Youssef Mouawad

Hezbollah, you probably had something to prove! By launching a "salvo of missiles and a swarm of drones" towards Israel in the early hours of Monday, March 2, you certainly had something in mind. To this day, the consequences are incalculable: more than seven hundred dead, ruthless eradication of entire neighborhoods, nearly nine hundred thousand displaced from their homes, including more than 150,000 who found refuge only in the precariousness and promiscuity of collective shelters! Why didn't you keep a low profile? You could not have shown such immaturity when you knew that the Hebrew state's retaliation would be disproportionate. In your capacity as a "self-proclaimed resistance movement," you were not big enough to measure yourself against the IDF, especially since you had been decapitated on September 17 by the "pagers." What then was the purpose of your act of provocation? Your pathetic fireworks could not reverse the course of the situation, especially since the missiles fired from Iran had proven ineffective and insufficient and had provided proof of the vulnerability of a clerical regime on the ropes.

Should we mourn Ali Khamenei? Shall we join the procession of the grieving, or perhaps name an avenue in our capital after this martyr? In their complacency, our governments once even gave the name of Hafez al-Assad to a busy street, celebrating in sæcula sæculorum his so-called golden age on our land.* After all, the Iranian Supreme Leader did indeed shape Lebanon and rule it just as the usurpers Assad—father and son—did. And even if it was through intermediaries, he left indelible marks on our history, violating our institutions and tearing apart our uniquely fragile social fabric. For decades, our country was nothing more than a Syrian-Iranian condominium, a strip of land along the Mediterranean where Damascus and Tehran simultaneously exercised their joint sovereignty.

Donald Trump has just committed American forces to a large-scale operation against the Iranian regime. This is the real McCoy, the real thing, not a simulated raid nor a mere warning shot. The face of the Middle East is about to change. And, truth be told, it is the arrogance of the ayatollahs that will have brought about their downfall. Indeed, only a few days ago, the United States dealt Iran an affront that the ayatollahs had every interest in keeping quiet. During the latest conclave held in Geneva on Thursday, under the auspices of the Sultanate of Oman, Steve Witkoff, the American negotiator, abruptly broke off the talks and withdrew from the meeting on the pretext that he had other obligations to fulfil. In fact, he was heading to meet, on the other side of Lake Geneva, a Ukrainian delegation.

If the rumors are to be believed, there will be nothing serious to report in the coming weeks. For, if one trusts Abbas Araghtchi's statements, Tehran and Washington would have reached, during their talks in Geneva, a broad agreement on a set of 'guiding principles, on the basis of which they will advance and begin to work on the text of a potential agreement'. In the meantime, Iran is rearming itself with weapons and ammunition, which is not reassuring to Israel, the latter demanding, moreover, that the ongoing talks go beyond the strict framework of nuclear issues to include the two questions of missiles and proxies.

What would be the point of a strike ordered by Trump? Are we to believe it would put an end to the repression raining down on Iranian protesters? In reality, no one is in a position to halt the reprisals that the Revolutionary Guards are inflicting upon their fellow citizens. And even if an agreement were concluded in Oman to avert an American military operation, nothing suggests that civil peace would immediately take hold. In either case—whether the mullahs reach a cut-rate understanding with the United States or not—the Iranian protest movement will be left to the ferocity of a so-called “pacification” that fires live ammunition at point-blank range at demonstrators and other opponents.

What if Iran were to yield in the face of the massive deployment of American force? What if it chose not to take up the challenge posed by the U.S. fleet now anchoring in what it considers its own waters, those of the Persian Gulf? It would lose face—after having so recently strutted and solemnly proclaimed that it controlled four Arab capitals! Let us not be mistaken: Tehran is now faced with a choice between war and compromise—that is, a retreat that would bring back into fashion the much-criticized gunboat diplomacy, so often denounced in academic circles. This so-called diplomacy, which predates the First World War, consisted of firing from the sea at the coasts of a country deemed to have something to answer for, usually unpaid financial debts.

Who did not welcome the removal of Nicolás Maduro, the dictator who forced eight million of his compatriots, or a quarter of Venezuela's population, into exile? But does this mean that the American administration was within its rights in carrying out this audacious raid in the vicinity of Caracas? According to the 1945 United Nations Charter, which enshrines national sovereignty and guarantees peace between nations, a country can only resort to armed force in two cases: self-defense and the adoption of a Security Council resolution authorizing it. A country can, however, intervene in the territory of another to respond to the urgent request of its legitimate government: Wasn't it that US Marines landed on our shores in 1958 at the request of President Camille Chamoun?

What a master of suspense Donald Trump is! In the warm waters of the Gulf as in the frozen lands of Greenland, the American president follows the same pattern: he engineers a stunning event, then scoops up the prize under the stunned gaze of the protagonists. One would be wrong to overlook the histrionic side of the man, who seeks to monopolize attention and to be implored before dispensing his favors. On January 13, he called on Iranian demonstrators to seize control of institutions, assuring them that help was “on the way.” But this promise was nothing more than a damp squib. Three days later, the American president backtracked, seizing upon a hollow pretext: “I greatly respect the fact that all scheduled hangings that were supposed to take place yesterday were canceled by the leaders of Iran. Thank you!”

Do not count your chickens before they are hatched. The Tehran regime has not fallen; and even if it has been weakened, it is not on the verge of collapse. While the demonstrations and riots that have erupted in Iran’s cities—led by academics, women, bazaar merchants, and other segments of society—are noteworthy, one may well ask whether they have surpassed in scale those that toppled the Shah in 1979. Yet these convulsions and protests could suddenly reach an unforeseen level of gravity, and it would not be illusory to bet on their success, as the German chancellor has openly suggested. Even in the event of an Israeli or American strike!

There are ample reasons to recoil from the term debellatio. This barbaric legal concept denotes, in international law, the subjugation of a state and its eradication through armed violence. It refers to a situation of complete military, political, and legal annihilation of a given country as a result of devastating warfare—such as that experienced by Carthage at the end of the Punic Wars, or Nazi Germany at the fall of Berlin in May 1945. And what about Lebanon? Is it not at risk of meeting a similar fate, supposedly in the name of the “acts of resistance” of the Hezb? Normalization, but at what cost?