The New World

The condemnation by the United States Mission to the United Nations of the attack carried out by the Polisario Front against the city of Smara, in the Moroccan Sahara, is no trivial event. The American mission deemed that such acts threaten regional stability and undermine the progress made on the path to peace. Equally significant is the American mission’s insistence that the time has come to put an end to this conflict, which has dragged on for nearly fifty years, with a reminder that UN Security Council Resolution 2797 considers Morocco’s autonomy proposal the framework tracing the path toward peace in the Sahara. It is clear that the issue does not actually concern the Polisario itself, but rather an Algerian policy incapable of coming to terms with the reality embodied in Resolution 2797, adopted on 31 October 2025 and recalled by the American mission. In short, what we are witnessing is Algeria’s return to failed bets whose futility has been amply demonstrated in the past. It is worth first establishing the meaning and scope of Resolution 2797, particularly as regards its emphasis on the Moroccan autonomy proposal as the only practical framework for a solution, on the one hand, and its consecration of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara, on the other. That is precisely what the Algerian regime has been unable to swallow — and above all, that Algeria is an integral part of this conflict, a conflict entirely manufactured by Algiers from the very moment it erupted, in 1975. This conflict broke out with a single and sole objective: to wage a war of attrition against Morocco in retaliation for the success of the Green March, nothing more. The aggression against Smara did not go unnoticed. The American position revealed that Algeria’s actions are under scrutiny and that it can no longer indefinitely conceal itself behind the Polisario. The Algerian game is now exposed, and it amounts to this: exploiting events in Mali to justify a stance that Algeria has defended for many years under the banner of the right of peoples to self-determination. A slogan that is ostensibly just, yet put to questionable use, for want of any capacity to confront reality: the inhabitants of Morocco’s Saharan provinces have expressed their position unequivocally since the return of these territories to the motherland in 1975, and have let no occasion pass without reaffirming their allegiance to Morocco. This Moroccan character of the Sahara has progressively garnered Arab consensus, a near-African consensus, and broad European assent. Several turning points have contributed to this, foremost among them the recognition, some six years ago, during Donald Trump’s first term, of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara by the United States. Why did Algeria not recall its ambassador from Washington, when it unleashed a furious outcry against France the moment President Emmanuel Macron, in his historic letter to King Mohammed VI, recognised Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara in the summer of 2024? It is no coincidence that new Algerian bets aimed at challenging this Moroccan sovereignty emerged precisely in the wake of events in Mali and the launching, by separatist and extremist forces, of a war against the central government in Bamako. By reactivating the Polisario, Algeria seeks to lend credence to the idea that another separatist movement exists in the Sahel region, aspiring to carve out a place for itself on the political map of the area. Algeria does not realize that events have moved well beyond this type of calculation, and that the Malian government itself had already recognised, on 10 April last, Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara and the importance of the Moroccan autonomy proposal. The plain fact is that the encouragement of separatist movements in Mali aims, among other objectives, at punishing Bamako for the shift in its position on the Sahara question — a shift that came after Mali had previously played a pivotal role at the African level in supporting Algeria, the Polisario, and the phantom entity of the Sahrawi Republic, proclaimed half a century ago. That proclamation had no other purpose than to justify keeping Sahrawis confined in the Tindouf region of Algeria, in wretched camps, when they could instead be living in their country as free Moroccan citizens, enjoying the full range of their rights and their dignity. To invest in the support of separatist movements in the Sahel is to invest in the encouragement of extremism and terrorism in a region that is in dire need of a wholly different kind of investment — the kind practiced by Morocco, which works to improve the daily lives of every citizen in the areas of health, agriculture, and education above all, while simultaneously striving to promote a tolerant Islam, including by training imams from several African countries and grounding them in sound religious principles. No one is unaware that the Mohammed VI Foundation for African Islamic Scholars, in Rabat, brings together dozens of religious scholars from more than thirty African countries, and that its creation represents a significant step in the fight against extremism and terrorism. Sooner or later, the attacks carried out by the Polisario will rebound against Algeria. Morocco knows how to defend itself, for the simple reason that Moroccan investment is investment in human beings and in development, not in the encouragement and fanning of extremism. Whoever truly desires stability in the Sahel region does not seek to blow up a country like Mali from within, but works to cut off extremism in all its forms. It bears repeating that Algeria, beset by serious domestic problems, cannot decently support separatists when they operate beyond its borders while repressing them when they stir within the country itself.

A thick cord binds together all the Lebanese errors whose price will inevitably be paid in 2026 — those errors that ultimately led to the return of the Israeli occupation. What we are witnessing today is the natural consequence of an accumulation that began even before the Cairo Agreement of November 1969, that ill-fated pact concluded between Lebanon and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The agreement consecrated the collapse of the Lebanese state by leading it to abdicate its sovereignty over a portion of its territory. Whoever abandons part of his land abandons, in practice, sovereignty over the whole of it. No Lebanese politician spoke at the time about the catastrophe that the Cairo Agreement represented, with the sole exception of the Amid Raymond Eddé, who grasped the danger of the event and its full implications. Before the signing of the Cairo Agreement, Lebanon had treated lightly the events shaking the region, including Israel’s destruction of the Middle East Airlines fleet at Beirut airport in the final days of 1968, in retaliation for Palestinian groups’ use of the Lebanese capital’s airport to launch hijackings of aircraft bound for Israel — among them a flight between Athens and Tel Aviv. Lebanon failed to grasp what the destruction of the MEA aircraft meant. Rather than understanding the lesson, it moved toward signing the Cairo Agreement, with all that this implied in terms of opening Lebanon’s borders to Palestinian groups to launch attacks against Israel. Lebanon went still further in its accumulation of errors. Parliament elected Sleiman Frangieh, the grandfather, as President of the Republic in 1970. He was a patriotic man, but one whose political culture was very limited, particularly at the regional level. How could Sleiman Frangieh have absorbed the significance of the extremely grave events unfolding across the region — the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser and the rise of Anwar Sadat, Hafez al-Assad’s accession to power in Syria, the expulsion of Palestinian fedayeen from Jordan and their passage into Lebanon through Syrian territory? All these historic events occurred in 1970 in the absence of any Lebanese authority attuned to what was taking place in the region. Sleiman Frangieh moved from an attempt to eliminate the armed Palestinian presence in Lebanon in May 1973, to addressing the United Nations in 1974 to speak in the name of the Arabs on the question of Palestine. There was no Lebanese awareness of the significance of the consequences of the October 1973 war, nor of the divorce it produced between Egypt and Syria. Anwar Sadat was moving toward a settlement with Israel, while Hafez al-Assad was working to seize control of Lebanon and of the Palestinian decision-making process, which resided in Beirut where Yasser Arafat had made his home. Assad the father regarded an independent Palestinian decision as “heresy” and considered Lebanon nothing more than a theater of operations compensating for Syria’s loss of the Golan Heights. For the late Syrian president, control over Lebanon was far more important than recovering the Golan. Lebanon entered the civil war in 1975 without the Christians realizing they were falling into the trap that Hafez al-Assad had set for them. In 1976, Assad obtained American and Israeli authorization to lay his hands on Lebanon — and particularly on “the bases of armed Palestinians affiliated with the PLO,” in the words of American officials of the time, foremost among them Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who believed that military intervention in Lebanon would prevent a regional confrontation that the armed Palestinian presence in a zone capable of threatening northern Israel might otherwise provoke. Lebanon has no choice but to revisit this period of its history if it wishes to preserve itself. It is more necessary than ever to learn from missed opportunities and, before that, from the errors that led to an underestimation of what Israel is capable of doing — an Israel that cannot withdraw from southern Lebanon without a price. What Lebanon is being asked to pay today is not only the cost of the last two wars — the war of support for Gaza and the war of support for Iran — which Hezbollah entered on Iranian instructions, but also the accumulated debt of decades of compounded errors. These errors span more than fifty-seven years, the age of the ill-omened Cairo Agreement and the events that preceded and paved the way for it, on Lebanese soil and in the surrounding region. The pivotal notion today is the capacity to absorb regional and international developments — a capacity that Hafez al-Assad mastered throughout his long years of rule. He mastered it to the point of transforming his military entry into Lebanon into a service rendered to the Americans and the Israelis, who once again authorized him to lay hands on the country in 1990. At that time, the Syrian army entered Baabda Palace and the Ministry of Defence at Yarze, thanks to the stupidity of Michel Aoun — a stupidity that reflects the foolishness and opportunism of a considerable portion of Lebanon’s Christians. In October 1990, Michel Aoun believed that Saddam Hussein, bogged down in the sands of Kuwait, would come to his rescue and keep him in Baabda Palace! No one in Lebanon held Michel Aoun accountable for this crime. On the contrary, Hezbollah deemed that he deserved a reward — and that reward was his elevation to the presidency of the Lebanese Republic in 2016. Much will depend, for Lebanon, on how the negotiations with Israel are conducted. These negotiations are now a reality. Israel wants a price. How can Lebanon pay it while obtaining in return the restitution of its occupied territories and the return of the displaced to their villages and towns, even if those lie in ruins? One cannot spend all these years accumulating errors and then escape the reckoning. Errors carry a price that cannot be evaded. But what matters more than the price is the lesson to be drawn from it. Has Lebanon, in 2026, learned enough from the mistakes of the past to understand that its very survival now resembles a miracle more than anything else?

It is striking to observe the persistence with which the “Islamic Republic” insists that it negotiates on Lebanon’s behalf and claims credit for the ceasefire in that country. This is attested by the declaration of Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi who, in a phone call to President Nabih Berri, stated that “the cessation of Israeli aggressions against Lebanon is covered by our agreement with the Americans.” It is no coincidence that Araghchi chose to call Berri specifically, as if to signal that the Speaker of Parliament has become Iran’s last remaining refuge in Lebanon. This Iranian stance toward Lebanon reveals a bankruptcy without precedent, all the more so since there is in reality no genuine ceasefire. All that is happening is that Israel continues its war against Lebanon, a war that Hezbollah itself originally provoked. In this phase, Israel is concentrating its operations on territories south of the Litani River, occasionally extending them to the western Bekaa with targeted strikes. In short, what exists is not a ceasefire but the ongoing prosecution of a war that the Hebrew State is conducting while accommodating certain American demands. Israel is currently sparing Beirut, in conformity with the wishes of President Donald Trump, who harbors particular calculations regarding Lebanon and wishes to treat it as a country he claims to “love.” This approach appears to stem from personal motivations rather than from concerns related to Iran, and is driven above all by the desire to see any negotiations between Lebanon and Israel succeed. Worth noting in this regard is that Trump personally insisted on hosting the latest round of preliminary talks between Lebanon and Israel at the White House rather than at the State Department. The Iranian position on Lebanon gives some measure of the illusions in which the “Islamic Republic” remains captive. Foremost among them is the belief that Lebanon is still subordinate to its will. Tehran refuses to acknowledge that Lebanon has moved to an entirely different place. What it declines to recognize is that Lebanese political decision-making is no longer under its dominion, particularly since its withdrawal from Syria. The “Islamic Republic” disregards the fact that Lebanon needs to rid itself of Hezbollah’s weapons and, beyond that, to reach security arrangements with Israel in order to seriously undertake the return of the southerners displaced from their villages, or what remains of them. It equally ignores the fact that Lebanon cannot survive under the shadow of a ticking time bomb represented by more than a million displaced southerners who have lost everything they owned. The most essential dimension of the Lebanese reality is absent from the Iranian vision: on one side, the suffering of the people of the South; on the other, Israel’s determination to alter the very character of the southern land. The manner in which Israel destroyed a two-kilometer Hezbollah tunnel in Qantara stands as living proof of this — it was not simply a matter of demolishing an underground structure, but of physically reconfiguring the terrain itself. Unable to keep all of Lebanon within its grasp and in the wake of Hezbollah’s military defeat, Iran has now focused its attention on Nabih Berri, who is these days taking pains to distinguish his positions from those of President of the Republic Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. Berri accommodates Iranian wishes under the pretext of preserving communal unity, rather than adopting the Lebanese national stance that the combined weight of domestic, regional, and international circumstances demands. He resorts to formulations such as his support for indirect negotiations with Israel, without asking himself how such indirect negotiations could possibly secure the recovery of territory through an Israeli withdrawal from approximately five percent of Lebanese land still under occupation. Will the Iranian maneuver, which uses the Speaker of Parliament to link Lebanon to the American-Iranian negotiations that have themselves been reduced to indirect talks, succeed? The answer is that such a maneuver is destined to fail, given the reality on the ground, where Israel daily destroys what remains of predominantly Shi’ite villages with the aim of establishing a buffer zone in southern Lebanon. Ultimately, whoever follows the Iranian logic, whether Nabih Berri or anyone else, serves only the logic of occupation and its entrenchment — nothing more. It is no secret that Hezbollah feeds on occupation; its conduct confirms as much, since it did everything in its power to bring it back. It is Hezbollah that deliberately engineered the “Gaza support war” on October 8, 2023, the consequences of which are well known, including the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and virtually the entire senior leadership of the party, without need to revisit the pager operation or what it revealed of Israel’s knowledge of Hezbollah’s internal structure and the residences of its commanders. Neither Hezbollah nor Iran, which stands behind it, has drawn any lesson from the results of the “Gaza support war.” The “Iran support war,” launched on March 2, 2026, only compounded the disaster: Israel expanded its occupation. The question that lingers is how a figure such as Nabih Berri, endowed with all his political experience, can persist in following an Iranian policy that has reached a total dead end rather than supporting the national position embodied by Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam. It is difficult to understand the stance of the Speaker of Parliament at a moment when Lebanon needs more than ever to affirm its break with Iran, rather than continuing to pay the price for the misdeeds of the “Islamic Republic” since the very first day of its establishment in 1979. Has the Lebanese Speaker of Parliament not taken note of the fact that Iran recently launched most of its arsenal of missiles and drones… in the direction of the Arab Gulf states, and not in the direction of Israel?

Against a backdrop of more than a million displaced persons and the rubble of over fifty-five Lebanese villages and towns in the South, the "Islamic Republic" held a commemoration in Beirut — Lebanon's capital — to mark the fortieth day of mourning for Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, assassinated by America and Israel on 28 February last. The spectacle of this commemoration betrays an impudence with few equivalents, not least because the Iranian ambassador Mohammad Reza Shibani — declared persona non grata by the Lebanese government — occupied the front row, though he has never once presented his credentials. His continued presence in Beirut is nothing but further proof of the contempt with which Iran regards Lebanon and the Lebanese, a contempt that is, at its root, of Persian character, grounded in a sense of superiority towards everything Arab in the region. The image of those seated in the front row — among them the Minister of Health, one of Hezbollah's representatives in the government — encapsulates, on its own, the Iranian impudence in Lebanon. It illustrates in concrete terms the wager that the "Islamic Republic" continues to place: holding Lebanon in its grip and turning it into one of its bargaining cards. This wager on the Lebanese card dates back to that ill-omened day in the summer of 1982 when the vanguards of the Revolutionary Guards entered the city of Baalbek. It was no coincidence that those Guards — who had crossed Syrian territory on the pretext of confronting Israel — chose to install themselves in a Lebanese army barracks named the Sheikh Abdullah barracks. Striking a blow at the Lebanese army was one of the foremost objectives of the "Islamic Republic," as embodied by its Revolutionary Guards. The image of the Khamenei fortieth-day commemoration thus appears more than meaningful. It reveals, first of all, the refusal of the "Islamic Republic" to accept that Lebanon has now dissociated its path from Iran's own. Tehran cannot bring itself to acknowledge that Lebanon is striving to exist outside direct Iranian control. This blindness stems from an inability to come to terms with the regional and international realities that eventually brought the war inside Iran itself, after long years of unparalleled success in deploying its instruments — most notably the Lebanese Hezbollah — to extort the world and the Arabs alike. What began with the Guards' entry into Baalbek and their occupation of a Lebanese army barracks, in open defiance of all international laws and conventions, continued with an Iranian campaign targeting the American University of Beirut. In the summer of 1982, the Iranians abducted university president David Dodge from Beirut through their Lebanese proxies and transferred him to Tehran. The Iranian authorities subsequently released Dodge following efforts made by Rifaat al-Assad, who was then seeking to ingratiate himself with the Americans and to present himself, in due course, as a potential successor to his brother Hafez. Iran succeeded in driving the United States out of Lebanon. It prevailed, effectively, over American presence in the country — particularly following the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut in April 1983 and of the Marines' headquarters near Beirut airport in October of the same year, an attack that inflicted on the American military its heaviest losses since the Vietnam War. Two hundred and forty-five American servicemen were killed. The Iranian campaign against the American presence in Lebanon never ceased. There is no need to revisit the kidnappings of Americans in Beirut, nor the assassination of Malcolm Kerr, the American University's president, in 1984, all the way through to the day Rafic Hariri was assassinated on 14 February 2005, an event that opened the path to the imposition of total Iranian guardianship over the country in the wake of the Syrian military and security withdrawal. There is a fundamental Iranian incapacity to accept that Lebanon has changed and that the region has changed with it. The fortieth-day commemoration for the "Supreme Leader" confirms this incapacity, now transformed into outright impudence. What remains of the Iranian leadership cannot conceive of the "Islamic Republic" without Lebanon in the position of a vassal state. There is a refusal of a reality that is nonetheless pressing: Lebanon is capable of recovering its status as an independent and sovereign state while simultaneously freeing itself from the Iranian stranglehold that drove it to the present catastrophe — a catastrophe that struck the Shia community first and foremost, before any other, and devastated the land of the South, its villages, its towns and its people. The "Islamic Republic" will not be able to flee from international and regional reality indefinitely. It is plain that the impudence to which it has resorted in Lebanon is but one facet of this Iranian flight, with its multiple dimensions — among them the response to the United States and Israel through acts of aggression against the Arab Gulf states. No country in the world can continue its flight from reality without end. The reality is that the "Islamic Republic" has lost every war it waged on the margins of the Gaza war — whether in Lebanon, in Syria, or in Gaza itself, which Israel has obliterated from existence just as it simultaneously obliterated the leadership of Hezbollah. The loss of Syria remains Iran's most significant loss, as Syria was the bridge to Lebanon. The "Shia Crescent" that once extended from Tehran to Beirut and stretched toward southern Lebanon no longer exists. In brief: impudence cannot conceal impotence. Only the admission can cover that impotence — the admission that Lebanon is no longer an Iranian protectorate, as Syria was in the days of Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad, when the "Shia Crescent" was still alive and thriving.

The essential point of the bold address that President of the Republic Joseph Aoun delivered to the Lebanese remains that relating to the attainment of "permanent agreements" with Israel in the light of a ceasefire. The head of state deliberately affirmed Lebanon's complete exit from the Iranian game by passing over in silence any role for the "Islamic Republic" in reaching the ceasefire. He instead underscored the role of "friend" President Donald Trump and the Arab group, "at the forefront of which the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." This has undoubtedly drawn the wrath of Iran and Hezbollah upon a president who is working to end the occupation and restore the displaced to their villages. The ceasefire in Lebanon was achieved after Presidents Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam came to understand that a half-exit from the Iranian game was worthless. Either a complete exit from that game, or Lebanon would remain yet another victim of the Iranian expansionist project and the dead end it has reached. Iran's problem with Lebanon appears to be of extreme complexity. It stems, at root, from the Iranian inability to grasp Lebanon's composition and its intricate formula on the one hand, and from the refusal of most Lebanese to see their country fall under direct Iranian domination immediately after freeing itself from Syrian tutelage on the other. But Iran's overriding predicament remains its discovery that its investment in Hezbollah, an investment spanning more than forty years, was misplaced. Every billion poured in by the "Islamic Republic" has gone up in smoke, whether in Lebanon or in Syria. One must understand Iran's situation and the predicament that Lebanon has caused it. That predicament lies in the "Islamic Republic's" inability to adapt to the transformation the region has undergone. The best illustration of this transformation is that the war currently under way is playing out within Iran itself. Not far off is the day when this war will lay bare the failure of the regime that Ayatollah Khomeini established in 1979, a regime whose founding watchword was "the export of the revolution." Forty-seven years after the birth of the "Islamic Republic," the slogan Tehran once brandished has rebounded against those who brandished it. Lebanon, in its majority, refuses to be dragged down by this same Iranian recoil. The Iranian regime has ultimately proved incapable of continuing to defend itself by exporting its crises beyond its borders. A game at once grotesque and dangerous was bound to come to an end. It rested on the naivety of successive American administrations since the Jimmy Carter era, and on Israeli complicity. Israel played every role Iran required of it in order to serve its own interests, grounded in the fragmentation of the region. The rules of the regional game have changed. That game rested primarily on American permissiveness toward Tehran and on Israeli complicity. The region has changed, Israel included, since October 7, 2023. The "Islamic Republic" did not even grasp the meaning of no longer being the party that decides who becomes president of the Republic in Lebanon. One cannot forget that Hezbollah imposed Michel Aoun as president of the Republic on October 31, 2016. Nor can one overlook that Joseph Aoun reached the Baabda Palace in early 2025 against the will of Iran and Hezbollah. The fact remains that reality is one thing, and illusion quite another. Michel Aoun, along with his son-in-law Gebran Bassil, was a mere instrument in the hands of Hezbollah, itself an instrument of Iran. The different regional circumstances, especially with the major transformation that has occurred in Syria, now allow the current president of the Lebanese Republic to break free of Iranian hegemony and to be a genuine president for Lebanon, despite the occasional absence of clarity in Baabda's vision... The whole issue is that Iran does not know how to lose, unlike Germany and Japan in their time. The "Islamic Republic" appears not to know how to lose today, just as it did not know how to win during the period when it believed it controlled four Arab capitals, Beirut among them. What matters for a country like Lebanon is knowing how to lose and extricating itself definitively from Iran's grip. The options before a country that will have to pay the price of "a war imposed upon it," in Nawaf Salam's words, are few. Through Joseph Aoun's address, Lebanon showed that it genuinely intends to go further than a mere ceasefire with Israel, which will require inevitable concessions. The sooner Lebanon accepts the terms capable of leading to a permanent ceasefire, the better for the South and its people. Just as Iran negotiates with America, Lebanon must negotiate with Israel without any complex of any kind. When the "Islamic Republic" shows no mercy toward the people of the South, nor toward the Southern villages and towns, Lebanon has no choice but to place its own interest above all others, above Iran's most of all. It must take note that in the face of a monster named Benjamin Netanyahu, the country holds no card to play other than direct dialogue with "Bibi." Such dialogue could prove useful at a certain stage, with a view to going beyond a ceasefire and exploring whether there exists a means of ending the occupation in exchange for a price that cannot be avoided. It is the price of Hezbollah's total subordination to the "Islamic Republic"...

The announcement of Lebanese-Israeli negotiations, with American participation, in Washington, amounts to no more than a first step along a long road that will pave the way for a definitive separation between the Iranian and Lebanese trajectories. It should likewise open the path, at least in principle, to a peace treaty between Lebanon and Israel modelled on the Egyptian-Israeli treaty of 1979 and the Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement of 1984. What is now at stake is Lebanon's capacity to recover its autonomous decision-making and to dissociate it from Iranian tutelage, much as it once managed to sever the unity of path with Syria under the successive reigns of Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad. Both had wielded the slogan of "unity of path and destiny" with Lebanon as a bargaining chip in their dealings with Washington, and as a tool for perpetuating the state of neither-war-nor-peace that has so long defined the Middle East. Will 2026 be the year in which the Cairo Agreement is finally buried? That accord, signed in 1969, lies at the very root of the Lebanese tragedy. It seems to have taken fifty-seven years of wars fought among Lebanese and wars fought by others on Lebanese soil for the country to rid itself, at long last, of that agreement and its lasting consequences. What remains established, at least for now, is that Lebanon is firmly resolved, under the stewardship of President of the Republic Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, to reject any Iranian attempt to negotiate on its behalf. Lebanon is indeed seeking, through their efforts, to achieve a provisional ceasefire along the lines of the agreement that the "Islamic Republic" has reached with the United States; yet it is equally unwilling to find itself absorbed into the American-Iranian negotiations, which seem destined to fail, all the more so if Tehran clings to demands that admit of no realistic satisfaction. Nothing compels Lebanon to go on paying the price for the ventures of an Iranian regime that has spared no effort to reduce it to one of its colonies. Tehran had even come, at a certain point, to regard Beirut as an Arab capital under its direct grip and as its window onto the Mediterranean, while South Lebanon had itself turned, in a similarly telling phase, into a mere post box between the "Islamic Republic" on the one hand and the Hebrew state on the other. The time has long come to put an end to a farce that has gone on far too long. The unity of path between Lebanon and Iran is merely the counterpart of what the unity of path between Lebanon and Syria once was. The "Islamic Republic" clings to Lebanon as though it were the last card remaining to it in the region, even as it retains its grip on Iraq and on a portion of Yemen, where the Houthis now find themselves in a deepening predicament, dependent as they are on a Gulf Arab state to pay the salaries of civil servants in the territories they still control, including Sanaa. Lebanon's move testifies to a remarkable political acumen, even if the first session of direct negotiations with Israel, expected shortly, will be largely ceremonial in character. It is worth noting that Israel's agreement to hold this session came twenty-four hours after the strikes it had carried out against various sites across Beirut, a way of asserting that it remains capable of intervening inside Lebanon and that it holds the reins of political decision in the country. Has Lebanon grasped the Israeli message, which means above all that the Hebrew state is determined to see through the destruction of Hezbollah to its conclusion, and that it contemplates no withdrawal from South Lebanon in the absence of a prior peace agreement? The fundamental question, however, refuses to go away, for if the "Islamic Republic's" negotiations with the American "Great Satan" are permissible, on what grounds would Lebanon's negotiations with the Israeli "Lesser Satan" be deemed forbidden? Lebanon has at last chosen to serve its own interests rather than those of Iran, in whose service Hezbollah had committed all its resources, faithfully obeying the orders and directives of the Revolutionary Guards. Lebanon now knows full well the party’s arsenal means the perpetuation of the occupation, its deepening and its entrenchment, and that this arsenal represents a source of weakness rather than of strength, in any form whatsoever. There is no doubt that Lebanon is waging a momentous battle, one whose stakes are no less severe than those of the struggle to emerge from Syrian tutelage in 2005, following the assassination of Rafic Hariri and his companions on the fourteenth of February of that year. What may help Lebanon in this battle is that the majority of Lebanese have now come to understand that arms mean the perpetuation of Israeli occupation, and that the only path to ending it lies in direct negotiations with Israel, negotiations that have become unavoidable. Is Lebanon worth less than Egypt or Jordan? Lebanon has no remaining option but direct negotiation, for which it must prepare by assembling a delegation as broadly representative as possible of the active political forces, including those that carry genuine Shia weight. The Shia community has interests entirely at odds with those of Iran and Hezbollah, since it stands to gain everything from an end to the Israeli occupation, from the return of displaced inhabitants to their devastated villages, and from the reconstruction of those villages, rather than seeing the displaced transformed into a time bomb at the national level, and most acutely within Beirut itself. What may finally help Lebanon advance decisively in its negotiations with Israel is Iran's loss of its Syrian card. Now that Syria has rid itself of the Alawite regime, it no longer serves as a pressure tool against official Lebanon or against the Lebanese people. This will undoubtedly help the country shake off Iranian domination, so that Lebanon may be Lebanon and Iran may be Iran, and so that the farce known as "unity of fronts" and the "axis of resistance" may at last come to its end.

Lebanon has now been left to its fate, in the absence of a unified position from the country’s senior officials — the President of the Republic, the President of Parliament, and the President of the Council of Ministers — both in the search for a way out and in the face of Israel’s determination to establish a buffer zone in the south. The Israeli threat, however, extends well beyond the creation of this buffer zone; it is becoming increasingly clear that the Hebrew state is bent on destroying Lebanese villages along what is considered the border between the two countries, lines that have never been officially demarcated. The need for a unified and courageous position is more urgent than ever, for the simple reason that the country’s fate and future hang by a thread ever since the Iranian Revolutionary Guards dragged it into a war of devastating character. How will Lebanon cope with the presence of more than one million displaced persons in the months ahead? The responsibility for this massive displacement — the overwhelming majority of whom are Shia — falls simultaneously on Iran and Hezbollah. These displaced persons are the direct consequence of the decision to engage in a new war against Israel, triggered by the six missiles that the Revolutionary Guards fired from southern Lebanon under the pretext of avenging the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. What is distressing is that the Islamic Republic, entirely dominated by the Revolutionary Guards, knows perfectly well what it wants from Lebanon and to what end it intends to use it, particularly since the Guards have taken complete control of Hezbollah. It appears willing to sacrifice all Lebanese, Shia included, in order to assert that it holds cards in the region and that it is capable of turning the conflict into a regional war — one capable of affecting the global economy. To put it plainly, the Iranian regime seeks to demonstrate that its investment in Hezbollah and its relentless efforts to reshape the nature of the Shia community in Lebanon were a sound investment, and that there are men in Lebanon willing to die in order to earn their rank as “soldiers” in the army of the wali al-faqih, in the words that the late Hassan Nasrallah was fond of using. The American administration knows perfectly well what is expected of Lebanon. From the perspective of the Donald Trump administration, determined to bring Iran to heel, Israel enjoys full freedom of action in Lebanon. Within Israel itself, an attempt had been made to entrust the Lebanese file to Ron Dermer, a man of genuine political acumen; but the file quickly returned to the hands of Defense Minister Israel Katz, who has little faith in diplomacy and believes there is no solution in Lebanon other than a military one — meaning the elimination of Hezbollah and its arsenal. The difficulty on the Israeli side lies in Benjamin Netanyahu’s need to keep Dermer in Washington, or in constant contact with the American capital, given that this man maintains a privileged relationship with the Trump administration, whose positions on the war with Iran shift from one day to the next. There is an American position and there is an Israeli position. Lebanon is Israel’s share of the equation. Yet one link is missing, and that link is the Lebanese position. What does Lebanon want? What are its priorities? Does it have any option other than entering into direct negotiations with Israel to determine what that state demands before allowing the displaced to return to their villages — or what remains of them? The displaced persons crisis is a time bomb that Lebanon has no choice but to confront, sooner or later. Doing so requires overcoming all of Lebanon’s mental blocks, including the one that holds that Israel harbours territorial ambitions over Lebanon. Had that been the case, Israel would not have refrained from going to war with the country in 1967, simply because Lebanon had refused to take part in the Six-Day War — a war that ended with Israel’s occupation of Sinai, the West Bank including Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Moreover, had Israel truly had designs on Lebanon, it would not have implemented, in May 2000, the provisions of United Nations Security Council Resolution 425. Israel ultimately executed that resolution, adopted in 1978, and withdrew from Lebanese territory, as certified by the Security Council itself. Lebanon has a duty to define its priorities and to engage in direct negotiations with Israel, free from any form of illusion. Such negotiations cannot begin as long as Hezbollah remains armed, since it has now been established that this arsenal served only to bring back the occupation, entrench it, and stoke internal strife in response to Iran’s will. In the circumstances Lebanon is currently living through, the situation on the ground no longer permits any distinction between peace and surrender. Where would the dishonour lie in surrender if it represents the only path to peace? Everything else is mere detail, a waste of time, and a permanent flight from truth and reality — when everyone knows perfectly well what Israel demands and when it is manifestly clear that no American position exists independently of the Israeli one. Lebanon’s tragedy comes down to a single question: how to recover the territory, and at what price. A price is unavoidable, one from which there is no escape, if only to prevent the explosion of the time bomb that the million displaced persons represent. In light of what Iran has inflicted upon Lebanon, surrender appears to be the true patriotism, and patriotism the true surrender. The time has come for Lebanon to state what it wants, now that it is known what Israel demands and that no American position can break free from the Israeli one. Surrender carries no shame. The shame lies in the absence of a unified Lebanese position to provide cover for direct negotiations — without which the occupation cannot be lifted, and the majority of the displaced cannot hope to return to their villages…

Whether the Iranian ambassador designated to Lebanon, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, stays or goes is beside the point. What matters is the symbolic weight carried by two distinct stances, that of the Lebanese Foreign Ministry, which declared the ambassador persona non grata, and that of the "Shia duo" in response. Beyond the national considerations that compel Lebanon to take a courageous stance toward a state that incessantly interferes in its internal affairs and treats it as a mere vassal colony, the official Lebanese position speaks to the depth of the change that has taken place in the country itself, in the region, and far beyond. A depth that still escapes Iranian thinking, and that of the Lebanese sectarian militia in its service known as Hezbollah. It should never be forgotten that Hezbollah remains nothing more than a brigade of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, whose members are for the most part Lebanese nationals. A disarmingly simple question imposes itself on the "Islamic Republic" as much as on Hezbollah, which ought to try to answer it. Here it is: had the upheaval brought about by the "Gaza support war" not occurred, would Iran have accepted, through Hezbollah, that Joseph Aoun become president of the Lebanese Republic? The facts supply the answer. The change wrought by the outcomes of that war, including the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and his designated successor Hashem Safieddine, allowed Joseph Aoun to reach the Baabda Palace. Without it, Hezbollah would have clung to its own candidate, as it had done following the end of President Michel Sleiman's term in 2014. The country was then forced to wait long months before everyone bowed to the will of Nasrallah and Iran, electing Michel Aoun president at the end of October 2016, with his son-in-law Gebran Bassil in tow. Nothing better measures the scale of the change Lebanon has undergone than the repositioning of the Foreign Ministry. Now led by Youssef Rajji, the ministry has ceased to function as an annex of its Iranian counterpart, as was the case when Gebran Bassil and other figures from the "Shia duo" held the portfolio. They were, in effect, representatives of the "Islamic Republic" within the Arab League. Bassil, Michel Aoun's son-in-law, made no secret of his refusal to show solidarity with Arab positions when he served as foreign minister. Arab ministers did not hesitate to describe him as the foreign minister of the "Islamic Republic", which was not itself a member of the Arab League. What remains most puzzling is the position taken by the Amal movement, chaired by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Does this not reveal that Berri finds himself unable to break free from Iran's orbit and all that it represents, despite everything Iran has inflicted on Lebanon and the Lebanese, including the Shia, the people of the South and the Beqaa? In the end, what the Lebanese state's decision to demand the departure of the new Iranian ambassador, who had previously served in Lebanon, has most clearly revealed is that the "Islamic Republic" succeeded in radically transforming the very nature of the Shia community. It achieved this through relentless efforts dating back to 1982, when the first contingents of Revolutionary Guards entered Lebanese territory under the pretext of defending the country against the Israeli invasion. One must return to that period when the Guards worked to entrench themselves in the Sheikh Abdallah barracks, a Lebanese army installation in Baalbek. Iran's first act in Lebanon was thus to undermine the army, the backbone of the state. It should also be recalled that the founding of Hezbollah was accompanied by the establishment of educational institutions designed to impose the Iranian curriculum in the party's schools (the Al-Mahdi and Al-Moustafa schools). Beyond that, an entire formation was imposed on Shia youth grounded in values foreign to Lebanon. The "Mahdi Scouts" bear eloquent witness to this, preparing Shia teenagers to serve in the ranks of a sectarian militia with no connection to the Lebanese state or Lebanese society. From this vantage point, the position of the "Shia duo" toward the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador becomes intelligible. This ambassador was accredited to the "duo" before being accredited to the Lebanese state, which means the "duo" possesses a state of its own, separate from the Lebanese state, one over which Iran and its interests exercise full control. Be that as it may, the position of the Lebanese Foreign Ministry, inseparable from that of Nawaf Salam's government, remains one more step along a long road that should lead to the day when the Lebanese state recovers its sovereign decision-making... provided Lebanon emerges unscathed from the "Iran support war" currently underway. The journey toward recovering a sovereign decision, free from Iranian tutelage, began with the election of Joseph Aoun to the presidency and the formation of Nawaf Salam's government. The expulsion of the Iranian ambassador represents yet another step along that road. The Iranian behaviors voiced through the "Shia duo" betray a refusal to acknowledge that before and after the "Gaza support war" stand as two entirely different realities, and that Iran's influence has receded considerably. Beirut has ceased to be that Iranian city on the Mediterranean, that Arab capital under Tehran's thumb. It has shed Iranian hegemony, all the more so now that Iran has left Syria with no prospect of return, and Syria is once again an Arab state no longer governed by the Revolutionary Guards. On Lebanese soil, the "Shia duo" wages a war lost before it began. Its fortunes there will be no better than in the "Gaza support war." Sooner or later, the "Islamic Republic" will have no choice but to capitulate. Control over Lebanon's decisions of war and peace will not spare it that fate. Nor will headlong aggression against the Arab Gulf states, nor keeping its ambassador in Lebanon as an envoy accredited to the "Shia duo" rather than to the Lebanese Republic...

Among the most priceless comments I have recently heard was one made by a mouthpiece of the so-called "Resistance" appearing on a Lebanese satellite channel, who claimed that "Hezbollah is defending its land" against Israel. It would be hard to find a more brazen distortion of reality — one perpetrated by a Sunni figure who has spent several years serving as a front for the party in exchange for regular remuneration. Not a single word uttered by this "Sunni Resistance" figure contains a grain of truth. He conflates the defense of a land — which is not Hezbollah's land — with the active consolidation of Israeli occupation. The truth is straightforward: the party reopened the southern Lebanon front, once again, on direct Iranian orders that have nothing whatsoever to do with the interests of Lebanon or its people. In Lebanon, the chapters of a farce are unfolding that will have to be brought to an end, sooner or later. It might have provoked laughter were it not for its transformation into a genuine human tragedy. Nothing captures the scale of that tragedy more starkly than the fact that the number of displaced persons — from villages in the South, the Bekaa, and the southern suburbs of Beirut — has exceeded one million in a country of approximately six million citizens. Two factors explain Hezbollah's decision to reopen the southern Lebanon front, under the pretext of avenging the assassination, by the United States and Israel, of Iranian "Supreme Leader" Ali Khamenei. The first is the party's total subjugation to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps: it was an IRGC officer who gave the order to fire the six rockets that marked the beginning of the renewed war. The second concerns the very nature of Hezbollah and its ideology, which is built on the exploitation of Israeli occupation. There is no Hezbollah without occupation, and no Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory without Hezbollah. When Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000, the party insisted the withdrawal was incomplete — even as the United Nations Security Council confirmed that Israel had implemented Resolution 425, adopted by the Council in 1978, to the letter, withdrawing to the "Blue Line," the ceasefire line between Lebanon and Israel, which is, with negligible differences, the border between the two countries. The party invented the issue of the Shebaa Farms and the Seven Hills in order to justify retaining its weapons. It became unmistakably clear, in the year 2000, that the existence of occupation was the very reason for the party's existence, and that this arsenal constituted the backbone of an organization whose sole ambition is to turn Lebanon into an Iranian colony, nothing more. Amid everything unfolding on Lebanese soil today, Hezbollah appears willing to set the country ablaze and reduce it to ashes in order to seize control of it. This explains its pursuit of a war that is lost before it begins, a war that will bring nothing to Lebanon but ruin — as the country spins in a closed circle, revolving upon itself. If the party — and Iran behind it — has achieved anything over nearly forty-five years, that achievement, negative in nature, consists in transforming the character of Lebanon's Shia community, in its majority at least. There remains in the country a Shia elite that resists the Iranian expansionist project in every Lebanese region — the southern suburbs, the South, the Beqaa. A Shia elite that understands what Lebanon represents and what it means to belong to it, rather than being a "soldier in the army of the wali al-faqih ," as Hassan Nasrallah used to say. In a moment of truth, Nasrallah acknowledged on camera, with his own voice, that Hezbollah was a creation of the "Islamic Republic"… Who will break the closed circle in which Lebanon is trapped? The positions adopted by President of the Republic Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam are undoubtedly of great importance. But more urgently than ever, what is needed is an internal Shia uprising that shatters this circle rather than continuing to revolve within it. The impetus for such an uprising cannot come from outside the "Shia duopoly," which has proven itself to have been nothing more than a cover for Hezbollah's weapons — that is, for the use of those weapons to pressure the Lebanese state and spread terror among the other communities: Sunnis, Christians, and Druze. Who will lead this internal Lebanese uprising? Where is the role of Nabih Berri, president of the Amal movement and Speaker of Parliament, who employs a wooden rhetoric entirely in service of the Iranian position on Lebanon? In the end, the Revolutionary Guards carried out in Lebanon what they had carried out in Iran itself: a coup d'état. They placed their hands fully on Hezbollah in order to bind Lebanon's fate to that of the "Islamic Republic" and the culture of death it proclaims. Lebanon has no alternative but to return to the language of reason and logic, rather than brandishing the slogan of "battlefield resolution by force of arms." The consequences of such a slogan are well known: it will bring a Nakba upon Lebanon, and upon the Shia community in particular. It is the duty of the Shia to save the Shia, rather than remaining captive to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards… or lending an ear to this or that "Resistance" figure, whether Shia or Sunni. These are hypocrites, in the manner of the Revolutionary Guards, who appear determined to commit suicide. There is no reason for Lebanon's Shia to follow them into that suicide — especially given that the Shia of Lebanon have a point of reference, which is the Lebanese state, or at least which ought to be…

The sheer number of rockets recently fired from Lebanese territory toward Israel speaks to several things at once. Chief among them is this: unlike the Lebanese authorities, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has not wasted a moment since the ceasefire agreement between Hezbollah and Israel was reached. That was on November 23, 2024, under the government of President Najib Mikati. President Nabih Berri had played a pivotal role in brokering the agreement, which reflected the Party’s urgent need, at that juncture, to halt the fighting at any cost. It has become abundantly clear that Israel exploited the ceasefire to assert its freedom to continue its campaign against Hezbollah, while the Revolutionary Guard used the same agreement to consolidate its presence in Lebanon and prepare for the coming phase of confrontation between Iran on one side and America and Israel on the other. Yes, the Revolutionary Guard did not waste its time. It resumed its activities in Lebanon through whatever remained of Hezbollah. The fruits of the Guard’s success in this endeavor became visible in the period following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, approximately two weeks ago. The consequence of that assassination was Lebanon’s total enlistment into the war Iran is waging against the United States and Israel. How did Lebanon enter this war? What responsibility does the Lebanese state bear for it? This is the overriding question of this moment, as we witness an Israeli expansion of occupation and an intensification of airstrikes, increasingly precise and targeted, across Lebanese territory — reaching now into the heart of Beirut itself. What is strangest of all is that Hezbollah, as an independent entity, no longer truly exists in Lebanon. Or rather: the Party exists whenever the needs of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard require it to. Those with insider knowledge of the Party relate that an officer of the Guard ordered Hezbollah fighters to launch rockets from Lebanese soil toward Israel. In doing so, the Iranian officer effectively declared the reopening of the South Lebanon front. All of this occurred against the will of the Lebanese state — including President of the Republic Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam — and against the wishes of the Lebanese majority. Naim Qassem was unaware of the specifics of what had happened. He learned of the rocket fire from television — much as Mojtaba Khamenei learned through the same medium that the Guard had selected him as Supreme Leader. Mojtaba used the occasion of his first speech since his appointment to announce that he had “heard of his appointment on television.” The irony is compounded by the fact that someone had to read the speech in his absence — the new Supreme Leader apparently being incapacitated by wounds he sustained… and perhaps by more than wounds alone. The meaning of everything that has unfolded, whether in Lebanon or in Iran itself, seems to be twofold: the Guard holds ultimate decision-making authority in both countries, and it has found no better front for itself in Lebanon than Hezbollah. There is no longer any doubt that the Party — which was never anything other than a brigade of the Revolutionary Guard with Lebanese personnel — has become a Lebanese sectarian militia operating under the command of Iranian officers. Between the ignorance of Lebanese officialdom, at every level, of what is being wrought on Lebanese soil and in the region — particularly regarding the deeper meaning of the transformation in Syria — and the latest developments embodied in the new Israeli military offensive, it is impossible to ignore that Lebanon is living through a moment of historical consequence. The problem is that official Lebanon failed to grasp that time was not working in its favor. Time has caught up with Lebanon. It is clear that the opportunities afforded since the agreement of November 23, 2024 will not come again. There is no awareness of the plain reality that Joseph Aoun could never have become President of the Republic without Hezbollah’s defeat in the “Gaza solidarity war.” Had the Party still been standing — had it and its former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah survived — it would have clung to its candidate Sleiman Frangieh, who was supposed to occupy the presidency. The Party had been insistent that its candidate hold the presidency, just as it had imposed Michel Aoun in October 2016, shepherding him and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil all the way to Baabda Palace. They were brought to the presidency so that the institution might serve Iran and its expansionist project — hostile to everything Arab in the region — nothing more. What has passed has passed. What can Lebanon do now that the Islamic Republic has managed, through the Revolutionary Guard, to reopen the South Lebanon front? Can the errors of the near past — a near past that is only a year and a few months old — be avoided? The answer is that there is no alternative to confronting the reality: the country has become, like Iran itself, subject to the authority of the Revolutionary Guard. How does one confront an authority that expresses, in a different but no less total form, Iran’s complete hegemony over Lebanon? A Lebanese response is needed. And no response of any substance will be possible without breaking through the wall of fear surrounding Hezbollah — a party that barely exists anymore, save as an instrument wholly controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. Once again: the Guard has not wasted its time since the autumn of 2024, when Lebanon concluded its ceasefire with Israel. It has reinforced its position in the country — a fact confirmed by the volume of rockets launched toward Israel. Lebanon will pay a steep price for those launches, and a steeper price still for having failed to understand that time was not on its side, that every word spoken about disarming Hezbollah is worthless without concrete action on the ground. Action was needed — regardless of the cost, and without fear of threats of civil war or similar specters that, when scrutinized, hold no purchase on reality.