The New World

The question could hardly be simpler. Does Lebanon have one government headed by Nawaf Salam, or several governments, each with its own agenda and controlled by one minister or another? It was only natural for Nawaf Salam to settle the matter and prevent Defense Minister Michel Menassa from speaking during the parliamentary session that saw the passage of the amnesty law, with all its merits and flaws, a law that reflects better than anything else the state of Lebanon, with all its decay and tensions. Nothing illustrates this Lebanese decay more clearly than the alliance between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement, led by Gebran Bassil, the son-in-law of former president Michel Aoun. This alliance opposed the amnesty law and sided with the defense minister, who intended to express before Parliament the Lebanese army’s position on the law. This would have meant undermining the existing system at its very foundations by portraying the army as an entity autonomous from the Council of Ministers. In other words, the army would have a position of its own, alongside that of the Council of Ministers, which represents the executive authority… or so it is supposed to.

Six years after the catastrophic explosion at the Port of Beirut, at a time when it is more than likely that Hezbollah, with the complicity of others, shielded the stockpiling of ammonium nitrate, Lebanon is still struggling against its internal enemy. That enemy is embodied by Hezbollah’s weapons, which have been used both inside Lebanon and beyond its borders, particularly in Syria, long before the so-called “war in support of Gaza”, a war that ultimately brought disaster upon Lebanon’s Shiite community and, above all, a national calamity for the country itself. The latest remarks by Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem are further proof of this reality. He accused the Lebanese authorities of having “helped Israel instead of helping Lebanon,” adding that “President Joseph Aoun has become a party to the conflict and a source of division, which is incompatible with the role he is supposed to play.”

Success often breeds further success. Morocco has offered a striking example of this ever since Mohammed VI ascended the throne twenty-seven years ago. The foremost of these achievements has been the consolidation of Morocco’s claim to the Sahara, followed by a series of major projects that have now become reality. These include the transformation of the Port of Dakhla into one of Africa’s leading Atlantic gateways, the African gas pipeline linking Nigeria to Morocco, and the more than one-thousand-kilometre highway connecting Tiznit to Dakhla, which now bears Donald Trump’s name. The Moroccan monarch scarcely needed to dwell on these accomplishments in his annual Throne Day address, particularly after the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2797 on 31 October 2025. The resolution marked a turning point by explicitly acknowledging Morocco’s claim to the Sahara and reaffirming that the only realistic solution remains the one Rabat has advocated since 2007: broad autonomy for the Saharan provinces within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty.

The attacks launched from Iraqi territory against Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan underscore the fragility of a country that remains unable to regain its balance. Saudi Arabia’s response, which targeted positions belonging to the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the umbrella organization for Iraqi sectarian militias aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), confirms that the regional conflict has entered a new phase. Riyadh has made it clear that it is no longer willing to submit indefinitely to Iranian blackmail. The Islamic Republic is now playing every card at its disposal in an effort to escalate its confrontation with the United States. It is incapable of acknowledging that it is not a superpower and that it must reach an understanding with Donald Trump’s administration that would allow it to become a normal state rather than a hegemonic power imposing its will on others through Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon.

The threats issued by the Houthis in Yemen against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and maritime traffic serving its ports have neither political nor military prospects. It is simply impossible for the Houthis to carry out their threats to impose a blockade on Saudi ports. In reality, through their grandiose but hollow rhetoric, the Houthis have squandered the opportunity to become a full participant in Yemen’s political process, a process aimed at reaching a political settlement that excludes no party. By openly aligning themselves with the Islamic Republic, they have effectively removed themselves from that political process. They have demonstrated, quite simply, that they are Iranians rather than Yemenis, and that any hope they might regain even a minimum sense of national consciousness was always misplaced. Such expectations amounted to nothing more than a waste of time.

Will Donald Trump have better luck with Iraq than he has had with Iran? The question naturally arises after the exceptionally warm welcome the U.S. president extended to Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi in Washington. Trump lavished praise on al-Zaidi, overlooking the fact that, until not long ago, he owned a bank that had been placed under U.S. sanctions on charges of laundering money for the benefit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Trump received the Iraqi prime minister at the White House at a time when intermittent clashes between the United States and Iran have resumed, with particular focus on the Strait of Hormuz. The American president discovered, rather belatedly, that the memorandum of understanding he signed with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was, in reality, worth very little. A wide gulf still separates Washington from Tehran. Each side continues to interpret the memorandum according to its own interests. On the American side, the agreement had been negotiated by Vice President J. D. Vance, accompanied by special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The renewed confrontation between Washington and Tehran is ultimately a reflection of Trump’s profound disappointment with the outcome of the Islamabad process and the failure of Pakistan’s mediation efforts.

At its core, one question demands an answer: what drove Iran to so flagrantly violate the memorandum of understanding it had reached with the United States through the negotiations held in Switzerland with an American delegation led by Vice President J. D. Vance? There are, no doubt, many reasons that may explain Iran’s strange behavior, bordering on irrationality. It prompted President Donald Trump to go so far as to describe Iranian officials as “sick” and “liars” with whom no meaningful dealings are possible. He went even further, using language that revealed profound disappointment with Iran’s leadership before announcing the end of the memorandum of understanding.

One can only welcome the visit to Lebanon by Asaad al-Shaibani. For the first time, it was the visit of a Syrian foreign minister to a sovereign, independent state rather than to a mere arena or subordinate territory. At least in the way it was conducted, the visit reflected President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s desire, as the man ultimately in charge in Damascus, to build a different kind of relationship between Lebanon and Syria, one freed from the burdens of the past, particularly those that have weighed on both countries since Hafez al-Assad seized power in Syria in November 1970. Does this signal a lasting shift in Syrian policy, or merely a transitional approach while the new leadership consolidates its rule by building a strong, cohesive state, much as Hafez al-Assad did even before the coup he carried out in the autumn of 1970 under the banner of the “Corrective Movement”?

Lebanon has no alternative but to pursue negotiations with Israel in order to achieve the desired objective: obtaining an Israeli withdrawal and enabling the displaced to return to their villages and towns. That is what genuine patriotism means, far removed from the temptation to cling to a past dominated by glittering slogans such as “praying in Jerusalem,” slogans that have led only to the return of occupation. Ultimately, Lebanon faces a reality from which it cannot escape forever. That reality lies not only in the price the country must now pay for the wars waged by Iran, through Hezbollah, against Israel. It also lies in the emergence of new parameters that now shape the region, parameters to which Lebanon would do well to adapt instead of remaining captive to Iranian tutelage. Lebanon must determine the price it is prepared to pay in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal, if it wishes to avoid falling into the Iranian trap. At the heart of that trap lies the Islamic Republic’s determination to turn Lebanon and its people into bargaining chips, regardless of the devastation and destruction inflicted upon the South and other parts of the country.

On paper, the American-Iranian memorandum of understanding eventually signed by President Donald Trump and President Masoud Pezeshkian appears to be a document in which all outstanding questions remain unresolved. Apart from reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting the American naval blockade imposed on the “Islamic Republic”, nothing points to any breakthrough on the issues that continue to divide Washington and Tehran. Can one also say, at least on paper, that the Trump administration has chosen to yield to Iran rather than follow through on its initial determination to break its capacity for disruption and put an end to its expansionist project, as it had originally intended?