You can see it on the faces of the Lebanese politicians: They are drooling over the millions they stand to skim off the profits of any gas production process that may follow the maritime border agreement between Lebanon and Israel.
Yet, they have to wait. It may take a couple of years before the Cana gas field reveals what it has underneath the ocean surface. It's a field that straddles the still poorly defined maritime border and which Israel agreed to cede entirely to Lebanon in exchange for some mysterious compensation that the Lebanese puppets of Hezbollah are hard pressed to hide. God forbid that Hezbollah be seen as paying Israel. Cana may have no gas. It may have gas which may be difficult or impossible to extract. But should it turn out to be a rich field, the more pressing challenge right now for the Lebanese people is not Israel, but how to prevent their corrupt political culture from ripping them off and pilfer the profits.
Then, there's the geopolitical side of the coin. Yes, Europe needs gas, be it Lebanese, Israeli or Egyptian. Yes, both Israel and Lebanon won't mind making money. But there's the shadow of Hezbollah and Benyamin Netanyahu looming over the festivities of the moment.
Hezbollah is the arm of Iran. It will do whatever Iran tells it to do, including scuttling the agreement. The Iranians (Shiite Muslims) have never hidden their goal: The destruction of Israel and the seizure of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina from the hands of the Saudis (Sunni Muslims). Whether the Iranian regime collapses as a result of the ongoing uprising of the Iranian people is still not a certainty. The regime is very powerful and can muster as much violence as it needs to bring the country back under its full control.
But assuming a continuity of the Islamic regime in Tehran, a small agreement between Lebanon and Israel over gas extraction does not mean the end of Hezbollah's perennial warmongering. Just as it invented the Shebaa Farms lie after Israel's withdrawal from the south in 2000 to maintain its assets and perpetuate its hyper-militarization strategy and unadulterated hostility to Israel, it will probably do the same thing here: A maritime agreement between Lebanon and Israel will not modify Hezbollah's modus operandi and won't make it depose its arms to the benefit of a stronger Lebanese state. Any signal from Tehran - Khamene'i to Hassan: please send a suicide drone over the Karish field platforms - and the happy gas extraction hour will quickly come to an end and raise the hostility level back to pre-agreement levels. It doesn't take much to sink the agreement, even though part of the agreement stipulates that Hezbollah will NOT threaten Israel's security. In other words, Iran and Hezbollah have agreed to protect Israel's northern gas fields. This is a repeat of Hezbollah's pledge to protect Israel's northern land border in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from the Lebanese south [See https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/05/hezbollah-israel-collusion-big-lie-of.html]
Meanwhile in Israel the radical Likudniks of Benyamin Netanyahu are already wailing their unhappiness at the agreement. Regardless of the merits of the agreement, they, of course, hate Democrat Joe Biden who mediated and sponsored the agreement and whom they cannot manipulate as they did with Donald Dumb Trump. Just like the radical fundamentalist Islamic Hezbollah, the radical Jewish fundamentalist Israeli far right does not like peace agreements because they set back its racist policies, warmongering, Palestinian land grabbing, and ultimate objective of erasing Palestine from the map. The Israeli fundamentalist terrorists also adulate Donald Dumb, not because he's smart and friendly but because he's the dumb American president who was easily manipulated into recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving his embassy there. Netanyahu may in fact, should he score a win in the November legislative elections, walk out of the Lebanon-Israel maritime border agreement, just like Donald Dumb did with the JCPOA nuclear agreement between Iran and the international community.
The US mid-term elections, also slated for this coming November, may also weaken Biden's hands domestically if the Republicans gain seats in the House and Senate. If the Democrats maintain or increase their share in the Congress, then a Biden-Netanyahu relationship is likely to be rocky.
In sum, all cards are up in the air pending the results of the upcoming presidential election in Lebanon (deadline: Oct. 31), and legislative elections in Israel and the US (first week of November). The Saudi turnabout in the OPEC+ decision to reduce oil production (and raise oil prices) has irked the Americans who see in it a stab in the back at the onset of a winter with gas shortages and high prices. The Saudi leader, Mohammad Bin Salman, evidently hates Joe Biden as well and will side with the Israeli far right against the maritime border agreement between Lebanon and Israel because it signals a strengthening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and a weakening of the American position vis-à-vis Iran.
As far as Lebanon is concerned, everything hinges on what happens in Iran over the next few weeks because the disintegration of Lebanon - now in its third year - is largely the doing of Hezbollah which has seized or undermined every institution in Lebanon, including even the Army which keeps a low profile and gives Hezbollah a lot of breathing room. The Lebanese Army and Hezbollah are the only two militarized entities in the country. In the contest between the US and Iran, the US backs the Lebanese Army, while Iran backs Hezbollah. If Lebanese Army Chief Joseph Aoun is elected as a "strong consensus president", as has become a norm in the cesspool of Lebanese political culture over the past decades to bring Army chiefs to the Lebanese presidency, then the odds of a military confrontation increase, especially if the maritime border agreement ends up failing for one reason or another. And there are many reasons why it might.
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