is structured by degrees of initiation. Here, the city functions as a pedagogical machine, where every rank in the religious hierarchy corresponds precisely to a rank in the cosmos. As for the Platonopolis of Avicenna, where the Platonist remains concealed behind the dual aura of Aristotle on the one hand and the Prophet on the other, it possesses a far more elusive character.

The saying “All roads lead to Rome” is one of the most famous expressions in political history and the history of civilizations. It was not merely a literary metaphor, but a description of the reality of the Roman Empire, which built an extensive road network that made Rome its political, military and economic center, with all the major roads leading to the capital. From the Middle Ages onward, the phrase became a proverb meaning that a variety of means does not necessarily alter the final outcome, and that different paths may lead to the same destination. Lebanon today may offer a contemporary political illustration of that saying. Since the end of the latest war, speeches and slogans have multiplied, as have the options being proposed. Yet one question remains: does Lebanon truly have several strategic choices, or do they all, one way or another, ultimately lead to the negotiating table? This article neither advocates negotiations nor opposes them, nor does it seek to justify any particular political choice. It simply attempts to read reality as it is, away from slogans and political passions, and to ask a straightforward question: does Lebanon still have any strategic option that does not, in the end, pass through negotiations? From War to Politics In international relations, wars are not ends in themselves. They are often a means of reshaping the balance of power in preparation for negotiations. Wars rarely end in absolute victory. More often than not, their outcomes are translated at the negotiating table, whether through direct or indirect talks. In Lebanon’s case, the latest war has produced a new reality shaped by several factors: Israel’s reoccupation of parts of Lebanese territory; growing international pressure to implement Resolution 1701 and other relevant international resolutions; the linking of reconstruction to a new political and security process concerning weapons outside the authority of the state; profound regional transformations that have redrawn the balance of power and shaken many of the assumptions that shaped the region over the past two decades. All of this has brought Lebanon face to face with a challenge that can no longer be deferred. What Options Does Lebanon Have? On the surface, the options appear numerous. But once examined more closely, they prove far less diverse than they seem. First: The Military Resistance Option One camp believes that continuing military action provides an alternative to any negotiating track. But this option runs up against several realities: a clear imbalance of power; a human and economic cost that Lebanon can scarcely afford; the absence of international support for an open confrontation; the domestic need to rebuild the state and its institutions. Continuing the confrontation, therefore, does not eliminate negotiations. It merely delays them or alters their terms. Second: Waiting Others are betting on regional or international changes that might eventually offer Lebanon more favorable conditions. But waiting is not a policy in itself. It amounts to suspending a decision. Meanwhile, realities continue to change, balances of power shift, and new facts on the ground become entrenched, only to become part of any future settlement. Third: Internationalizing the Crisis Some call for placing the entire file in the hands of the United Nations or international powers. Yet even the most internationalized conflicts have never been resolved by international resolutions alone. Their implementation and translation into reality have ultimately required negotiations among the parties concerned. Fourth: Indirect Negotiations This is a model Lebanon has experienced on several occasions, whether through the armistice agreement, negotiations over the maritime boundary, or American and international mediation. This option allows understandings to be reached without requiring either side to assume the full political cost of direct contact with the other. Fifth: Direct Negotiations This is the most politically sensitive option. Yet it remains a possibility if the parties come to believe that mediation is no longer sufficient to achieve the objectives they seek. The Negotiations Everyone Refuses to Acknowledge The actors most adamantly opposed to talking about negotiations appear, in fact, to be among those most closely tied to their outcome. Hezbollah, which rejects any discussion of direct Lebanese negotiations with Israel, is now part of a regional equation that extends far beyond Lebanon’s borders. Many of its strategic calculations today appear linked to the outcome of negotiations between Iran and the United States. The future of sanctions, the nuclear program and Iran’s regional role are all factors that directly or indirectly affect Hezbollah’s position and choices. This means that even if Hezbollah is not sitting at the negotiating table, it is waiting for the results and basing much of its calculations on them. Rejecting negotiations in Beirut does not mean rejecting negotiations altogether. It simply means that the negotiating venue has shifted to another capital and to a different dossier. Israel , despite its military superiority, faces a similar dilemma. Military force can destroy or weaken an adversary’s military capabilities, but it cannot by itself produce lasting stability along the northern border. Ultimately, Israel needs arrangements that can guarantee the security of its northern settlements, enable their residents to return, and prevent the threat from re-emerging. Whatever name is given to such arrangements, they cannot be achieved through force alone. They will require political or security understandings, direct or indirect, with the Lebanese state or through international mediation. In other words, despite their different rhetoric, both sides are moving within the same negotiating framework, even if they are not sitting at the same table. Hezbollah is waiting for the outcome of Iranian-American negotiations, while Israel is seeking negotiated arrangements that can secure its northern front. Both understand that war alone cannot produce a sustainable outcome. Is There Any Real Alternative to Negotiations? This is where the central paradox lies. After examining the various scenarios, it becomes clear that the real divide is not between negotiations and no negotiations , but between the form, timing and level of negotiations . War can be a means of improving negotiating terms. Deterrence is also an instrument of negotiation. Mediation is itself a form of negotiation. International resolutions require negotiations to be implemented. And waiting is, ultimately, nothing more than postponing negotiations. Even the continuation of occupation or limited clashes cannot constitute a permanent solution. They are merely transitional phases that sooner or later end in some form of settlement. The real question, therefore, is no longer: will there be negotiations? Rather: what kind of negotiations? Who will represent Lebanon? And what cards will it have to play? What Does This Mean for Lebanon? The fundamental issue is not the principle of negotiations itself, but the Lebanese state’s readiness for them. States are not judged only by their ability to enter negotiations, but also by their ability to define their objectives before taking a seat at the table. What does Lebanon want to recover? What are its priorities? What can it accept? And what can it not concede? The answers to these questions are what determine the outcome of any negotiating process, not the mere fact that negotiations take place. A state that enters negotiations united and capable of defining a national position becomes a partner in shaping the settlement. A divided state, by contrast, becomes an arena where settlements crafted by others are played out. Perhaps the saying “All roads lead to Rome” is no longer merely a description of the Roman road network, but an unusually accurate description of Lebanon’s current situation. The paths differ, the slogans change and the rhetoric shifts, but the outcome appears to remain the same. Hezbollah, despite rejecting negotiations with Israel, is waiting for the results of other negotiations that will determine a significant part of its future. Israel, despite its military superiority, is also seeking negotiated arrangements capable of providing the security that force alone has failed to guarantee. And the Lebanese state, however much it tries to postpone the issue, will eventually find itself confronting the same question. The question is no longer: will Lebanon negotiate? It is now: how will it negotiate? Who will negotiate on its behalf? On the basis of what national vision? And will it enter negotiations as a state that is master of its own decisions, or as an arena where the negotiations of others intersect? For in politics, as in history, the issue is not simply that all roads lead to Rome. It is knowing why you are taking a particular road, and having the ability and courage to set your own destination before others choose it for you.

At a time when countries across the region are seeking mechanisms and alliances that would allow them to reduce their total security dependence on the United States, if not move entirely out from under its umbrella, with the Turkish-Saudi-Pakistani alliance offering a clear example of this trend, official Lebanon is moving in the opposite direction, toward ever greater reliance on Washington in most areas of its foreign policy. This is not limited to the issue of direct Lebanese-Israeli negotiations, which began in Washington and are continuing in Rome, rather than Paris, for instance, and that is no coincidence. Naturally, Lebanon cannot compare its position, presence, or role with those of the three major regional powers, nor can it adopt approaches similar to theirs, given the political, economic, and military capabilities at their disposal. Nor can anyone say with certainty whether Lebanon is even capable of distancing itself from Washington, or whether it has other options that would allow it to do so. There is also nothing to suggest that such a move is required in the first place, given the major role the United States continues to play internationally and regionally. If some believe that it was, in practice, the direct political negotiations that brought the war to an end, and there is certainly some truth to that, Lebanon nonetheless needs to pursue a more active and effective foreign policy, one capable of mobilizing international support for its just cause and pressing consistently for a full Israeli military withdrawal to the internationally recognized borders. Those borders were acknowledged in the 1949 Armistice Agreement between Lebanon and Israel, yet they were entirely overlooked in the latest negotiations. It is true that Washington will not accept anyone competing with its restored role in Lebanon, and that it wants to retain a monopoly over this arena in order to use it as a gateway toward some political achievement at the regional level, particularly in light of the stalemate surrounding the Iranian file, caught between bombardment and negotiation, with neither track proving capable of producing a decisive outcome. But it is equally true that relying exclusively on a single international power, however strong, does not necessarily yield the desired results. Perhaps the clearest example is the marginalization of the French role to its bare minimum, something highly unusual in the context of the “historic” Lebanese-French relationship. While acknowledging that the American role is unavoidable under the prevailing circumstances and given the balance of power produced by the wars that have raged over the past two years, one can only hope that Washington will exert greater pressure on its favored ally in order to secure a withdrawal and curb Israel’s unabated appetite for territory in southern Lebanon, reflected in the publication of suspicious maps, the opening of roads, and the establishment of military positions in occupied areas. Unless the United States becomes convinced that building a functioning state in Lebanon serves the interests of stability both at home and across the region, and unless that conviction is translated into concrete positions producing practical results in southern Lebanon, the situation will remain trapped in the same vicious circle: weapons before withdrawal, or withdrawal before weapons? Incidentally, this choice, namely the establishment of the state in Lebanon, does not necessarily serve Israel’s interests and most likely does not, because the absence of a strong state gives Israel room to vent its historic hostility toward Lebanon’s pluralistic character, which stands in stark contrast to its increasingly radicalized, monolithic identity. Building the state in Lebanon, beginning with placing all weapons under the exclusive authority of the state rather than simply disarming them, is the right and only way out of the reality in which we find ourselves. It would allow the people of the South to trust that there is a state capable of protecting them, embracing them, and providing the conditions for a dignified life, away from narratives of marginalization and neglect that are reinforced by repugnant sectarian rhetoric, cloaked in unhealthy slogans and expressing a hatred that could lay the groundwork for civil conflicts that most Lebanese believed had been consigned to the past for good. In a pluralistic and diverse society such as Lebanon, the state cannot be built on the principle of rule by the sword, although excessive weakness can itself prove fatal to the state-building project. It must instead rest on the creation of spaces of shared interest embodied by the state, which no party, however powerful, can replace. This is precisely what developments in Lebanon have demonstrated over the years, as an excess of power has passed successively from one community to another. The Lebanese state must therefore take the necessary steps to build itself and must not rule out dialogue with anyone, at home or abroad, in pursuit of that objective, even if this requires opening channels with actors that support particular parties in Lebanon rather than the state itself. Why should the state not seek to forge regional understandings under international cover that would enable it to put its project into practice in Lebanon: the project of the state? Is this beyond the state’s capabilities? Perhaps. But the attempt should at least be made. Finally, if calling for dialogue abroad appears necessary to break out of the current impasse, the need for dialogue at home is no less urgent. Such dialogue must not assume a merely folkloric character, producing nothing more than verbal understandings that never find their way into implementation. Rather, it must seriously seek to establish the necessary domestic red lines: no retreat from the project of building the state, beginning with placing all weapons under the exclusive authority of the state, and no fueling of feelings of marginalization and neglect among any segment of the Lebanese population. Between these two imperatives, some common space must be created, however difficult the task may be.

“Charity begins at home” is an apt saying for describing the missteps of Greater Lebanon – missteps that Georges Naccache captured in one cutting, lucid line: “Two negations do not make a nation.” That sentence exposes the tragic shortcomings of the first generation of Lebanese, confronted with a Greater Lebanon still struggling to assert itself. Rooted in St. Augustine’s thought, “charity begins at home” simply means that one must meet one’s needs and obligations before seeking to help others. The concept is sometimes distorted to justify individualist behavior, a lack of generosity, or putting personal interests ahead of a collective cause. In fact, it stems from the theology of St. Augustine (4th century) and from his notion of ordo caritatis – the order of charity. St. Augustine held that charity, or divine love, must follow a logical hierarchy: one must love God first, then love oneself in a healthy, “ordered” way, for the salvation of one’s soul, before being able to love one’s neighbor. Drawing on Augustine, the Latin formula caritas bene ordinata incipit a se ipso later emerged in highly pragmatic fashion, from the writings of medieval jurists. Commentators invoked the maxim particularly to settle disputes between neighbors over water. The classic case was as follows: a landowner with a spring on his property was not required to irrigate his neighbors’ fields if doing so risked leaving his own land without water. The law thus justified giving priority to one’s own vital interests. Over the centuries, the maxim gradually moved beyond courtrooms and theological treatises and into everyday speech. By the 16th century, it had become a popular proverb used to remind people that it is natural to think of their own material and moral security before that of others. The Lebanese Tragedy This principle applies perfectly to Lebanon’s history. At first glance, the proverb might seem to sum up the tragedy of a system in which each community in Lebanon has historically put its own survival and security ahead of that of the central state. But another reading is possible – and it is through this reading that Lebanon’s true tragedy comes into focus. It shows how, by favoring other causes over that of Greater Lebanon as conceived and envisioned by its founders – causes such as Palestine, Arab unity, Greater Syria, or pan-Islamism – Lebanon strayed from the principle of “well-ordered charity,” which should have meant putting “first and foremost” the well-ordered development of its own nation-state. This reading, in fact, captures the turning point in Lebanon’s modern history. It points to the proverb’s second side: that the opposite excess – embracing universal or regional causes before consolidating one’s own foundations – drove the country to ruin. By choosing to turn Lebanon into a “sounding board” for the Middle East conflicts mentioned above, much of the political class and the population missed out on healthy internal growth. This “departure” from the principle of well-ordered charity is best captured by the concept of “sacrificial altruism syndrome.” In theology as in logic, one cannot give what one does not have. Lebanon, a young and fragile state emerging from 1920 and 1943, had not yet consolidated its institutions or forged a unified national identity. So, by investing heavily in transnational causes from the 1950s and 1960s onward – Nasserism, followed by armed support for the Palestinian cause through the 1969 Cairo Agreement – Lebanon acted like a weak organism attempting the impossible: carrying the burden of others. That choice shattered the fragile compromise of the National Pact and triggered the civil war in 1975. The Dilution of the National “Self” For “well-ordered charity” to be possible, there first had to be a clearly defined and accepted “self” – something Lebanon’s elites had failed to build, or even to want. By favoring the ideal of Greater Syria, championed by the SSNP, or that of Arab unity, part of the Lebanese population continued to regard Lebanon as an artificial entity, a mere province meant to be absorbed into a larger whole. Conversely, by favoring theocratic agendas or regional axes – such as the pro-Iranian axis – other factions moved the center of decision-making outside the country’s borders and alienated their own fellow citizens. The result: Lebanon was managed to love itself as a sovereign nation-state. Its detractors have long portrayed Lebanese patriotism as a form of betrayal of the “greater causes,” while branding its champions as “isolationists.” Well-ordered growth would have required giving absolute priority to developing Lebanese infrastructure, unified civic education, securing the country’s border, and strengthening the local economy. By importing other people’s wars onto its own soil, Lebanon squandered its wealth, drove its elites into exile, and tore apart its social fabric. The country became a playground for regional powers, which have waged proxy wars on its territory for decades – confirming that when one fails to tend to one’s own house first, the neighbors come into to loot it or take it over. Herein lies the whole Lebanese paradox: the country’s history swings endlessly between an inward-looking communal selfishness – retreating into one’s sect at the expense of the state – and an outward-looking ideological altruism – favoring regional causes at the expense of the homeland. Either way, the project of a modern, strong, and prosperous Lebanese state was sacrificed.

Doctored images, sexualization, smear campaigns, and accusations of treason: in Lebanon, artificial intelligence is providing new tools for harassment targeting women who are visible in the public sphere. The case of a government minister and the testimonies of two journalists shed light on a global phenomenon that is outpacing the legal and technical measures designed to contain it. A red devil with horns, holding a trident — but with a familiar face: glasses, short bleached hair, and hoop earrings. This was no ordinary caricature, but one of dozens of AI-generated images that flooded social media platforms targeting Education and Higher Education Minister Rima Karamé. Her publicly stated insistence on going ahead with official exams despite the tense security situation surrounding the war had sparked a widespread wave of anger. Those who were angry did not engage with the educational decision using pedagogical arguments. Instead, accounts appeared under a distorted, mocking version of her name, alongside hate pages created specifically against the minister. Images portraying her as a demon, a witch, or a "villain" proliferated. One of them superimposed her face onto the body of Gargamel, the iconic villain from the cartoon The Smurfs. When run through the detection tool Hive Moderation , both images were assessed as having a 99.9% probability of being AI-generated. The tool estimated, with a considerably lower degree of certainty — 75.7% — that the model used may have been Gemini 3. Second image circulated: Hive Moderation's analysis placed the probability of it being AI-generated at 99.9%. It is worth noting that AI-generated content detectors are probabilistic tools capable of producing both false positives and false negatives. The same pattern played out with women who have far less protection than a government minister. Maya*, a young Lebanese journalist, posted a video filmed in the field during the war that went widely viral. According to her account to the author of this investigation, her only "reward" was seeing an anonymous account appear and circulate fake sexually explicit AI-generated images of her, accompanied by phrases such as "Israel loves Maya" — a dual attempt to violate her body and cast doubt on her loyalty. This incident has not, however, been independently corroborated to date. Journalist Lynn*, meanwhile, discovered that a photograph of her taken while reporting in the field had been manipulated to show her standing between two Israeli soldiers pointing their weapons at her. The image had been posted by a foreign account followed by tens of thousands of people. After being physically assaulted while filming in Beirut, she personally counted 148 comments beneath a post about the attack: criticism of her appearance, sexual insinuations, and accusations of collaborating with the enemy. "The comments hurt me far more than the assault itself. With the person who attacked me, we had a confrontation and that was the end of it. But the things I was reading, written by people hiding behind fake accounts, were much harder to take," she says. The ministry's version: an orchestrated campaign, not an educational debate A source close to the Education Minister says that she and her ministry were aware of the campaign from the moment it launched, and that it gradually escalated from spreading misinformation to personal attacks, before becoming a full-blown "trend" on social media. According to this source, the ministry simultaneously attempted to explain its position and publish studies and figures on the number of students, displaced persons, and the school curriculum. "But these messages weren't getting through, or had far less reach than the campaign being waged against her." The source describes a "violent campaign in which every means possible was used," combining personal attacks and insults. On some days, the minister's phone received between 700 and 1,000 messages within short periods of time, coming from what she describes as "organized electronic trolls" using fictitious numbers and sometimes real ones, some of which belonged to students. According to this source, the campaign also became a vehicle for gaining visibility: "Everyone who wanted to be seen, drum up sympathy, or put themselves forward started posting content about the minister, until the debate about exams and education faded away and was replaced by attacks on her person — her hair one day, her accessories the next, the color of her skirt after that." Despite all this, the minister filed no legal complaints — a stance the source attributes to her desire to "not make it personal." "She was speaking on the basis of science and data; she therefore did not personally take anyone to court." On the question of solutions, the source mentions a "social cohesion" plan that the ministry is developing as part of school curricula, in coordination with the ministries of Culture, Information, and Youth and Sports. The legal framework governing behavior on social media remains, for its part, under review at the Ministry of Information. Beyond harassment: a systematic form of cyberbullying What the minister's case has in common with those of the two journalists goes beyond simple "digital harassment" in the narrow sense. This is systematic cyberbullying targeting specifically women in the public sphere: the distortion of their image, demonization, ridicule, and the questioning of their competence — all without a single one of their decisions or ideas being genuinely discussed. International figures show that what is happening in Lebanon is part of a global phenomenon that is rapidly worsening. According to the " Tipping Point " survey, published in December 2025 by UN Women and the European Commission, in cooperation with UNESCO and the ICFJ and with the participation of researchers from City St George's, University of London, across 119 countries, 70% of women working in the public sphere have experienced digital violence in the course of their work. 41% reported having also suffered real-world harm linked to that violence, while the figure rises to 75% among journalists. In Lebanon, the latest statistics from the Internal Security Forces, cited by UN Women, indicate that 80% of reported victims of digital violence are women. When artificial intelligence enters the picture, the figures become even more alarming. According to the " State of Deepfakes " study, published in 2023, 98% of deepfake videos available online are pornographic in nature, and 99% of their victims are women. The study also reported a 550% increase in the number of such videos between 2019 and 2023. The second part of " Tipping Point ", published in April 2026, further reveals that 6% of women in the public sphere have already been victims of deepfakes, while 12% have had intimate images shared without their consent. One in four women has been diagnosed with anxiety or depression linked to digital violence, while 41% practice some form of self-censorship in their posts in order to avoid attacks. How is this content created, and how can it be detected? Creating such content no longer requires any particular technical skills. A single publicly available photograph is enough to generate dozens of degrading versions in just a few minutes, using image generation models. And, as Lynn points out, "ten seconds of your voice is all it takes to fabricate an entire conversation you never had." Conversely, detection tools such as Hive can estimate the likelihood that content was artificially generated and attempt to identify the model used. This is the tool that was used in the course of this investigation to examine the images and videos targeting Minister Karamé. But detection remains slower than spread. By the time the analysis results are available, the image may have already reached thousands of screens. And since this content is "professionally crafted," the journalist explains, "people will believe it, because almost no one is truly able to tell the difference anymore." The problem lies in society before it lies in the tool "With the rise of artificial intelligence, digital harassment has changed not only in intensity, but also in nature. We are now seeing disinformation fabricated from images and videos, and it is always more dangerous for women than for men," says Abed Qataya, Director of Digital Content at SMEX, an organization specializing in digital rights. Qataya notes that these campaigns intensify during significant political moments — when a woman runs for office or makes a controversial decision, as in the case of Minister Karamé. "Insults are often used against women who work in the public sphere, and they become personal; they don't even try to discuss policy or facts," he explains. He adds: "The danger comes not only from the AI tools now available, but also from the way society thinks about and regards women." On the legal front, Lebanon appears to be lagging behind the pace at which the threat is evolving. Qataya explains: "In Lebanon, we have no laws directly dedicated to the digital sphere. We have the Penal Code, the 2018 law on electronic transactions and personal data, and the 2020 law criminalizing harassment" — but no legislation specifically addresses fabricated content or gender-based digital violence. "We have no national plan, nor even a national committee dedicated to this issue," he adds. Lynn echoes this from her own experience: "The first thing we need is real laws that actually allow us to hold people accountable. Who am I going to file a complaint against? Against X?" She also believes that the authorities themselves do not take digital violence seriously enough: "They think it's not real violence. For them, real violence is when someone comes and hits you." From legislation to platforms: four levels of action The three cases examined in this investigation — a minister demonized over an education policy decision, a journalist whose fake sexual images were fabricated, and a third who was digitally placed between the weapons of two Israeli soldiers — demand action on four levels that can no longer be deferred. Legislators must adopt a legal framework that explicitly criminalizes the production and distribution of malicious fabricated content, strengthen penalties for sexual and financial blackmail, and establish the national committee called for by digital rights advocates. Media outlets and public institutions must adopt clear protection protocols — ranging from managing abusive comments to providing legal and psychological support — rather than leaving targeted women to face hundreds of messages on their own. Digital platforms must speed up the processing of reports and improve their ability to detect AI-generated content. As for women in the public sphere and their teams, Qataya recommends investing in digital security skills, both technical and psychological. In the meantime, the first line of defense remains in the hands of the public itself: before sharing a 'compromising' or 'shocking' image of a woman in public life, one question should come before all others — who made it, and why? * 'Maya' and 'Lynn' are pseudonyms used, at their request, to protect the identities of the two journalists. This report was produced with the support of the European Union and the Dutch government, as part of the grant dedicated to artificial intelligence in the media for the Middle East and North Africa region. Its content does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or the Dutch government. Generative AI tools — Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT — were used for source research and restructuring during the preparation of this work. The Hive tool was used exclusively to verify content suspected of being AI-generated, and not to produce content. All content was reviewed and the accuracy of every piece of information and every source cited was verified prior to publication. Every possible effort was also made to eliminate any potential bias from the results, whether related to language, the presentation of events, or the selection of sources. Full editorial responsibility for this work rests with its author.