Donald Trump's "art of the deal" in Lebanon is geared to give Netanyahu a life-saving orgasm. It involves pointing two guns, one to each side of the head of the impotent Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun. Impotent because the Christian-by-custom president has been castrated by the 1989 Taif Agreement that the conservative dumb Texan president George Bush Sr. forced on Lebanon to appease the Sunni Muslim Prime Minister and kiss the oily ass of the Sunni Saudis. In Texas, the Bushes are Christians, but in Lebanon they're Sunni Muslims.
One gun says, "use the army and plunge the country into a civil war to disarm Hezbollah". The other gun says, "Let Israel bomb Lebanon an umpteenth time to dislodge and disarm Hezbollah." Lebanon is sick and tired of Hezbollah, but it doesn’t want a repeat of 1975 when the country tried to disarm the Palestinian guerillas while everyone on the planet calling the Lebanese monsters for beating up on the "poor Palestinian refugees". Never mind that foreign colonial Israel forcibly "transferred" hundreds of thousands of indigenous Palestinians as refugees into Lebanon and refuses to take them back.
In 1975, a war between the Lebanese and Yasser Arafat's PLO led to a breakdown of the army along sectarian lines, Syria's Assad, whom George Bush Sr. admired, was asked to quell the unruly Lebanese trying to salvage their country. That was GUN NUMBER 1. It led to a brutal 30-year occupation by the last Stalinist regime in Damascus which, truth be told, was the inaugural member of the US's list of state sponsors of terrorism. Bush, Clinton and others kept meeting Assad in Damascus and Geneva, praising him as "cunning" and "keeps his word". But Syria did not deliver the PLO. So, GUN NUMBER 2 was introduced: Israel invaded in 1978, in 1982 and so on and so forth without ever ridding Lebanon of the PLO or its heir Hezbollah.
So now that a test run was performed by the Israeli artists in which they decimated Hezbollah's capabilities, one wonders how much more should, or can, Hezbollah be quashed? Hezbollah's Iranian sponsor is debilitated, Syria's Assad, a long-time sponsor of Hezbollah, also crushed.... But the Donald Dumb "doctrine" (he is utterly incapable of one, but we'll grant him the benefit of the doubt) remains a mystery unless one invokes the land thieves south of the border. Zionists love land, they are addicted to augment their Nazi "lebensraum" and will steal whatever land is available around. They already took the Golan Heights from Syria, they are stealing Gaza and the West Bank, and I think they want south Lebanon too, a formidable land south of the Litani River known as the Upper Galilee. But they need a pretext, and the pretext is to defend themselves against an emasculated Hezbollah. Israelis have a knack at playing victims of the very people they have been brutalizing for a century.
If President Aoun adopts GUN NUMBER 1 and complies with Trump and attacks Hezbollah with his badly armed army, he is certain to plunge the country into a civil war. For decades, Israel pressured the US not to arm the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) on the pretext that should decent weapons be given to the LAF, those weapons will fall sooner or later into Hezbollah's hands, and this is the army that US is now cornering into fighting Hezbollah! As a result, GUN NUMBER 1 will inevitably misfire, Lebanon will again turn into a jungle like it did with the Palestinians in the 1970s, the army will splinter along sectarian lines, and the ensuing chaos will necessitate the involvement of the US-blessed Syrian army - now more favorable to Israel - i.e. another Syrian occupation by Al-Qaeda and ISIS types, which in turn will require the intervention of the poor victim of all this, the Zionist settler army. Ultimately, the Israelis will occupy and annex South Lebanon south of the Litani. Syria too might grab Lebanese territories it always claimed as its own.
If President Aoun resists the Donald Dumb temptation, GUN NUMBER 2 will set into action with a full-fledged war by Israel against Lebanon on the pretext of disarming Hezbollah. Devastation, destruction, deaths by the tens of thousands, and the outcome is the same: Israel will occupy and annex South Lebanon south of the Litani.
The question is why even give the Lebanese the option of committing suicide when the alternative also ensures their death by murder? The answer is that if President Aoun takes the civil war approach, Israel can claim deniability in the future by saying that it is these unruly Lebanese who are to blame for the war. Moreover, Israel does not have to spend treasure and life if the Lebanese do the job. They're taking the South anyway, why bother and work hard at it when the Lebanese can do it for them?
This in fact explains why Hezbollah remained armed and threatening for four decades since 1982 and no one tried then to muzzle it, even when it bombed the US Marines Headquarters in Beirut and killed 243 US servicemen and kidnapped dozens of American and western hostages etc. In 1982, the other Republican coward, Ronald Reagan, had his army on the ground in Beirut along with British, French and Italian contingents, the new government of Amin Gemayel was an ally of the US, Israel itself was on the ground, and none of these courageous armies could decimate one-year old poorly developed and armed Hezbollah? Had Reagan not fled Lebanon the morning after his marines were murdered, had he stayed and fought Syria - Iran's theocracy was still in its infancy, it posed no immediate threat - we would not be in the swamp we're in today. It wasn't even kicking the can down the road; it was a deliberate policy of mantaining useless Lebanon in a state of chronic instability to ensure the freedom to intervene at will.
The question every day on Lebanese news is what is President Aoun going to do? I grant that a small country like Lebanon cannot stand up in any serious way to the big players around it. And that attitude has been integrated into the Lebanese DNA. The Lebanese will not take any action unless they are told what to do. And so we wait.
Will President Aoun refuse Trump's ultimatum and unleash a new Israeli assault and invasion? I think that is the more likely scenario. President Aoun does not want to go down in history as the man who presided over a civil war in his country. He'd rather see the Israelis clean his toilets and pick up his garbage, especially since the alternative (GUN NUMBER 1) will invite Al-Qaeda's Syria into the country, with all the jeopardy to the country's Christian minority. In the 1970s, Assad was a secular dictator and he brutalized Lebanon. Imagine what Al-Qaeda's Al-Sharaa will do if Trump invites him into Lebanon to "pacify" the country.
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A weakened Iran and Hezbollah gives Lebanon an opening to chart path away from
the region’s conflicts − will it be enough?
Mireille Rebeiz, Dickinson College
Wed, July 9, 2025 at 11:11 PM GMT+3·7 min read
After a 12-day war launched by Israel and joined briefly by the United States,
Iran has emerged weakened and vulnerable. And that has massive implications for
another country in the region: Lebanon.
Hezbollah, Tehran’s main ally in Lebanon, had already lost a lot of its
fighters, arsenal and popular support during its own war with Israel in October
2024.
Now, Iran’s government has little capacity to continue to finance, support and
direct Hezbollah in Lebanon like it has done in the past. Compounding this
shift away from Hezbollah’s influence, the U.S. recently laid down terms for a
deal that would see the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon in
return for the total disarmament of the paramilitary group – a proposal
seemingly backed by the Lebanese government.
As an [naive] expert on Lebanese history and culture, I believe that these
changing regional dynamics give the Lebanese state an opening to chart a more
neutral orientation and extricate itself from neighboring conflicts that have
long exacerbated the divided and fragile country’s chronic problems.
The shaping of modern Lebanon
Ideologically, developments in Iran played a major role in shaping the
circumstances in which Hezbollah, the Shiite Islamist political party and
paramilitary group, was born.
The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 toppled the widely reviled and corrupt
Western-backed monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza and led to the establishment of
an Islamic republic. That revolution resonated among the young Shiite
population in Lebanon, where a politically sectarian system that was intended
to reflect a balanced representation of Muslims and Christians in the country
had led to de facto discrimination against underrepresented groups.
Since Lebanon’s independence from France in 1943, most of the power has been
concentrated in the hands of the Maronite Christians and Sunnis, leaving Shiite
regions in south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley lacking in development projects,
social services and infrastructure.
At the same time, Lebanon for decades had been irreparably changed by the
politics of its powerful neighbor in Israel.
In the course of founding its state in 1948, Israel forcibly removed over
750,000 Palestinians from their homeland – what Palestinians refer to as the
Nakba, or “catastrophe.” Many fled to Lebanon, largely in the country’s
impoverished south and Bekaa Valley, which became a center of Palestinian
resistance to Israel.
In 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon to push Palestinian fighters away from its
northern borders and put an end to rockets launched from south Lebanon. This
fighting included the massacre of many civilians and the displacement of many
Lebanese and Palestinians farther north.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon again with the stated purpose of eliminating
the Palestinian Liberation Organization that had moved its headquarters to the
country’s south [And from Amman, Jordan]. An estimated 17,000 to 19,000
Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and armed personnel were killed during the
conflict and the accompanying siege of Beirut.
It was in this cauldron of regional and domestic sectarianism and state
abandonment that Hezbollah formed as a paramilitary group in 1985, buoyed by
Shiite mobilization following the Iranian revolution and Israel’s invasion and
occupation.
Hezbollah’s domestic spoiler status
Over time and with the continuous support of Iran, Hezbollah become an
important player in the Middle East, intervening in the Syrian civil war to
support the Assad regime and supporting the Kataib Hezbollah, a dominant Iraqi
pro-Iranian militia.
In 2016, Secretary General of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah officially recognized
Iran’s role in funding their activities.
With Tehran’s support, Hezbollah was effectively able to operate as a state
within a state while using its political clout to veto the vast majority of
Lebanese parliamentary decisions it opposed. Amid that backdrop, Lebanon
endured three long presidential vacuums: from November 2007 to May 2008; from
May 2014 to October 2016; and finally from October 2022 to January 2024.
Lebanon also witnessed a series of political assassinations from 2005 to 2021
that targeted politicians, academics, journalists and other figures who
criticized Hezbollah.
How the equation has changed
It would be an understatement, then, to say that Hezbollah’s and Iran’s
weakened positions as a result of their respective conflicts with Israel since
late 2023 create major political ramifications for Lebanon.
The most recent vacuum at the presidential level ended amid Hezbollah’s
military losses against Israel, with Lebanon electing the former army commander
Joseph Aoun as president.
Meanwhile, despite the threat of violence, the Lebanese opposition to
Hezbollah, which consists of members of parliament and public figures, has
increased its criticism of Hezbollah, openly denouncing its leadership and
calling for Lebanon’s political neutrality.
These dissenting voices emerged cautiously during the Syrian civil war in 2011
and have grown after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the subsequent war on Gaza.
During the latest Israel-Iran war, the Lebanese opposition felt emboldened to
reiterate its call for neutrality. Enabled by the U.S’s growing tutelage over
Lebanon, some opposition figures have even called to normalize relations with
Israel.
These efforts to keep Lebanon out of the circle of violence are not negligible.
In the past, they would have been attacked by Hezbollah and its supporters for
what they would have considered high treason. Today, they represent new
movement for how leaders are conceiving of politics domestically and diplomacy
across the region.
The critical regional context going forward
As the political system cautiously changes, Hezbollah is facing unprecedented
financial challenges and is unable to meet its fighters’ needs, including the
promise to rebuild their destroyed homes. And with its own serious internal
challenges, Iran now has much less ability to meaningfully support Hezbollah
from abroad.
But none of that means that Hezbollah is defeated as a political and military
force, particularly as ongoing skirmishes with Israel give the group an
external pretext.
The Hezbollah-Israel war ended with a ceasefire brokered by the United States
and France on Nov. 27, 2024. However, Israel has been attacking south Lebanon
on an almost daily basis, including three incidents over the course of 10 days
from late June to early July that have left several people dead and more than a
dozen wounded.
Amid these violations, Hezbollah continues to refuse to disarm and still casts
itself as the only defender of Lebanon’s territorial integrity, again
undermining the power of the Lebanese army and state.
Lebanon’s other neighbor, Syria, will also be critical. The fall of the Assad
regime in December 2024 diminished Hezbollah’s powers in the region and land
access to Iraq and Iran. And the new Syrian leadership is not interested in
supporting the Iranian Shiite ideology in the region but rather in empowering
the Sunni community, one that was oppressed under the Assad dictatorship.
While it’s too early to say, border tensions might translate into sectarian
violence in Lebanon or even potential land loss. Yet the new Syrian government
also has a different approach toward its neighbors than its predecessor. After
decades of hostility, Syria seems to be opting for diplomacy with Israel rather
than war. It is unclear what these negotiations will entail and how they will
impact Lebanon and Hezbollah. However, there are real concerns about new
borders in the region.
The U.S. as ever will play a major role in next steps in Lebanon and the
region. The U.S. has been pressing Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah, and the U.S
Ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack said he was
“unbelievably satisfied” by Lebanon’s response thus far. But so far, there has
been no fundamental shift on that front.
Meanwhile, despite the calls for neutrality and the U.S pressure on Lebanon, it
is hard to envision a new and neutral Lebanon without some serious changes in
the region. Any future course for Lebanon will still first require progress
toward peace in Gaza and ensuring Iran commits not to use Hezbollah as a proxy
in the future.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent
news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make
sense of our complex world. It was written by: Mireille Rebeiz, Dickinson
College
Mireille Rebeiz is affiliated with American Red Cross.
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