Tilda Abou Rizk

For the first time since February 28, Lebanon experienced a day of calm: no Israeli raids, no exchanges of fire on the southern border, and no fighting in the border villages where the Israeli army maintains a presence. The only exception was the Israeli drone attack that killed one person in Kunin, in southern Lebanon. The focus is now on assessing the casualties—who continue to be recovered from the rubble—and the material damage in the southern suburbs of Beirut, as well as in accessible southern towns, to which displaced people have returned en masse. The ten-day truce between Tel Aviv and Beirut, brokered by US President Donald Trump, appears, at first glance, to be a respite in a war that is far from over, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted on Wednesday, since the underlying causes of the armed conflict remain.

The elimination by Israel of Ali Larijani – head of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council and one of the Islamic Republic’s key power brokers – along with the commander of the Basij militia, the formidable Iranian police force, Gholamreza Soleimani, will undoubtedly mark a turning point in the war between Iran and the Israel-US axis. Both men were killed in targeted Israeli strikes on the Iranian capital overnight on Monday, Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, officially announced early Tuesday morning. As of late afternoon, however, Tehran had neither confirmed nor denied the reports. Iranian media merely announced an “imminent televised address” by Ali Larijani – echoing the scenario that preceded Tehran’s official confirmation of the death of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was also killed in Israeli strikes on 28 February 2026 – before broadcasting a handwritten message attributed to Larijani. This was accompanied by a statement from the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, pledging to “continue the war until the defeat of the United States and Israel.”

Fears of a military conflict between Iran and the axis formed by Israel and the United States getting bogged down are being confirmed as developments on the ground accelerate and political and military confrontation between Tehran and Washington intensifies. On the fourteenth day of the war raging since February 28, Washington and Tel Aviv insist on their determination to annihilate the military capabilities of Tehran, which is reacting by expanding the scope of its attacks, just hours after the bellicose televised message from the new Iranian Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who was nevertheless injured in the violent strike that killed his father, Ali Khamenei. Diplomacy still seems to have no place in this tug-of-war whose outcome remains uncertain.

Over the past twenty-four hours, a battery of indicators on the ground suggests that the war between Iran and the axis formed by Israel and the United States is on the verge of crossing a new threshold–an escalation from which Lebanon is not escaping. On the thirteen day of the military operation dubbed “Epic Fury” by US President Donald Trump, tensions have significantly surged across the dual Iran-Israel and Lebanon-Israel fronts, marked by a striking synchronicity between Hezbollah and Tehran. The overnight intensification of missile exchanges between Tehran and Tel Aviv–occurring just as Hezbollah announced on Wednesday evening the launch of Operation “Eaten Straw” (an allusion to Quranic account of Abraha’s army, decimated by clay stones dropped by birds)–is a direct consequence of rising hostilities around the strategic Strait of Hormuz. This flashpoint now threatens to become a decisive turning point in the ongoing conflict.

The Lebanese government undertook intensive diplomatic activity on Friday, March 6, in an attempt to put an end to the rampant degradation shaking the country, following the reopening of the South Lebanon front by Hezbollah, on the night of the 1 st to March 2, disregarding all warnings addressed to Lebanon on this plan in recent weeks. Faced with this new suicidal adventure by the formation allied with the Pasdaran, the paramilitary and security activities of the pro-Iranian party were banned on Monday by the government of Nawaf Salam. But Hezbollah remains completely deaf to official injunctions and remains deeply engaged, under instruction from the Islamic Republic of Iran, in a regional war to which Lebanon is completely foreign.

The Salam government’s decision to outlaw Hezbollah’s military and security activities – and to prosecute those behind them – is undoubtedly historic. Yet, it remains insufficient given the sheer scale of the “descent into hell” that this Iranian proxy has, once again, forced upon Lebanon. It is historic because it shatters a long-standing Lebanese tradition of political self-effacement and complacency – a stance long dictated at times by a fear of an internal strife and at others by political opportunism toward a group that has, over the years, successfully imposed its grip on the country and built a security and military apparatus that surpasses the capabilities of the Lebanese state.