The two Shiite Muslim parties in Lebanon, Iran-backed Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, are mobilizing their troops against the Lebanese government (represented by Maronite Christian President Joseph Aoun and Sunni Muslim Prime Minister Nawaf Salam) for its signing of the Trilateral Framework agreement with the US and Israel.
One wonders how far this mobilization is willing to go. Will it be just statements of condemnation and denunciation? Or will it go as far as turning its weapons against the State and its legitimate Lebanese Army?
Hezbollah and Amal Movement mouthpieces are foaming at the mouth, attacking Aoun and Salam as traitors who have agreed to sell Lebanon to the US and Israel. Any move by anyone to extricate Lebanon from the six-decades-old spiral of violence is treated as a traitor, when all other Arab countries - including US-friendly Syria where large swaths of its territory are still occupied by Israel - have decided to no longer officially display hostility to the Jewish colony in Palestine.
Of all 21-some Arab countries, only the smallest and weakest of them is tasked with "liberating Palestine", precisely because Lebanon is home to the only free Christian community in all these Arab countries. Being Christian in the minds of Fascist Islamists and Muslims - both Iran's Shiite clients, and Saudi Arabia's Sunni clients who are America's lackeys - is the next worse thing than being Jewish. Therefore, Lebanon is an expendable and disposable commodity in the chess game of creating a new Middle East that is unfolding in the region.
I have always said in reply to those who defend Hezbollah's "resistance" rape of the Lebanese State that Hezbollah will NEVER voluntarily depose its weapons and become a strictly political entity as long as the Islamic Republic of Iran is still standing. Back in the early 1990s, there were Jewish American leftwingers like Rachelle Marshall (writing for the Washington Report of Middle Eastern Affairs) defending Hezbollah's "resistance" against the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon and declaring unabashedly that Hezbollah will depose its weapons once Israel withdraws from the southern strip along the border. Israel withdrew in 2000, but Hezbollah did not give up its weapons. Rather, it continued to give Israel every pretext it needed to continue bombing and tormenting Lebanon.
Hezbollah dragged the country into a war with Israel in 1996 (Operation Grapes of Wrath), then again in the July 2006 34-day war. In 2008, Hezbollah deployed its "Black Shirts" militia in the streets of the country and threatened to take over the government. Between 2011 and 2024, Hezbollah put aside its "Palestine liberation" bullshit to fight in Syria in defense of the Assad regime. More recently, Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into another war with Israel in support of Hamas in Gaza following the October 7, 2023 attacks. And now, Hezbollah dragged the country into yet another war with Israel in support of the ongoing Iran-Israel-US confrontation.
Every time Hezbollah waded into a war with Israel, it ended up losing more territory than it claimed to be liberating, and I still believe that Hezbollah will NEVER surrender its weapons and cease its "resistance" pretext. Which is why the joint Israeli-Lebanese-American "tripartite framework agreement" is a waste of time because Hezbollah is not a party to the negotiations. In fact, Hezbollah refuses ANY negotiation with Israel because it believes that merely talking to the Israelis is tantamount to a recognition of the Zionist state.
At this very moment, tensions are rising sharply inside Lebanon, at least on the airwaves and in official statements. Having signed the Framework Agreement, the Lebanese government must now implement clauses pertaining to it, notably deploying Lebanese Army units to areas from which its regular troops have been denied access by non-state terrorist organizations, including the Palestinian PLO (1969-1982) and Hezbollah (1982-present time).
Moreover, the absence of regular government troops will soon be compounded by the departure of the UN's Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) that has been in the area since 1978 without ever really solving any of the problems for which it was deployed in the first place. UNIFIL is slated to begin its orderly and safe withdrawal from Lebanon in December 2026, with the mission expected to fully disband and exit the country by 2027. The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2790 on August 28, 2025, extending the UNIFIL’s mandate for the final time until December 31, 2026, when it is granted an additional one-year drawdown period (through December 2027), during which the force will transfer security responsibilities in southern Lebanon to the Lebanese Army.
Which brings us to what we and others have been saying: The Lebanese are being pressured to launch their own "civil" war to disarm Hezbollah, which the Lebanese government of Aoun and Salam are reluctant to do for a number of reasons, including a poorly equipped Lebanese army (the US and Israel historically arguing against it in a self-fulfilling prophecy for fear of weapons falling into Hezbollah's hands) and a fear of a repeat of the 1975 War in which the Lebanese fought against Yasser Arafat's PLO attempted takeover of the country as a substitute for Palestine.
Back in 1975, it was the Sunni Muslims of Lebanon who led the insurrection against their own state in defense of the Palestinian guerillas (also Sunni Muslims), a war that led to the fracture of the Lebanese Army into sectarian units. Now with a Sunni Arab World less hostile to Israel, it is the turn of the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslims, namely Hezbollah, to lead the insurrection against the State. And again, any attempt by the Lebanese Army to confront Hezbollah will inevitably lead to another fracture of the Army: All Hezbollah has to do is call on the Shiite Muslim soldiers to abandon their units and join its ranks. Loyalty and identity in Lebanon are more to one's sect than to one's country.
As long as Iran is able to withstand the American-Israeli assault, Hezbollah will not flinch in Lebanon. So, per traditional American backstabbing foreign policy, the Americans, who are in a terrible bind at what to do, are beginning to think, again, of handing over the Lebanon headache to Syria.
If official Lebanon is reluctant to "clean up" Hezbollah, and
Which brings us to what we and others have been saying: The Lebanese are being pressured to launch their own "civil" war to disarm Hezbollah, which the Lebanese government of Aoun and Salam are reluctant to do for a number of reasons, including a poorly equipped Lebanese army (the US and Israel historically arguing against it in a self-fulfilling prophecy for fear of weapons falling into Hezbollah's hands) and a fear of a repeat of the 1975 War in which the Lebanese fought against Yasser Arafat's PLO attempted takeover of the country as a substitute for Palestine.
Back in 1975, it was the Sunni Muslims of Lebanon who led the insurrection against their own state in defense of the Palestinian guerillas (also Sunni Muslims), a war that led to the fracture of the Lebanese Army into sectarian units. Now with a Sunni Arab World less hostile to Israel, it is the turn of the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslims, namely Hezbollah, to lead the insurrection against the State. And again, any attempt by the Lebanese Army to confront Hezbollah will inevitably lead to another fracture of the Army: All Hezbollah has to do is call on the Shiite Muslim soldiers to abandon their units and join its ranks. Loyalty and identity in Lebanon are more to one's sect than to one's country.
As long as Iran is able to withstand the American-Israeli assault, Hezbollah will not flinch in Lebanon. So, per traditional American backstabbing foreign policy, the Americans, who are in a terrible bind at what to do, are beginning to think, again, of handing over the Lebanon headache to Syria.
If official Lebanon is reluctant to "clean up" Hezbollah, and
if Israel is terrified of yet another land invasion of Lebanon, and
if Hezbollah is backed into an existential corner, its supply routes have been severely diminished with the mutation of Syria from a pro-Iran to an anti-Iran regime,
one avenue would be to subcontract the task to the Syrians next door. In 1975, the Syrian troops of the Shiite-leaning Assad regime were dispatched into Lebanon to quell the Sunni Muslim Palestinians. Now the Syrian regime is Sunni, and Hezbollah is Shiite: A perfect recipe for the Americans to send in the Syrian troops of Al-Sharaa who have no lost love for Hezbollah that fought against them during the Syrian civil war (2011-2024).
Donald Dumb's chaotic mind spilled the beans - he must hear his advisors discuss these issues in his presence, and he brainlessly latches on to what he hears and later disgorges it in his posts. He suggested a week ago that it might be a good idea to subcontract the Lebanon stalemate to Syria, which means another US-sponsored Syrian invasion and occupation of Lebanon which would, in theory, finish off Hezbollah in what could turn out to be a horrific and more bloody war than that of 1975.
As an example of the tenor of Hezbollah's discourse in reaction to the signing of the Framework Agreement, Hezbollah MP Mohammad Raad said, "The joint US-Lebanon-Israel statement represents a surrender of the Lebanese State to American domination and its collusion with the Zionist enemy against its own people who are attached to their land."
The chameleon Shiite dinosaur Nabih Berri, leader of Hezbollah's twin sister, the Amal Movement, and who has been speaker of the Lebanese parliament for some 40 years (because of Lebanon's fake "consensual" democracy) has not yet criticized the signing of the Lebanon-Israel-US Agreement; Any criticism by him would represent a major vertical split within the Lebanese government because he represents the Shiite community in the State's hierarchy. His response will determine the course of events.
No comments:
Post a Comment