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The global order is entering a transitional phase marked by remodeling rather than collapse. The post-WW2 order led so far- and more so since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 - by the United States is adjusting to new realities. China’s economic weight gives it strategic leverage that extends far beyond trade and finance, positioning it as a major competitor to the United States. Although China’s form of interventionism differs from that of Western powers, its growing influence across regions such as the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America is nothing but another version of neo-colonialism, hence not less damaging to America’s global interests. Despite the erosion of many of its strategic assets as a result of the war in Ukraine, Russia should neither be dismissed nor underestimated as a global power. It continues to wield influence across Africa, the Middle East, and other regions, maintaining a network of geopolitical reach. For the United States, Russia therefore remains a threat—diminished, but far from eliminated. More importantly, the inconsistent engagement and mounting internal challenges of traditional powers such as the United States, the European Union, and Russia have created a strategic vacuum that enabled a new set of regional actors across the Middle East and Asia to arise as the new “power brokers”. The emerging landscape is multipolar, but also interdependent. Competition is increasingly economic and technological. Control over supply chains, digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, energy flows and critical minerals now shapes strategic influence more decisively than traditional territorial expansion. In this context, corporations and financial institutions exert unprecedented transnational impact, exposing new forms of state vulnerability. From a realist perspective, this represents a partial diffusion of power away from the state. While governments remain primary actors, their capacity to project power is increasingly undermined by private entities that control critical assets. States dependent on foreign-controlled supply chains, platforms, or capital markets face structural constraints on strategic autonomy, limiting their freedom of action even in matters traditionally associated with national security. Economic coercion, technological chokepoints, and financial leverage thus become substitutes for military force. This new reality may look like deepening a complex mutual dependence, in which corporations function as key intermediaries linking national economies. However, this interdependence is asymmetrical. States embedded in global markets but lacking domestic control over finance, technology, or energy are more exposed to external shocks and private decision-making beyond their regulatory reach. The scale and impact of non-state actors often rivals that of nation-states, raising important debates about governance, regulation and economic balance. For example, governance increasingly shifts from public institutions to transnational corporate networks that set standards, control data flows, and influence regulatory regimes. State authority is not eliminated, but fragmented and shared with non-state actors whose priorities are driven by profit, risk management, and shareholder interests rather than national strategy. For the Middle East, this transition presents both risk and opportunity. Strategic geography, energy transformation initiatives and infrastructure investments position the region as a central node in evolving global networks. The question is not whether the region will be affected — but how it will shape and leverage the shift. The capacity of Middle Eastern states to shape and leverage this shift is uneven and deeply conditioned by structural fragilities. Many of these vulnerabilities are rooted in the legacy of colonial state formation, which produced borders, institutions, and political economies poorly aligned with social realities. Post-independence governance models often relied on coercion, external rents, and patronage rather than inclusive political participation, resulting in weak or fractured social contracts. Over time, authoritarian consolidation, conflict, and economic mismanagement further eroded state legitimacy and institutional capacity. Nonetheless, the significant transformation is taking place at the societal level. The normalization of instability — from financial volatility to geopolitical shocks — has altered public expectations. What once triggered sustained public reaction now generates limited engagement. Information cycles accelerate, and crises overlap, compressing public attention spans. This shift does not necessarily imply manipulation, but it does reflect a structural change in how societies absorb disruption. Adaptability has become a defining feature of contemporary populations. The risk, however, is that adaptation without participation may gradually weaken long-term civic engagement. The emerging world order will be shaped not only by strategic competition among states, but also by how societies interpret and respond to continuous change. Ultimately, the most significant transformation may not be geopolitical, but cognitive. As power diffuses across states, corporations, and transnational networks, citizens increasingly confront governance systems that feel distant, opaque, and difficult to influence. The central question is whether societies respond to this complexity through renewed political engagement or retreat into permanent adjustment within structures they no longer meaningfully shape. In many contexts, prolonged exposure to instability, economic precarity, and external dependency has fostered a politics of accommodation rather than participation. Citizens recalibrate expectations downward, prioritizing survival and individual adaptation over collective agency. Governance, in turn, risks devolving into a technocratic exercise focused on managing volatility rather than articulating shared political projects. This cognitive shift—from ownership to endurance—gradually erodes the foundations of accountability and consent. The ultimate outcome of this transition will not be determined by states, corporations, or institutions alone. It will hinge on whether citizens remain active participants in shaping governance frameworks or settle into a condition of perpetual adjustment to forces they no longer contest. The world is being rewritten in real time. Whether public agency evolves alongside it—or erodes under the weight of complexity and fatigue—will define not only the legitimacy of future governance models, but the character of the next era itself.

The Shiites knew "the death of God" more than a thousand years before the rest, when the lineage of Hassan ibn Ali al-Askari was cut off and he died by poison — the last of the great, infallible Imams. Shia political fiqh did not withdraw into some haven of consolation; it insisted, rather, that divine wilaya and the infallibility of the wali must endure. And so the son of Hassan came into being — most necessarily —, then disappeared in a Minor Occultation, followed by a Major Occultation, in the most prudent of all precautions… And thus Shia political fiqh deflected the idea of "the death of God" and fled from it toward the end of time… suspending time, leaving it hanging by a single hair: the awaiting of the Mahdi, who will return from his Occultation to fill the earth with justice and equity after it has been filled with oppression and iniquity… A Tour of the Shia Political Imaginary Before Khomeini Awaiting his noble return, political history remains for the Shiites a body of grievances and tragedies. They neither disavow them nor labor to avert them; quite to the contrary, this accumulation is a necessary sediment for the Mahdi's return. Furthermore, the Shiites long stood in a state of juridical release from the state, deeming it illegitimate, and harbored deep wariness toward the concepts of modernity and their outcomes — except within the latitude conceded by certain religious authorities, in isolated flashes, with wide variance between openness and closure. Awaiting the Mahdi, the Lord of Time, the Shia political imaginary finds itself before an epistemological deadlock and an existential predicament. The connection with God has been severed; and while awaiting the return of His Hujja , time becomes a commons, ownerless in the absence of the Lord of Time. This led a number of Shiites across the ages to withdraw from power and boycott it. Others engaged with existing authority on the grounds that it was necessary — for people must have governance, whether righteous or corrupt. The deadlock of Shia political fiqh very nearly drove it to embrace the project of the civil state and enter modernity through that door, having no alternative to offer beyond waiting or dealing with the existing reality by necessity. Hence, before Khomeini, the Shiites had on their own effectively killed God, on the roadside of the long wait for the return of His Hujja . And the Shiites' participation in nationalist, progressive, Marxist, leftist, socialist, liberal, secular, and atheist parties and organizations was entirely natural… These political and intellectual currents filled the place of a God who had turned His back and left His servants to await His return. The Window onto Western Modernity and Its Closure in Iran "God is dead, and we have killed him," in the words of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It was thus that modern Western society moved to curtail religion's role as moral arbiter. As a result, epistemological, economic, and technological systems grew and flourished in conditions hospitable to every requirement of growth, prosperity, and well-being. Religion did not return to the public sphere except escorted by the epistemology of the sciences — as a theory of knowledge offering answers to humanity's great questions from outside the box of religion's ready-made answers — and by the philosophy of religions, which transformed the creeds of Western societies into relative truths. The plurality and renewal of gods, the relativity of truth and the measured appreciation of its necessity, the changing and accountability of leaders within the framework of the rotation of power, diversity as a source of wealth and difference within the management of plurality: these are all co-extensive paradigms of modernity. The result was the liberation of the human being and the reinforcement of his rights as an individual citizen, a state whose legislation and laws derive from a civil reference, the welfare of the individual and the supreme interest of society, and a rationalist impulse to consolidate these achievements, reevaluate them, and build upon them. That said, I will not engage here with modernity and the critique of modernity, nor will I revisit Foucault fleeing it for the embrace of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, only to return and revise his opinion — searching, like Lévi-Strauss and others, for his quarry for the critique of modernity, in the natural course of the development of societies. It had always been an exercise in plowing the waters to extract a political project for society from the folios of Shia political fiqh . Until Khomeini arrived and drew the theory of wilayat al-faqih from the cellars of the religious tradition, sealing the window onto Western modernity in Iran and the Arab world. He fashioned, in the eyes of the Shiites, an exact replica of the Lord of Time, and installed the Iranian wali al-faqih as his deputy. How the Occultist Mind of the Shiites Operates Under the Doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih The wali al-faqih has his Shiites in many Arab cities. They are the mustadaafun — the oppressed — by their governments and within their national states. For this reason, they must profess loyalty and obedience to the wali al-faqih at the expense of their belonging to their national identities and the causes of their communities; indeed, his claim upon them is the equivalent of the Prophet's claim and of God's own. Political borders are nothing but soft barriers before the expanding wilaya . While "the support of the mustadaafun " wherever they may be in the world is the foundational value of the Iranian Islamic Republic's constitution, "the export of the revolution" — toward this end — is the road to extending influence and expansion. In this way, the wali al-faqih shattered the Shiites' awaiting of the Mahdi, being himself his deputy and present among them at the same time. And he kept them in a state of perpetual waiting. Their minds thus came to rest on the occult, which displaces all realistic approaches. The will to obstruction consequently overwhelms every society in which the Shiites of the wali al-faqih are present — for what matters is his religious mandate, which he ratifies on behalf of millions of Shiites. And ruin, destruction, and gnawing from within ensue, for governance is permanent revolution and the export of revolution — not stability, peace, and the sovereignty of states within the obligations of each one's national security. Endless wars blaze and killing becomes habit, against the erasure of development and its requirements… Or woes proliferate and blood is shed and human values are violated and chaos and upheaval spread — for that is divine will and there is no way around it. Every fallen one becomes a martyr, every martyr is blessed, felicitous in his death — which occasions congratulation more than condolence, addressed to the Lord of Time, the Imam al-Mahdi, and to the Islamic Nation. The fall to earth is an ascent to heaven and an elevation, and the shroud of death a divine decoration. Until complete defeat and thunderous collapse arrive in culture, politics, security, and civilization — in Iran and beyond Iran. And here comes the role of the sanctification of ignorance and the denial of reality: defeat becomes victory, humiliation becomes honor, and self-respect becomes blind obedience… There is no room to hold the wali al-faqih , his agents, or his followers to account, for pledging allegiance to him is an absolution of all obligation. The Shiite operating under the doctrine of wilayat al-faqih functions within parallel systems in the society of his state and does not work for the welfare of society as a whole — for what concerns him is his religious duty, to which he remains faithful while betraying everything else. The Shiite of wilayat al-faqih does not weigh options rationally, does not shrink from chaos and destruction, does not find it objectionable to live in a society without a state, and does not hesitate whether death falls upon him or he falls upon death… The surrender of his affairs to his wali is the key to understanding his mind and behavior — not rationality as a methodological approach. Naturally and ordinarily rational questions — such as development, production, and stability — do not belong to the occultist mind of the Shiite who holds to wilayat al-faqih . The Death of Khamenei and All the Date-Palm Gods "Khamenei is dead, and we have killed him." Following this announcement, the American administration can extract the Shiites from the cave of their political fiqh and their occultist mind with a decisive blow and usher them into modernity. And if the son-Khamenei returns, as sons of gods do, the revolution of communication will expose the vulnerabilities of his alleged sanctity — from insufficient qualifications for the marjaïyya to the ease with which he can be targeted and struck, rendering him from every direction into a god of dates, easily eaten, as Muslims throughout history have generally made a habit of doing when hunger strikes: they eat their gods.

As the Israeli-American offensive against Iran enters its tenth day–an assault that has set the entire region ablaze, Lebanon included–tensions continue to mount. While US and Israeli authorities are raising the tone, the pillars of the Iranian regime, currently fighting for their survival, have responded with heightened virulence, appearing to find a second wind following the announcement of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader. US President Donald Trump set the tone on Monday, claiming he believes the war is “very complete, pretty much.” In an interview with CBS, the president suggested that the conflict is moving “very far ahead” of its initial schedule. “It is we who will decide when the war ends,” the Revolutionary Guards shot back in a defiant statement. However, the Iranians have moved beyond mere bellicose rhetoric. Tehran has threatened to “block oil exports for the duration of the war”–a move that drew an immediate and characteristic response from Donald Trump. The US president warned that Washington would “hit twenty times harder” should Tehran act on its threat. Ali Larijani, the regime’s security chief, dismissed Trump’s warnings as “empty,” retorting that “Iran has no fear.” What lies beneath this acerbic exchange of rhetoric, particularly from the Iranian side? Very few details are filtering out regarding the situation on the ground in Iran, largely due to the relentless and violent Israeli-American air strikes targeting cities and critical infrastructure. In any event, a fresh statement on Tuesday from Donald Trump–who delights in blowing hot and cold–has served to muddy the waters. The US president claimed to have “heard that Tehran wanted to talk,” indicating his own readiness to do so. For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained steadfast, asserting that he was in the process of “breaking the bones” of the Iranian regime, while once again calling on the Iranian people to rise up in revolt. The Christians of the South In Lebanon, the war remains in full swing, with a relentless succession of evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military for entire swathes of the country. The Israeli Air Force continues to target Hezbollah’s financial backbone, Al-Qard al-Hassan, with numerous branches already reduced to rubble–the majority located in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Residents across seven neighborhoods in the sector have been ordered to evacuate “until further notice.” However, the last forty-eight hours have been marred by a series of bloody incidents in Christian border villages–areas that are demonstrably not Hezbollah strongholds. In Alma el-Shaab, Sami Ghafari, a man in his seventies, was targeted and killed by a drone on Sunday while tending to his land. His death has deeply unsettled observers. On Monday, the violence spread to Qlayaa, claiming the life of Father Pierre Raï. The priest was killed after Hezbollah fighters reportedly took cover behind an inhabited house to launch rockets toward Israel. The Israeli military released a video on Monday purporting to show the “infiltration of armed elements into a Christian village in South Lebanon”–specifically identifying them as members of Hezbollah. Were these strikes intended to terrorize the residents of these villages, who are determined to remain in their homes, or are they truly caught between the hammer of Israel and the anvil of Hezbollah? Regardless of the intent, the residents of Alma el-Shaab have now chosen to evacuate their village under the protection of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). Meanwhile, in Rmeish, inhabitants received direct calls from the Israeli military demanding the evacuation of displaced Shia civilians they had been sheltering, who have since been relocated to Tyre. Faced with the spiraling violence in Lebanon, France has expressed its “deep concern.” Paris has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in New York, which is set to take place tomorrow, Wednesday 11 March. First Public appearance of Mohammad Raad The day of 9 March–or more precisely, the evening–was also marked by a speech from the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, Mohammad Raad, in what was his first public appearance since rumors of his assassination by Israel in the early days of the conflict. Only hours after participating in a parliamentary session where he and his colleagues voted to extend their own mandates by two years, Mr. Raad took up the arguments of his party’s Secretary General, Naim Qassem. He launched an attack on the government for its 2 March decision to deem the militia’s military activities illegal, asserting that Lebanon “had no choice but resistance.” Such remarks pose yet another challenge to the government and to President Joseph Aoun, who only the day before had accused Hezbollah of driving Lebanon toward “collapse.” They also represent a fresh attempt to close ranks within a popular base that is becoming increasingly disillusioned. For his part, Joseph Aoun visited the Ministry of Defense on Tuesday to defend the army. The military’s Commander-in-Chief, General Rodolphe Haykal, has become an increasing target of attacks since Hezbollah once again dragged Lebanon into an “absurd war” and the military was tasked with implementing the government's decision to ban the group's destructive paramilitary activities. The President made it clear that Haykal “would not be dismissed,” sharply criticizing the growing calls for his departure.

I belong to a generation that grew up with war, that fears dying with it, and that, in the meantime, will have wasted the best years of its life waiting or hoping for things to get better. I belong to that in-between generation that witnessed the pre-1975 era without being able to salvage any real memories of youth from it. The one that can feel regret without ever truly turning the page. The one that believed that today’s youth–regardless of the camp they belong to–would, much as we did, look back and choose life over dying as so-called martyrs. I am left, like so many others, stunned that my country has been pulled back into an absurd war rather than signing a peace deal. It was that very peace that let the rest of the Arab world make giant strides, while we thought we held the region’s Holy Grail. Instead, we have been demoted to the very last rank, forced to witness the permanent reshaping of our geography and our demographics. To leave or to stay is no longer even the question. Today, the very existence of the country is at stake. Whether or not Israel intended to launch a preemptive strike is beside the point. By firing those few rockets, Hezbollah merely handed them the pretext that would prevent us from invoking international law–assuming such a thing even still exists. The federal system causes teeth to gnash–perhaps the country is too small for it–and the Taif Agreement seems obsolete now that coexistence has become so fragile. Indeed, was this famous Lebanese “living together” not built on artificial foundations that always camouflaged the underlying tensions? And is this coexistence not rather a convivence , as historian Dima de Clercq calls it? One that, now, also risks collapsing. Lebanon–and its authorities, who never ceased equivocating over disarming the militia on the pretext of avoiding civil war–now finds itself facing total war. Between two evils, one usually chooses the lesser. Lebanon chose nothing. It allowed itself to be dragged along, biding its time, much like the Iranians who knew all along what the final outcome would be. Alliances are neither made nor broken by cultural or sectarian affinities; they are simply a function of intersecting interests. And when those interests converge, one must know when to board the train–even if it means watching it derail decades later. Such is the way of the world. Especially today’s world, which has gone mad. While Europe was preoccupied with its lag in artificial intelligence, it was blindsided by the war in Ukraine, even as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took on a permanent character. Far from the ‘Riviera’ promised by Trump, Lebanon now finds itself caught in the nets of a most macabre regime of mullahs. This time, we are told, will be the one–the final reckoning. Except that in this part of the world, nothing is ever final. Everything fluctuates; everything bends to the whims of one autocracy or another. It is useless, then, to believe that the path has been cleared. It is only a matter of time before the weeds grow back. As for aberrations, Lebanon is far from done with them. In a single day, a population that was never even consulted saw its Parliament's mandate extended by two years, and armed militants released on a ten-dollar bail–only for a minister, in an attempt to save face, to refer the judge responsible for this madness to the judiciary. And after all that, you would dare tell me that living in Lebanon doesn’t give you your money's worth? *The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editorial staff.

The recent remarks by Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, Mohammad Raad, and Mahmoud Komati, vice-president of the party’s Political Council, invite serious reflection on the political meaning of the conflict currently underway. Komati speaks of a “golden opportunity” for the State — built on what Hezbollah claims to have “proven” on the ground — to establish a deterrence equation that should now be consolidated. Raad turns his fire openly on the State itself, accusing it of refusing to become entangled in a conflict that his own party manufactured from nothing. The deputy secretary-general insists, stubbornly, on his will to liberate Lebanese territory from an occupation… that did not exist before his militia chose to open hostilities in order to avenge the Iranian spiritual guide. It is difficult to overstate the extent to which this represents a denial of reality. Granted, Hezbollah is in the process of demonstrating that, despite a series of monumental setbacks in 2024, the ongoing elimination of its cadres by Israel even through periods of relative calm, and the mounting international and domestic pressure for its disarmament, it remains a threat. But a threat to whom, precisely? Because the Hezbollah discourse is not addressed to Tel Aviv. It is addressed to the Lebanese State. In 2008, when the Siniora government made its bold decision — in terms of restoring sovereignty — to dismantle the pro-Iranian party’s landline telecommunications network, Hassan Nasrallah responded that “the weapons are there to protect the weapons,” and unleashed the militia’s punitive expedition against Beirut and the Mountain. Komati’s remarks signal that this logic endures, at the very moment when the head of state and the government are multiplying gestures to restore the monopoly on legitimate violence. What becomes clear, reading between the lines of the party’s rhetoric, is that the issue is not the preservation of the resistance’s military capabilities in the strict sense. It is the necessity of “Hezbollahing” the Lebanese State once and for all — keeping it within the axis of confrontation, meaning under Iranian influence, opposed to American pressure and to any willingness to negotiate with Israel. In other words, Hezbollah wishes to “Pasdaran-ize” the State, in the manner of what is already unfolding in Iran with the positioning of Khamenei’s son and the stranglehold of the Revolutionary Guards over the state apparatus. This is Hezbollah’s answer to the Lebanese executive’s decision to disarm it. From this follows a hard truth: the outcome of this war — provoked by Hezbollah — will be, one way or another, existential for Lebanon. The price of the party’s destruction would be exorbitant for Lebanon, likely exposing Beirut to direct Israeli influence and further weighting the scales of any negotiation with Tel Aviv — to say nothing of the human, infrastructural, economic and financial disaster already settling in day by day. The price of a Pyrrhic “victory” — achieved simply by holding out as long as possible and inflicting maximum pain on the adversary — would be equally exorbitant, to the extent that such a victory would further weaken the Lebanese State in its relationship with the party. Ironically, whatever the outcome of the conflict, Lebanon will lose in terms of sovereignty — whether vis-à-vis Israel or Iran. To borrow the iconic line from Russell Mulcahy’s Highlander: “There can be only one.” And this is not about Israel versus Hezbollah. It is about, once this war has run its course, Lebanon in its entirety versus Hezbollah and its unalterable desire for revenge against the state structure and the Lebanese model. There can be only one. And it will have to be the State — and the Lebanese model, however imperfect — whose guardianship has been entrusted to it. Can this inescapable conflict, two decades in the making, be avoided? Given the belligerent militia nature and the supremacist arrogance of Hezbollah, one would have to wager: no. The question that remains, however, is how a State can confront an organization that is suicidal by nature and prepared to fight to the last Lebanese in order to keep Lebanon under the grip of its Iranian patron — without descending into its sordid game of violence and legitimation through the posture of victimhood. For the first time since the missed opportunity of March 14, 2005, legality faces a true trial by fire. It must, through an extremely delicate balancing act, restore its uncontested authority and monopoly on legitimate violence without compromise — while simultaneously protecting the culture of connection and peace against that of violence and exclusion. In other words: though incapable of preventing Hezbollah from self-destructing, legality must be capable of reinventing itself — far from the petty interests of clan and community chieftains — and of proposing a model that stands, once and for all, at the opposite pole from the totalitarian, “chaophilic,” and mortiferous model of the Revolutionary Guards; a model worthy of the pluralist and nahda heritage of Mohammad Mahdi Chamseddine, Mohammad Hassan al-Amine, and Hani Fahs. This model is not one of divorce between communities, but of an indivisible unity — the only true guarantor of sovereignty, as in 2005. And it is directed not merely against Iran and its ideological and militia offspring, against Israel or any other political or physical tutelage, but inward — toward a positive consensus on the will to continue living together. Hezbollah, and with it a part of the Shia community, is traversing the same megalomaniacal process that led each of Lebanon’s communities, driven by a radical political tendency, to believe that Lebanon could be reduced to its domination and its vision of the country. Each paid an enormous price for that belief. It is time to learn the lesson, to set hubris aside — along with the hypocrisies. Hezbollah is not only committing suicide at this moment. In doing so, it is confronting Lebanon with itself, and with a moment of truth. The choice is between deciding, once and for all, on the basis of a rational and mature judgment, to build a composite, democratic, modern, and coherent State — respectful of the pluralism, diversity, and specificities of all its components, making room for a genuine process of civic individuation beyond clan and communal belonging — or making the choice of implosion and divorce, with the risk of yet another failure at the next turn. The voices in favor of the second option, after decades of bitter and painful disappointments spread across a century, are growing louder. Even if the temptation of withdrawal into oneself constitutes a powerful anxiolytic for communitarians, Greater Lebanon — in all its imperfections — remains a necessity for all, to the extent that it grants — and this point is never sufficiently emphasized — a strength and legitimacy to all its components through pluralism: each one legitimizing the other in the eyes of the region and its torments. Greater Lebanon is experienced by a part of its inhabitants as a curse and a suffering, because they see only its misfortunes and its failings. And yet it is also, every day, in the smallest enriching encounters, the smallest gestures of exchange at every level between its citizens, a singular experience of human life — especially in this part of the world. Provided it is given the possibility of managing its conflicts in peace: within the framework of a functional, sovereign, and regionally neutral State, holding the monopoly on violence, endowed with good governance, operating within a viable administrative arrangement, and — above all — resting on a social and political contract that commands the adherence of all Lebanese, founded on respect for the Constitution, the law, public and private liberties, and the specificities of each group. This naturally presupposes a caliber of statesmen currently almost entirely absent — since it is the men at the helm who have, in the past, through error after error, servitude after servitude, folly after folly, transformed Lebanon from paradise into hell. But events often produce this kind of providential figure, provided they choose to demonstrate courage, self-abnegation, and a sense of the common good. The battle underway is not about the defeat, victory, or survival of Hezbollah. No. To excise a metastasis from a body is to put the vital prognosis at risk. It is therefore the body — but also the soul — of Lebanon that is at stake before our eyes. May the patient choose to hold on. And, should it survive with its physical integrity intact, may it not make a choice it will regret even more in the coming half-century.

By imposing Mojtaba Khamenei as "Guide" to succeed his father, the Revolutionary Guards have brought to an end a regime whose very cornerstone was the categorical rejection of dynastic succession. The first directive issued by Mojtaba in the immediate wake of his accession to the office of "Guide" — the supreme and absolute authority of the "Islamic Republic" — is proof enough. The directive, which lays bare the Guards' appetite for escalation, reads as follows: “First: we grant the armed forces full and unconditional authorization to choose the time, place, and means appropriate for responding to any aggression threatening our national security. “Second: the protection of vital and nuclear installations constitutes an inviolable red line. Any transgression thereof confers upon you the authority to strike strategic targets deep within the territory of the aggressors and their allies, without awaiting prior authorization. “Third: the response must be resolute and shattering, so that global arrogance understands that a change of leadership in Iran signifies no weakness — on the contrary, it inflames the spirit of vengeance and defiance.” The Guards appear to have resolved upon escalation in every direction — including toward the neighboring Gulf states — driven by this "spirit of vengeance." Mojtaba Khamenei is, when all is said and done, nothing more than one instrument among many in the very game his father designed and set in motion. The selection of Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father can scarcely be called a surprise. Ever since Ali Khamenei rose to the office of "Guide," he had labored ceaselessly to entrench his grip over the apparatus of the state in close symbiosis with the Revolutionary Guards. The Guards are now the power itself — and they exercised that power in practice by deciding that Mojtaba would be the "Guide," with the single purpose of protecting the shared interests between the supreme authority of absolute prerogatives and the Guards themselves. Under the reign of Ali Khamenei — which stretched across thirty-seven years, from 1989 to 2026 — the Revolutionary Guards were transformed into the backbone of the regime; more than that, into a creature beyond all taming. Recent events have illuminated with merciless clarity that it is the Revolutionary Guards Corps that governs Iran. The pronouncements of President Massoud Pezeshkian carry virtually no weight. In practice, the traditional balancing act between reformists and hardliners has ceased to exist. In the shadow of permanent war, the elaborate game that Khamenei père had mastered — and wielded so deftly in service of the regime and its maneuvers — has lost all purpose. In the absence of Ali Khamenei, the survival of the Revolutionary Guards' state could not be secured through any means other than his son. Precisely as it was unthinkable that anyone other than his son should have succeeded Hafez al-Assad after thirty years of uncontested rule. Upon Hafez's death, keeping power and fortune within the family was an inexorable imperative, so indissolubly intertwined had those two elements become. Ali Khamenei, in his capacity as wali al-faqih — the shadow of the Hidden Imam upon the earth — exercised power in an absolute manner. Through the Guards, he secured for himself a commanding share of the economy by means of various companies and institutions affiliated with the "Guide." The Guards' economic activities were by no means foreign to Mojtaba, who devoted the greater part of his time to forging his own power through the accumulation of wealth — much as Bashar al-Assad did in Syria over a quarter of a century, before being compelled to flee to Moscow. The elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei to the rank of "Guide" — despite his manifest lack of the religious culture and qualifications the post demands — signals the Iranian regime's entry into a new phase: that of hereditary succession. This designation, within an "Islamic Republic" founded on the explicit rejection of dynasticism, compels a precise question: to what extent will Mojtaba adhere to the intransigent policies embraced by his father? Is the new "Guide" a replica of his departed predecessor — or a pragmatist, aware that the regime's survival rests exclusively on the perpetuation of the Guards' hold on power? How ready does Mojtaba, now fifty-six, appear to be to reach some modus vivendi with the Trump administration and with Benjamin Netanyahu and his government? The new "Guide" knows, better than anyone — in light of what befell his father on the twenty-eighth of February last — that the choice before him is between living underground and being exposed to assassination. No sooner had the announcement of Mojtaba's designation reverberated than the Revolutionary Guards hastened to unleash a fresh salvo of missiles toward Israel. There is little doubt that such a gesture is aimed at saving face. The matter is one of days, after which it will become plain whether the Guards' interests lie in the continuation of the war or in finding some path to capitulation — on the premise that the overriding priority is salvaging whatever can still be salvaged, including the financial coffers and investments managed by Mojtaba and members of his family. The road to capitulation is clearly mapped. Known conditions exist from which neither the Americans nor the Israelis can retreat — from the nuclear program to the Iranian proxy networks, through ballistic missiles and launch platforms. On the surface, the Iranian regime cannot accept these conditions. Yet in reality it will be compelled to adapt to them through compromises dictated by the existential necessity of remaining in power at any price. For, in the end, if Ali Khamenei, his son Mojtaba, and the Guards amassed all that wealth, it was not for the sake of self-sacrifice — it was to endure in power. Power begets fortune, and fortune serves the permanence of power. Circumstances did not spare Khamenei père. But nothing in what is known of Mojtaba's conduct suggests that he is among those disposed toward self-destruction. He may differ from his father — radically so — not least because he has mastered the art of accumulating considerable wealth and placing it in the service of power: the power of the Guards, who want of Mojtaba nothing more than a pliant instrument in their hands. Will this servitude to the Guards prevent the suicidal trajectory along which the "Islamic Republic" advances, step by deliberate step?