Opinion

To be or not to be. In this famous tirade, Shakespeare symbolizes life with its share of pain, injustice, and suffering, which we have endured for decades, but it also embodies death and suicide as a way out. If a fanatical splinter group has decided to take this path in the name of an obscurantist cause, the majority of Lebanese openly reject it. The Announced End of a Tyranny The signs are not deceiving. History teaches us this again and again. When a dictatorship such as that of the mullahs and the Revolutionary Guards finds itself cornered, when danger looms, when the delusions and megalomania it long fed on for its survival crash against harsh reality, when the house of cards it painstakingly built for decades at any cost, in defiance of all moral and ethical consideration for a population it believes it holds under its yoke, collapses, when despair takes over and all indicators turn red, then blind fanaticism, furious hysteria, and kamikaze madness take over and prevail over reason. To paraphrase Georges Clemenceau: “Dictatorships are like impalement: they start well but end badly.” The Iranian frog that wanted to make itself as big as the ox eventually imploded. But at an always exorbitant price for the populations bending under its vicious grip. The same goes for its agent in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Has the Mountain Given Birth to a Mouse? “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.” In my view, this acerbic and premonitory criticism by Churchill of Chamberlain symbolically illustrates the government's policy towards Hezbollah. After weeks of tranquility, the rockets sent to Israel by Hezbollah on March 1st were not only a resounding slap in the face and an affront to the state, but above all, blatant proof that this militia's loyalty to Lebanon is null and void. Without any military value, they are mere wasted efforts, a headlong rush, an irresponsible and suicidal act. Paranoia, delusion, megalomania, and blind fanaticism are the guiding threads. But the price paid by the Lebanese people, and particularly the Shiite community that the militia claims to represent, is very heavy. It entails not only enormous material devastation, painful human losses, general impoverishment, displacement of populations, and boundless humiliation, but above all, the destiny and future of an entire country that the murderous aberration of a totalitarian, doctrinaire, exalted organization, totally subservient to the Islamic Republic of Iran, is leading directly to the abyss. The decision of March 2, 2026, to consider the party's military wing an outlaw organization, unfortunately came too late. The iron should have been struck fifteen months ago, when it was hot. Missing the momentum proved fatal and benefited the militia, which exploited official laxity and lack of firmness to pursue, right under everyone's noses, subversion and destabilization. The Pigeon Grotto's pressure tactics were, however, a harbinger of problems to come. Instead of firmly opposing and prohibiting it, instead of putting a stop to it, the authorities deemed it better to lie low and wait for the storm to pass. And on March 2, again with another attack towards Israel. A new defiance of the government's decision. Trying too hard to smooth things over often leads to missing the boat. History teaches us that at a given and fateful moment, banging one's fist on the table and showing intransigence when it comes to the superior interest of the State are necessary and crucial, regardless of the potential price to pay. Notwithstanding President Joseph Aoun's vain attempts to bring the militia to reason (this same militia that had signed the ceasefire agreement and its disarmament throughout Lebanese territory), the average citizen has the legitimate right to consider that Aoun was duped, and us with him. Threats of civil war, military schism, Syrian invasion, and other demonic scenarios daily propagated by Hezbollah's propaganda are nothing more than smoke screens, crude scarecrows intended to sow fear and confusion. “Tyrants are great only because we are on our knees,” wrote A. de Tocqueville. The Eternal Recurrence? Zeus condemned Sisyphus to eternally roll a boulder to the top of a hill, which boulder tumbles down the hill when it reaches the summit. Sisyphus knows the extent of his miserable condition and it is of that he thinks during the descent. But he chooses life against all odds, does not give in to despair, and continues to roll his rock, thus defying the gods. This tragic myth makes me think of our drained country, caught in the eye of the storm, a maelstrom from which it will have enormous difficulty escaping, but it has no choice but to fight evil and conquer it. However, time is pressing. Urgency is at our doorstep. Words and official good intentions are not enough and have proven sterile, ineffective, and counterproductive to date. Procrastinations, hesitations, political jargon are no longer acceptable and cannot be tolerated. As long as the authorities do not immediately implement the official decision to once and for all impose the law over the entire territory, as long as they do not have the audacity, determination, and courage to bring Hezbollah to heel and disarm it without kid gloves and without asking its permission, Lebanon will remain at the mercy of irresponsibles, thugs, and criminals, and will enjoy no international credibility or sympathy, incidentally to the great satisfaction of Israel, which was waiting for the misstep to carry out, in good conscience, its undermining work, which it will persist in pursuing until further notice.

They have precision missiles, but they have no blankets for the children. This is not an oversight or a logistical failure — it is a choice. Cement was not used to build shelters to protect families; it was used to dig tunnels to protect rockets. In this logic, a warhead holds strategic value, while a civilian is considered replaceable. You simply produce more. Demography becomes, in this way, a form of arsenal. And the suffering of those civilians is not a failure for those who run this system. On the contrary, it becomes a tool. A mother weeping in a school before the cameras of the entire world produces a powerful message that spreads on its own: look at what they are doing to us. What one rarely says is that the enemy did not destroy the shelters. There simply never were any. To prevent people from asking too many questions, misery was eventually transformed into doctrine. The explanation goes: suffering is a form of resistance, poverty is proof of dignity, and living in destitution is almost a badge of honor. In this system, whoever dares to complain becomes suspect, as though betraying the memory of the martyrs. Meanwhile, the leaders run the cause from air-conditioned bunkers and fortified offices, while ordinary militants sometimes sleep on asphalt and are proclaimed glorious. Speeches cost nothing, whereas mattresses cost money. For decades, everything was done to ensure the Lebanese state remained too weak, too divided, and too corrupt to offer any real alternative to the population. The result is simple: people stay where they are — not out of love for the system, but because they have the impression that no other way out exists. The true genius of this system lies neither in its missiles nor in its parallel financial networks. Its genius consists in transforming entire populations into hostages who end up thanking those who hold them prisoner, simply because they no longer have the strength to imagine anything else. The tunnels protect the weapons. The tents, for their part, serve to display the suffering. And for those whom misery alone is not enough to convince, there is always the great promise of paradise. It is, in a sense, the deferred wage of the poor. In this world, there is not always a pension, not always healthcare, not always a decent school for the children — but a perfect reward is promised after death, with terms and conditions that no one has ever been able to read. The contract is ideal for those who propose it, because the beneficiary never comes back to demand an accounting. In this system, dying becomes almost a promotion, and sending others to their deaths can be presented as an act of generosity. It is a form of martyrdom accounting in which the workforce pays itself with its own faith. There are no social charges, no unions, no strikes. There are only mothers who weep and posters on the walls. Those posters are essential, because the martyr does not truly disappear. He becomes an image. On the poster, before his name, they write "The Happy Martyr," and after his name they add: "On the road to Jerusalem." But the poster never says what he left behind. It does not show the family without a father, the children who grow up without him, nor the immense void that opens in a house when someone does not come home again. That void is simply filled by the next volunteer. And so a simple question eventually poses itself: who decided he was happy? The dead do not speak, and that is precisely what makes the system so efficient. You can put any words in his mouth. You can claim he is fulfilled, that he is happy in paradise, and no one will ever be able to verify it. Telling a mother that her son is happy is almost tantamount to forbidding her to grieve. Her sorrow becomes suspect, as though it were a form of ingratitude. And so many mothers fall silent. They look at the posters on the walls and they say nothing. But somewhere deep within them, a question keeps haunting them. If their son is truly happy, why is the pain so great? Meanwhile, the promise of divine victory goes on. It is always near, always imminent, but it seems to recede each time one believes one is drawing close to it. It is announced for soon, for ten years from now, for the next generation, for the next war. And while this promise keeps shifting through time, the architects of this victory live rather well. They have bodyguards, protected villas, and children who study in Europe. They speak of sacrifice from armored podiums and weep for the martyrs with great eloquence, but they themselves almost never become martyrs. This coincidence has lasted for decades, and by lasting so long it has ended up resembling less a coincidence than a very well-organized system. In this system, the tunnels descend ever deeper to protect the weapons, while on the surface, the tents await the wind, the rain, and the cameras of the entire world. And the system continues to turn. It has been turning for decades because the dead never come back to tell their version of the story, and because the living are exhausted. Exhausted from fighting, exhausted from losing, exhausted from hoping. And so they end up voting for those who keep them in this machinery. They rarely vote out of conviction and almost never out of love. They vote out of fear, out of the absence of alternatives, and above all out of exhaustion. And sometimes too out of a certain very human cynicism, the reasoning that if one must remain a prisoner, one might as well let one's jailer win. The system knows this exhaustion very well, and it feeds on it. And it will continue to function as long as no one dares to ask the simplest question — the one that everyone avoids out of habit, out of fear, or out of politeness. Who decided he was happy? And above all, across all these years, how many of those martyrs have truly made it all the way to Jerusalem?

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. Our successive heads of state, our prime ministers, our commanders-in-chief, and their second-tier aides—those gray eminences—saw no problem with this arrangement as long as their respective interests were safeguarded, their camarilla prospered, and their close relatives could build financial empires and vast real-estate fortunes. Fear Imposed and Profit Promised The axis of defiance ( al-moumana’a ) did not abandon the Lebanese stage after the withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2005. Having penetrated the state since the mandate of Elias Hrawi, it had installed its “creatures” at every level of the civil and military administration. It had infused its poison and corroded the machinery of the state. Worse still, it imposed its official narrative upon the media. Whether willingly or not, we had to adopt its single line of thought glorifying the “Resistance.” We ended up chanting its refrains almost involuntarily. The collaboration of our elites was only natural: as everywhere in the world, it was driven by the fear imposed by Hezbollah and by the profits it allowed people to hope for. The free press remained muzzled, and the ordinary citizen gradually developed a bad habit—that of no longer calling things by their proper names. Silence—whether called muteness or discretion, that politeness of cowards—did the rest. But now, at this precise moment of American interventionism, at this breaking point, what prevents the Lebanese—rebellious as they are—from exclaiming: “It is enough! Iranians out! Your henchmen behave here as if in a conquered land!” The Apology of Physical Liquidation The American bombing has settled accounts with Allah’s vicar in Tehran. Mitra Hejazipour, a chess champion and Iranian refusenik, openly welcomed the news. In her “insolence,” she did not restrain her exultation—unlike many of our political leaders who live in fear of a backlash. “For decades,” she said verbatim, “millions of Iranians have awaited the end of this man and what he represented. Nothing will bring back the victims of this regime; nothing will erase the shattered lives, the torture, the executions, the humiliations. But after forty-seven years of this criminal dictatorship ruling Iran, this is the first time…” Lebanese who remain gagged by fear—disguised as temperance—take example from Mitra Hejazipour, or from our pop star Elissa, who dared to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization. An Iranian woman and a Lebanese woman have dared. What are you waiting for to denounce the unbearable? *The street was later renamed after Ziad Rahbani, commemorating a memory far more melodious.

In his latest address, Naim Qassem attempted to present Hezbollah’s decision to launch rockets and widen the war as a reluctant act of defense forced upon it by Israeli violations. According to his account, Hezbollah exercised patience for fifteen months after the November 2024 ceasefire, allowed diplomacy to run its course, and finally acted only when it became clear that Israel would not stop violating Lebanon’s sovereignty. This argument does not deserve to be debated seriously, because it is built on a lie. Qassem is not mistaken, misinformed, or presenting an alternative interpretation of events. He is lying. The facts are neither complicated nor ambiguous, and the timeline itself exposes the dishonesty of his claim. Hezbollah did not suddenly discover Israel’s violations after fifteen months of silence, nor did it decide that Lebanese sovereignty had finally reached a breaking point. The organization chose its moment very carefully, and it did so immediately after the killing of Ali Khamenei. That timing alone is enough to dismantle the entire narrative. If Hezbollah’s war was truly about Lebanon, then it should have begun long before now. Qassem himself spent a considerable portion of his speech listing thousands of alleged Israeli violations during the past year—airspace incursions, border attacks, property destruction, and civilian casualties. By his own logic, these violations were severe and constant. Yet despite this supposedly unbearable situation, Hezbollah repeatedly insisted that it would remain patient and that the Lebanese state should pursue diplomacy. For fifteen months, Hezbollah waited. Then suddenly, after Iran’s supreme leader was killed, rockets were launched from southern Lebanon and the country was dragged once again to the edge of war. Qassem would like the Lebanese public to believe that this sequence of events is purely coincidental, that Hezbollah simply reached the limit of its patience at exactly the same moment that Iran’s leadership was struck. No serious observer can accept such a claim. Hezbollah did not act because Lebanese sovereignty was violated; it acted because Iran was hit. The organization’s leadership may try to wrap this decision in the language of resistance, martyrdom, and national defense, but the underlying reality remains unchanged. Hezbollah’s strategic compass does not point toward Beirut. It points toward Tehran. In fact, Qassem himself inadvertently revealed the truth when he referred to the targeting of Khamenei during the speech as part of the context of the confrontation. That reference was not accidental. It exposed the emotional and ideological center of Hezbollah’s reaction. When Iran’s leadership was attacked, Hezbollah felt compelled to respond—not as a Lebanese political actor defending a national interest, but as a loyal component of Iran’s regional axis. This is why engaging Qassem’s speech as if it were a legitimate political argument misses the point. The speech was not an honest attempt to explain events; it was an attempt to conceal them. Hezbollah’s leadership understands perfectly well that openly admitting the real reason behind its escalation would expose the extent to which Lebanon is treated as a battlefield for someone else’s war. The behavior of Hezbollah’s leadership today resembles something far less noble than the heroic image it attempts to project. What remains of the organization’s leadership increasingly resembles a group of arsonists who enjoy lighting fires across Lebanon, fully aware that it is the homes of ordinary Lebanese that will burn first. They ignite wars, celebrate sacrifice, and invoke martyrdom from the safety of political speeches, while the destruction spreads through villages and neighborhoods that never chose this confrontation in the first place. Their reaction to the killing of Iran’s supreme leader reveals this mentality with unsettling clarity. Instead of treating the moment with restraint, Hezbollah rushed to demonstrate loyalty through escalation, effectively turning Lebanon into a symbolic arena for mourning and revenge. In doing so, they asked Lebanese civilians to pay the price for the death of a man who spent his life ruling Iran through repression and exporting violence across the region. Ali Khamenei did not defend Lebanon, did not answer to the Lebanese people, and did not sacrifice anything for the country whose territory Hezbollah now places on the frontline of retaliation. Yet Hezbollah’s leadership expects Lebanese citizens to accept this war as if it were their own. The contradiction is glaring. Qassem speaks endlessly about sovereignty while rejecting the authority of the Lebanese state whenever that state attempts to regulate Hezbollah’s weapons. He speaks about defending Lebanon while reserving for Hezbollah the exclusive right to decide when Lebanon goes to war. He calls for national unity while accusing critics of betraying the resistance. But sovereignty cannot exist in a country where a militia decides the fate of the nation, and unity cannot be built on a lie. Lebanon deserves honesty about why it is repeatedly dragged into wars that devastate its towns and displace its people. What it received instead was another speech designed to obscure the truth behind ideological slogans and emotional appeals. Qassem may hope that repeating the language of resistance will eventually convince the public that Hezbollah is acting in Lebanon’s interest. Yet the timing of this war, the structure of Hezbollah’s alliances, and the content of his own speech reveal something very different. This is not Lebanon’s war. It is the war of an organization that continues to treat Lebanon as the stage upon which it proves its loyalty to a foreign cause, even if the fires it lights consume the country it claims to defend.

Lebanon today stands divided along a stark vertical fault line, particularly since the executive branch moved to ban all Hezbollah’s military activity. Meanwhile, the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate, as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah steadily widens. The opening of the southern front, coupled with Hezbollah’s political and media responses – in which it criticizes the Council of Ministers and the President of the Republic, and attacks Lebanon as a whole – can, at best, be described as irresponsible, if not openly defiant. The first to pay the price are Hezbollah’s own supporters; Lebanon as a whole comes next. Hezbollah supporters and their families, fleeing Israeli threats and bombardment, are now facing their fifth exodus since 1992. There is, however, no guarantee that this one will once again be temporary – particularly if, as Israel’s Defense Minister has stated, Israel expands its occupation of southern Lebanon in order to establish a buffer zone stretching northwards. Defying all logic, many Hezbollah supporters accept this situation. They express unwavering trust in their leadership, loyalty to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and certainty of victory over Israel, no matter what happens. They are convinced that their destiny is to die avenging Khamenei’s death. This suicidal logic is deeply troubling, and the government’s inaction risks prolonging an erosive status quo. Since the November 2024 ceasefire, Israel has continuously targeted Hezbollah’s leadership and infrastructure, without provoking any retaliation. At the same time, the group persisted in refusing to restore state sovereignty, thereby reneging on its commitments in this regard. Until now, Israeli strikes had been conducted within a well-defined and predictable geographical framework. However, since 2 March, Lebanon has been drawn into a new “support war,” modelled on 2023–2024, version 2.0 – entirely unnecessary and having no impact on the broader conflict between Iran, the United States, and Israel. It is increasingly clear that Hezbollah will never change its stance, consistently prioritizing ideology over the pragmatism it once claimed to champion. Faced with the choice between suicide and options that would ensure the safety of its supporters, it has chosen suicide – a path it cannot, however, impose on other Lebanese, who have opted for the rule of law, continue to believe in it, and have been striving for fifty years to build such a state. Syria’s thirty-year occupation of Lebanon, followed by the dominance of Hezbollah and the Amal movement, has eroded the state from within. It facilitated the entrenchment of their supporters – as well as others belonging to corrupt fiefdoms – within the country’s administrations, judicial apparatus, and security institutions, systematically undermining their foundations. Without the presence of a handful of genuine resistors – discreet yet active within these institutions, and there are enough of them – the state would have long since ceased to exist. Passivity, the Worst Option Over the past fourteen months, the executive and the President of the Republic have spared Hezbollah, adopting a paralyzing stance of passivity while a dynamic shift was underway across the Middle East. Machiavelli considered passivity to be the worst option: if those in power remain passive and neutral, they become the prey of the victor. Lebanon cannot afford to alienate the United States, home to more than a million Lebanese – including dual citizens and Americans of Lebanese descent. Among them are senators, members of Congress, and officials such as Thomas Barrack, Massaad Boulos, Darrell Issa, Daren Lahoud, and many others who work tirelessly in support of Lebanon. Still drawing on Machiavelli, and especially in times of belligerence, Lebanon cannot adopt a passive stance between Washington and Tehran. Such neutrality has become synonymous with ruin. Once again, Israel is expanding its occupation of southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah and Iran are completely unable to prevent or deter it. On the contrary, they are helping provide the very pretext for Israel to occupy more Lebanese territory and displace its inhabitants. Some observers claim that enforcing the latest decision of the Council of Ministers would lead to civil war or an armed confrontation between the army and Hezbollah. These arguments cannot be sustained, as Hezbollah cannot afford – after all it has endured – a direct clash with the military institution or the risk of further alienating the majority of Lebanese. Other skeptical analysts doubt the army’s ability to enforce the government’s decision. At a historic moment such as this, only statesmen – rare in these times – could make a difference, possessing a clear vision and plan for doing so, without the country sliding into civil war or internal confrontation. For example, the Supreme Defense Council, which includes the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, and the Ministers of Defense, Interior, Finance, and Economy, should convene in an open session and oversee, hour by hour, the mission to disarm Hezbollah, rather than leaving the army to struggle alone against a politically complex situation that has been dragging on for forty years. The Supreme Defense Council could thus take the initiative and fully assume its responsibilities, since the decision-making power rests with it and not the military. In doing so, it would also reaffirm the supremacy of civilian authority over the army during a crisis such as the one we are experiencing. Left to their own devices, military actions can have significant political repercussions. On this basis, the army should be politically secured – not only through a decision by the Council of Ministers, but also through close, hour-by-hour oversight to ensure the proper implementation of that decision. Moreover, the parliamentary Defense Committee is conspicuously absent. Yet it is responsible for meeting periodically, and as frequently as the gravity of the situation demands, to question, take responsibility, and, where necessary, legislate to guide the actions undertaken, providing all resources required to support the army in successfully carrying out its assigned mission.

The dramatic circumstances the country is experiencing undoubtedly require the presence of statesmen! Lebanon has known them, and we miss them, especially since their number is limited. Certainly, a statesman must be in power to prove himself, and he can only assert himself in significant circumstances. Thus, since 1943, certain presidents of the Republic have risen to the occasion as head of state in the face of events. They have risen to the occasion either through their vision or through concrete decisions that have spared the country from catastrophe. They have also demonstrated their competence by firmly adhering to the Constitution and the laws in force, through force, diplomacy, or a wise and firm policy. Above all, they have assumed their responsibilities regarding the defense of the sovereign, independent state. Current events demand that those in positions of responsibility within the executive branch (for the legislative branch, one must refer to Mr. Nabih Berri) demonstrate that they are truly statesmen and not mere civil servants or administrators. There are statesmen in the government. The time has come for them to assert themselves and spare the Lebanese people the worst.

Naim Qassem has delivered many speeches over the years. His latest, marking the anniversary of Hezbollah’s “martyr commanders,” was not particularly original—but it was revealing. It was part elegy, part sermon, part warning, and entirely predictable. The martyrs were invoked, the faith was affirmed, Israel was denounced, Iran was praised, and the Lebanese government was gently informed that it is both responsible for everything and entitled to decide very little. It is a remarkable formula: Hezbollah demands that the state defend sovereignty—provided the state does not insist on owning it. Qassem’s central argument is simple. Lebanon respected the November 2024 ceasefire; Israel did not. Therefore, the Lebanese government must confront Israeli violations. So far, so reasonable. But then comes the sleight of hand: while the government is urged to act like a sovereign authority vis-à-vis Israel, it is simultaneously warned not to act like a sovereign authority vis-à-vis Hezbollah’s weapons. Apparently, sovereignty is indivisible—except when it reaches Dahiyeh. The speech was framed as a defense of dignity. Disarmament, Qassem argued, is surrender. International aid is humiliation. Pressure to centralize weapons under the state is a foreign plot. One almost expects the next logical step: the Lebanese constitution itself is an imperial conspiracy unless interpreted by Hezbollah’s political bureau. We are told that weapons are sacred, inherited from the blood of martyrs. Debate them, and you insult the dead. Question them, and you are flirting with collaboration. It is a clever move. By sanctifying the arsenal, Hezbollah attempts to remove it from politics altogether. Arms are no longer a strategic choice; they are a theological commandment. The problem is that Lebanon is not a shrine. It is a bankrupt republic with a collapsing infrastructure and a population that would quite like to survive the next decade. Qassem insists that Hezbollah does not want war. Of course not. Hezbollah never wants war; it merely finds itself permanently adjacent to one. It does not seek escalation; it simply reserves the right to decide when escalation is necessary. It does not undermine the state; it merely operates alongside it—above it when required. This is not contradiction, we are assured. It is “resistance logic.” The irony is almost theatrical. Hezbollah demands that the Lebanese government enforce the ceasefire against Israel while simultaneously arguing that the government should stop “obsessing” over disarmament. In other words: Dear government, please exercise your authority—just not over us. The party also reassures its base that Iran is strong, the “axis” is intact, and regional fronts are interconnected. This is meant to project confidence. But it also confirms the obvious: Lebanon’s security doctrine is not purely Lebanese. It fluctuates with Tehran’s negotiations, calculations, and regional priorities. Sovereignty, apparently, is strongest when subcontracted. And then there is the economic theater. “We do not want conditional aid,” Qassem proclaims. One admires the purity of the sentiment. After all, Lebanon has done so well without conditions. Investors are famously attracted to countries where war and peace are determined by actors outside formal institutions. Markets thrive when escalation is a matter of partisan discretion. Reconstruction flourishes when the chain of command is optional. The truth is less romantic. No state can rebuild while a parallel military structure retains veto power over its strategic direction. No army can mature into a credible national institution if it must coexist with an armed organization that reserves the right to outflank it. And no sovereignty can be persuasive when it is selectively applied. There was, however, one particularly revealing maneuver in Qassem’s speech: his insistence that critics are not allowed to “go back” and question Hezbollah’s decision to drag Lebanon into war. According to this logic, history resets itself at the moment a ceasefire is signed. The past dissolves. The war becomes a closed file. The casualties become unfortunate footnotes. This is not political reasoning; it is institutional amnesia. A ceasefire may end hostilities with Israel, but it does not absolve Hezbollah of accountability toward the Lebanese people. The party unilaterally decided to open a front. It did not consult parliament. It did not seek cabinet approval. It did not ask the millions of Lebanese who would pay the price in destroyed homes, paralyzed infrastructure, lost livelihoods, and renewed displacement. One cannot claim to defend sovereignty while denying citizens the right to evaluate the cost of that defense. The war did not begin in a vacuum, and it did not affect an abstract map. It affected Lebanese first and foremost. If Hezbollah wants to speak the language of statehood, then it must accept the language of responsibility. Signing a ceasefire is not a sacrament. It does not erase the consequences of decisions taken without national mandate. History is not suspended because a party prefers not to revisit it. Hezbollah’s narrative rests on one enduring trick: presenting itself as the guardian of the state while preventing the state from becoming whole. When Israel violates, blame the government. When the government hesitates, question its courage. When the government considers consolidating authority, accuse it of surrender. Heads, Hezbollah wins. Tails, the state loses. What is most striking in Qassem’s speech is not the rhetoric about Israel. It is the anxiety about internal debate. The real battleground is no longer the southern border; it is the concept of the Lebanese state itself. The weapons question is not about betrayal of martyrs or abandonment of Palestine. It is about whether Lebanon will ever function as a single polity rather than a negotiated coexistence between institutions and militias. Hezbollah likes to frame the choice as resistance versus submission. That binary is convenient—and false. The real choice is between a country governed by law and a country governed by permanent exception. Between a defense strategy owned by the republic and a doctrine owned by a party. Between accountability and sanctification. Qassem concluded with reassurance: Hezbollah is patient. It does not seek war. It is waiting for the state to fulfill its duties. One could almost mistake this for magnanimity. But patience, when paired with a monopoly on escalation, is less a virtue than a lever. Lebanon does not need more lectures about dignity from those who insist on holding the only key to it. It needs a government that governs without caveats, an army that commands without negotiation, and a sovereignty that does not require clerical endorsement. If Hezbollah truly believes the state is responsible, then it should finally do the unthinkable: allow the state to be sovereign—not in speeches, but in practice. Anything less is not resistance. It is rehearsal.

In Lebanon, money opens almost every door. It speeds up decisions, simplifies procedures, brings down many resistances. Yet there is one door it cannot open: the door of dignity, the door of genuine respect, the kind that cannot be bought. He knows it, even if he prefers not to admit it. He succeeded quickly, very quickly. Too quickly. A newly rich man, fortune arriving before recognition, money sometimes opaque, sometimes plainly dubious. Despite the assets, the connections, and the outward signs, he lives with a persistent unease: something is missing. A legitimacy. A place. The feeling of existing as something other than the one who pays. His wound does not begin in adulthood. It begins much earlier. With a father belittled, never respected, from whom he understands very early that he must distance himself if he does not want to end up in the same place. With a family it is better to conceal, not out of lack of attachment, but because it recalls an origin deemed disqualifying. Very early on, something settles in the background. Old marks, never erased. So he acts as if it never mattered. He moves forward. He builds for himself an image more solid, more brilliant, more acceptable. He quickly understands that worth depends on status, on name, on position. He does not seek to be loved. He seeks no longer to be humiliated. When money arrives, it heals nothing. It protects. It conceals. Whether it is clean or dubious matters little, as long as it allows him to impose himself and silence doubts. Success becomes a strategy of survival. But when money is no longer enough to produce respect, another solution imposes itself: to become a Member of Parliament. Here, the mandate is not a service. It is protection. In a State that protects no one, the seat becomes a personal guarantee, a de facto immunity, a way of transforming a contested fortune into official authority. He is ready to pay. Dearly. During the campaign, he repeats the expected words. Projects. Laws. Future. Reconstruction. He knows that all of this is merely a compulsory passage. What matters is shelter. To exist, at last, even if it is through fear. He buys votes. Misery does the rest. When one is hungry, a vote can be sold. He knows it and takes advantage of it. He calls it assistance. In reality, it is simple corruption: money in exchange for silence, poverty in exchange for power. Then comes the election. The title. The suit. And the void. Nothing is repaired. In the eyes of others, he remains the one who paid. And before himself, he remains the one he has always been. He had sought respect. He obtains to be called “Your Excellency.” And the most obscene thing is neither the lie, nor the failure, nor the emptiness. The most obscene thing is that it is enough for him.

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. That said, the Arab countries of the Gulf, who insisted that Trump prioritize diplomatic channels over the military option, may fear that Netanyahu will play the fool and ignite a powder keg. And if there was something fishy While gathering a threatening armada in the region, the American president came to the rescue of the ayatollah regime by granting it a reprieve. He saved it by keeping its head above water, just as he preserved it from Israel's fury, whose avenging arm he has so far restrained. But will he still restrain it after the 'persuasion trip' that Netanyahu made to Washington last February 11, the purpose of which was to share Israeli apprehensions with the White House? Donald Trump is more cunning than one might think. As proof, his unforeseen, and for some, untimely intervention last June. Let us recall that Israel had launched a surprise attack against Iran on June 13, 2025, and that, on the night of the 21st to the 22nd of the same month, the US Air Force and US Navy had entered the fray and bombed several nuclear sites. This raid was going to brutally interrupt the sixth round of negotiations, which was supposed to resume between Iran and the United States, three days after the start of the fighting. Today, what would prevent a remake based on the same scenario? Are we not on the eve of negotiations whose 'guiding principles' were recently established in Geneva? And isn't this the ideal moment to strike Iran, which believes it has won the round by outwitting the American? This would be a bit of tit for tat, and Trump is certainly capable of it! That is not taking into account pusillanimity Some have gone so far as to accuse American policy of inconsistency. Ben Samuels, Haaretz correspondent in Washington, still cannot explain the White House's zigzag (or yoyo) policy, when everything is a matter of one man's arbitrariness, mood, or whim. However, J.D. Vance, the American Vice President, did not hesitate to declare that Donald Trump was 'not in the habit of publicly revealing his positions in order to preserve his decision-making space'. Donald Trump is a businessman who does not want to fall into the trap of war, where many of his predecessors have fallen. He is also, and I'm not telling you anything new, a braggart capable of grand gestures but who backs down when it comes to confrontation. In decision-making, both a person's interests and their character come into play! And if the American president declares that he wants to exhaust the diplomatic path with Iran before any military action, it is due to 'failure of nerve and want of courage', that is to say, out of cowardice and pusillanimity. But at this precise hour, when two aircraft carriers have taken up position in the region, nothing is settled and anything can still happen!

The cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground off Giglio Island after hitting underwater rocks on January 13, 2012. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP) Imagine, as the Costa Concordia cruise ship was sinking in 2012, the restaurant manager asking passengers not to forget to pay their bill. Absurd? Yet, that is, more or less, the logic adopted by our government. In a country paralyzed by crisis, where only inflation is progressing, the State, desperately seeking to finance salary increases for its civil servants and more or less adapted pensions for retired military personnel, has found the solution: increase VAT by 1% and tax gasoline by three hundred thousand pounds per can. After all, why not? In a system where impunity reigns and accountability is an administrative fiction, it would undoubtedly be indelicate to ask leaders to return embezzled funds. As long as we're at it, we might as well extract from a people who have shown a remarkable ability to take it without flinching. What, after all, is more noble than paying taxes to support a public sector where some employees are as stealthy as a B-2 bomber, invisible 29 out of 30 days? Or those who prove that there is life after death, still receiving their salary long after their administrative burial? And then, if the unemployment rate is around 40%, this gasoline tax will ultimately only concern those who work. The unemployed, for their part, are not supposed to roam the roads doing nothing. The motivations for these taxes are impeccable: opposing them would almost be ungrateful towards those who maintain the illusion of a semblance of a state. Or even worse, towards an army whose some high-ranking officers, instead of enjoying a well-deserved retirement, have agreed to sacrifice themselves once more, by presiding over us. Shakespeare wrote, and he was right: «Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude», especially since the new taxes do not affect the fuel that warms us from the winter wind… And let's stop seeing the glass as half empty. As the saying goes, just take a smaller glass for it to be almost full. Certainly, a real taxation of the use of public maritime domain, cigarettes and carpets (which some leaders smoke) would have been more coherent. But the gasoline tax will at least have the merit of reducing the number of motorists, smoothing traffic flow and, consequently, lowering pollution. This government innovates! It has just invented ecological transition through economic asphyxiation. However, we have shown great maturity regarding the laws against which we express indignation. Let's remember: in 2019, the mention of a six-dollar tax on WhatsApp was enough to ignite the country, dissolve the government, and fill the streets. Today, a tax approaching twenty dollars monthly, coupled with a VAT increase, passes without a hitch. Our revolt takes place on social media, but at least it's free, and this, thanks to a sense of responsibility and general mobilization around a national cause, which we had ardently defended in 2019! Ultimately, our rulers have perfectly applied the concept of inverse solidarity: extracting from those who cannot afford to stop, in order to finance a state that, itself, is at a standstill. The difference with the Concordia is that when the ship was sinking, water or access to the sea were not yet being billed, whereas in Lebanon, we are sinking but will be in order….