Over the past two months, Israeli rhetoric regarding Ali Taher has mounted to the point where the fate of the entire Israeli invasion of Lebanon is being portrayed as hinging on taking that single hill.

Seizing Ali Taher would offer Israel some strategic advantages, but its true value – and the reason why Netanyahu-affiliated media is hyping it up so much – is political.

What’s in a hill?

Ali Taher is a 600m high hill in South-Eastern Lebanon, located north of the Litani river and outside Israel’s yellow line in Lebanon. It overlooks the city of Nabatiyeh, one of the largest urban centers of South Lebanon to the West, and the Israeli settlement of Metula to the East.

During the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Ali Taher was occupied by Israeli forces, along with the neighboring Beaufort Castle.

Strategically, the hill offers a direct line of fire over Nabatiyeh. Ali Taher’s occupation would put the city under de facto occupation, as cheap artillery mounted on the hill would be enough to target any movement in Nabatiyeh.

On the other hand, the hill also offers access to northern Israeli settlements. Drones launched from an altitude have a longer range, and when launched from Ali Taher, they can easily reach the Galilee Panhandle, the occupied Israeli territory punching into Lebanon.

The underground base

More important than the hill itself is the underground facility Hezbollah has built, which is said to be one of Hezbollah’s larger military sites and houses ballistic missiles.

Before Hezbollah integrated FPV drone warfare, Israel’s sole security concern was its remaining ballistic missiles, which it either did not know about during its infiltration of Hezbollah prior to 2024, or knew of but could not destroy by air during the 2024 war.

Since Hezbollah relinquished control of its infrastructure south of the Litani to the Lebanese army following the 2024 ceasefire, much of its remaining ballistic missile arsenal is said to be located in the south, north of the Litani River, and in the Bekaa.

However, and much to Israel’s dismay, getting to them will require ground forces. That is why, when the war resumed in 2026, Israel attempted two landing operations in the Bekaa, which ended disastrously. Israel claimed it was looking for the remains of Ron Arad, the Israeli pilot kidnapped in 1986. In reality, it was testing Hezbollah’s defenses to assess the feasibility of airborne operations that would move ground troops into the Bekaa to seize key facilities housing ballistic missiles.

The failure of these operations led Israel to contemplate having Syrian forces or the Lebanese army do the dirty work. Neither of these options materialized.

Effectively, Ali Taher is the only underground facility in Israel’s reach today. Taking it would politically unlock more strategic options, but that is far easier said than done.

The political allure

The Israeli capture of Ali Taher serves two political goals:

1. Getting Netanyahu reelected.

2. Unlocking new strategic options in Lebanon.

Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon has stalled and has not succeeded in achieving a strategic victory. Israeli forces are broadcasting their destruction of towns and villages, but that does not alter the balance of power, as Hezbollah has demonstrated; it can vacate the south of the Litani entirely and still put up a good fight.

While the Israeli public is entertained by displays of ethnic cleansing, after feasting on Gaza, it is no longer satisfied.

To that effect, Netanyahu-affiliated media has been hyping up the importance of Ali Taher, claiming that seizing it or failing to do so will either make or break the entire operation in Lebanon.

South Lebanon will not fall because of the capture of one hill. This hype is electoral. If Netanyahu could not deliver the destruction of Hezbollah, he will settle for the destruction of one over-hyped underground base. And he is desperate for a win before the elections.

That is not to say that Ali Taher is completely irrelevant. Capturing it does open up new political avenues for Israel in Lebanon.

First, capturing Ali Taher would be the first Israeli territorial encroachment beyond the yellow line. This would set a precedent that can be replicated ad infinitum to occupy even more land under the guise of seizing one military base after another.

Second, it would unshackle Israel from the limited constraints the US has placed on its operation in Lebanon. The US is keen on safeguarding the political viability of its local assets in Lebanon, as it considers a political process the key to containing and disarming Hezbollah. It is also very, very keen not to restart kinetic warfare with Iran before the US midterm elections. For that to work, it had to deliver some limited concessions, such as no further Israeli land encroachments and no bombing of Beirut. A heavily mediatized entry into the Ali Taher base that documents the presence of ballistic missiles would pressure the US administration to free Israel from these constraints to deal with this “very real and very imminent” danger.

Easier said than done

Capturing Ali Taher will be no easy feat. Israeli forces have launched many attempts to capture the hill for more than a month now, suffering many casualties in the process.

As a result, it has shifted its strategy to besieging the hill to starve out Hezbollah forces and to employ air and ground drones to monitor the area and attempt to breach the facility.

Hezbollah has also improvised its own tactics. It has led successful covert ground operations to breach the siege and deliver food, water, and fuel, and has even used drones to deliver essential goods to the base.

Israeli forces are currently in a strategic standstill and in a rush to capture the hill before the October elections. At this stage, only a few options are left:

• Overwhelming the base with Israeli ground forces and risking many casualties, which could backfire domestically.

• Calling on US help to drop a 15-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb using a B-2 stealth bomber, which would surely solicit an Iranian reaction as it would signify that the US has actively entered the war against Hezbollah.

• Launching swarming strikes, the Israeli tactic of dropping multiple bunker-buster bombs onto the exact same point in rapid succession used in the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah and his successor Hashem Safieddine. It is unclear how effective this tactic would be considering Lebanon’s geology. The surface layer of the ground is made of brittle limestone that shatters and dissipates the blast at the surface, preventing it from reaching the deeper and sturdier granite layer.

It is also no question that Hezbollah will fight tooth and nail to keep the hill from falling into Israeli hands. Indeed, it would do so to any Israeli ground attempt to occupy territory beyond the yellow line in order to preserve the current rules of engagement before a broader resolution of the conflict between the US and Iran can be achieved one way or the other.

Like many countries in the region, Lebanon has had a long and complicated history with Salafi militancy, ranging from car bombs to armed uprisings and occupation of territory.

I deliberately steer away from calling it terrorism because this term is now associated with anyone who does not serve Western interests. Indeed, many Salafi militants who employed terror as a means to a political end can fall in and out of Western terror lists at will. We may find many such examples among the new Syrian authorities.

It is because of this new Salafi regime in Syria that Lebanese officials – ever so concerned with catering to all foreign powers, whoever they may be – have rushed to pass another general amnesty law to free or commute the sentences of Salafi militants who sought to destabilize Lebanon during the Syrian civil war, and distract Hezbollah from fighting their sister organizations in Syria.

Like all states in the Levant, Lebanon is multireligious, multicultural, and multiethnic. This makes it particularly vulnerable to Salafi ideology, which rejects this diversity (Takfirism) and seeks to impose political and cultural practices that have long been considered fringe and frowned upon in Islam. That is, until the early 20th century, when the British supported a tribe in the Arab Peninsula to establish their eponymous country, Saudi Arabia. The Saud clan sought religious justification for their territorial expansion, which was granted to them by Islamic scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab (the founder of Salafism or Wahabism).

One might think that Lebanon’s diversity, which it has intricately codified in every aspect of its political system, would set it dead against Salafism. And yet, the nature of its regime, which forces it to mirror every change in the foreign balance of power, is enabling the contradiction of fueling and weaponizing Salafism in Lebanon.

In this article, I will first present a brief overview of the major uprisings that have threatened modern-day Lebanon, before attending to the converging internal and external circumstances that led to this renewed dalliance with Salafism.

The Syrian mandate era

The first Salafi uprising in post-war Lebanon occurred on New Year’s Eve in 1999. A Lebanese Army patrol was ambushed in Dinniyeh (east of Tripoli) by a group that sought to establish an Islamic State in northern Lebanon. The group was led by a veteran of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan.

Many equally brutal incidents rocked the country, such as the assassination of four judges in a Sidon courtroom (1999), an attack on the Russian Embassy during the Second Chechen War (2000), and a foiled plot to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies for their participation in the US-led coalition against Iraq (2004).

Throughout the pre-2005 period, the Lebanese regime kept an awkward balancing act. The Lebanese Army fought and was targeted by Salafi militants, whereas the Internal Security Forces, largely influenced by the Saudi-backed PM Rafik Hariri, maintained a close relationship with them. Whereas Syrian forces, which were occupying Lebanon, actively fought and suppressed Salafi political representation, recognizing them first and foremost as a threat to the Syrian regime.

The post-2005 era

With the assassination of PM Rafik Hariri and the withdrawal of Syrian forces, this balancing act crumbled into a free-for-all enabled by the internal Lebanese competition to fill the political vacuum left by Syria. Salafi militants aligned themselves with the anti-resistance, anti-Syria political camp, which publicly distanced itself from them.

In 2007, the first major war would erupt when Fatah Al-Islam would slaughter 27 Lebanese soldier in their sleep in retaliation for raiding one of their apartments used in a series of bank robberies. Led by Shaker Al-Absi, the group would take refuge in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, where the 1969 Cairo Agreement prevented the army from entering. This exempt status was dropped, and the army besieged and indiscriminately bombed the camp for 105 days. In its aftermath, 220 Salafi militants and 168 Lebanese soldiers were killed, and 28,000 civilians were displaced. As for Shaker Al-Absi, he was smuggled out into Syria, allegedly using the car of MP Bahia Hariri (sister of the deceased PM Hariri). A year later, he was captured and killed by Syrian intelligence services.

The Nahr al-Bared war marked a turning point, setting the Lebanese Army forever against Salafi militants. It also revived the civil war-era security concerns over leaving Palestinian refugee camps outside the purview of state security.

However, little to no attention was paid to the disenfranchisement of Palestinian refugees and Lebanese citizens who were kept in extreme poverty and herded into underdeveloped areas to be ignored. The simplistic equation of Palestinian camps, Tripoli, and Akkar as bastions of Salafism, independent of state policy towards these regions, survives to this day and may be acting as a self-fulfilling prophecy that promotes Salafi uprisings.

The Syrian civil war era

Syria’s fearful eye on Salafi activity in Lebanon was lifted as thousands of local and foreign Salafi fighters flooded into Syria. Lebanon was plunged into outright war, in all but name, against Salafi militants that formed, merged, and disbanded hundreds of groups.

A popular claim at the time is that the cascade of Salafi attacks in Lebanon would not have happened were it not for Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria to support Assad. Such juvenile claims disregard the well-established international relations observation that violence is rarely ever contained by borders and has a tendency to spill over into neighboring countries.

The fact that the Lebanese Army was the target of Salafi violence, and would be repeatedly throughout the Syrian civil war, indicates that Salafi hostility in Lebanon was not exclusively a response to Hezbollah’s intervention.

Moreover, had Hezbollah never existed, it would have been the Lebanese Army’s responsibility to actively intervene in the Syrian war to secure its interests just as every neighboring, regional, and Western country had done. As John Mearsheimer puts it:

“If a state gets into trouble in the international system, it can’t dial 911 because there’s nobody to come to its rescue.”

What is also purposefully overlooked is the scale of involvement of the Lebanese anti-resistance camp in funding, arming, and trafficking Salafi militants from Lebanon to Syria. The most notable example is Okab Sakr, an MP who served from 2009-2018. He was directly involved in moving weapons and fighters in his diplomatic car to Syria. His macro financing and political cover were provided by PM Saad Hariri. Audio recordings of his involvement were leaked, and he admitted their veracity. Following the leaks, he fled to Turkey, where he would remain from 2011-2016 and would not attend a single parliamentary session. Other notable Lebanese MPs and ministers were Mouin al-Merhebi, Jamal Jarrah, Misbah al-Ahdab, and Hadi Hobeich, who used their border strongholds and political networks to funnel funds, communication gear, and weapons to Salafi groups in Syria.

Between 2012 and 2014, dozens of skirmishes erupted between Salafi armed factions and Alawite militias in Tripoli, severely damaging the neighborhoods where the fighting took place and displacing residents.

In the South, in August 2012, Ahmad al-Assir would make his debut with a protest in Sidon, saying:

“We have a blood score to settle with Hezbollah that can only be settled with blood.”

This marked the beginning of the meteoric rise of the Salafi sheikh. He benefited from disproportionate media coverage, a clear sign of foreign backing in Lebanon’s pay-to-play media landscape.

As the year passed, al-Assir dominated the news, calling almost daily for a Sunni jihad against the Shia of Lebanon. By the summer of 2013, tensions were running high, particularly in the city of Sidon, in which both al-Assir and Hezbollah held influence. After stones were thrown at his brother’s car by locals, al-Assir attacked a military post in Abra, killing 10 soldiers and wounding 35. This marked the beginning of his endgame. Salafi militants in the Ain al-Helwe Palestinian refugee camp attacked soldiers positioned outside the camp. Al-Assir took refuge in a mosque, and a battle erupted between his loyalists and the army. More than 100 soldiers were wounded, and 16 were killed as they stormed the complex.

Al-Assir fled and went into hiding for two years in the Ain al-Helwe Palestinian refugee camp. He undertook extensive plastic surgery to change his facial features but was still recognized and captured as he tried to escape at the Beirut airport in 2015.

The Al-Assir episode was not random. Sidon is one of Hezbollah’s principal logistics hubs in which equipment and fighters transit between Beirut and the rest of south Lebanon. Seizing the city from within would have been a major blow to the resistance, a feat Israel could only dream of. Moreover, an Al-Assir victory in Abra would have marked the establishment of Jabhat al-Nusra (later rebranded into Jolani’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham [HTS]) in Lebanon.

The failure of Salafi militants to establish a home base in Lebanon drove them to adopt more covert and deadlier tactics. Between July and December 2013, they would launch 5 bomb attacks in the southern suburb of Beirut. On July 9, a car bomb exploded in Bir al-Abed, injuring 53 people; on August 15, another car bomb in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed 22 people and injured more than 200; on November 19, two suicide bombers targeted the Iranian embassy in Jinah, killing 22 people and injuring 140; and on December 16, two suicide bombers attacked a Lebanese Army checkpoint in Sidon. The use of suicide attackers of Lebanese nationality would send shockwaves across Lebanon.

The quest for a Salafi home base would revive in 2014 in a multi-pronged assault on Lebanon.

The occupation of border areas

By December 2011, concerns were mounting over the presence of Salafi militants coming from Syria in the Lebanese border town of Arsal. The matter was treated dismissively as a Hezbollah conspiracy theory, leading the Minister of Interior, Marwan Charbel, to declare at the time that “We did not find Al-Qaeda in Arsal.”

That statement did not age well, to say the least.

Only 2 years later, in August of 2014, hundreds of ISIS and Al-Nusra fighters flooded into Arsal from Syria, capturing the border area. In a brutal show of violence, they beheaded 20 soldiers – one militant even carved a soldier’s heart out – kidnapped 22 others and 8 internal security forces policemen, killed the mayor, and dragged his lifeless body behind a car around the town.

The Lebanese army responded immediately to prevent the takeover of the town. Around 20 soldiers and 150 militants were killed. The fight ended in a stalemate with the Salafi forces withdrawing into the highlands of the town that stretched across the border area of Syria and Lebanon.

Two months later, Salafi insurgents would attempt to seize Tripoli after the army captured Ahmad Mikati, who was behind a large-scale plot to capture the surrounding areas of Tripoli, declare an Islamic principality, and link it to the occupied border areas under ISIS and Al-Nusra. Mikati’s son was a known ISIS executioner, and his nephew was documented beheading a Lebanese soldier in Arsal. Fighting broke out in the city, leaving 11 soldiers and 30 militants dead, and more than 100 civilians injured.

In 2015, Salafi militants’ hold over the border area allowed them to smuggle explosives freely into Lebanon. In November, they launched a triple-tap suicide attack in a shopping street of the southern suburb of Beirut, killing 43 people and injuring over 239 others. The second suicide bomber was tackled by a civilian, Adel Termos, who was accompanying his daughter. The bomber detonated his vest during the struggle, but Termos’ actions saved many lives. The third bomber was killed before he could detonate himself. The security crackdown that followed uncovered a plot to orchestrate a vast bombing campaign across Beirut.

Through Qatari mediation, 16 of the kidnapped soldiers were exchanged for 13 Salafi prisoners held in Lebanon. The remaining soldiers were killed, 9 of them while being held, 1 died of his wounds, and 4 others were killed during negotiations to pressure the Lebanese government.

The occupation of the border area by Salafi militants remained unchallenged until 2017. By then, Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria had turned the tide against the Salafi groups and liberated much of the surroundings of the border area, leaving it isolated.

In August 2017, Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army on one side, and the Syrian Army on the other, launched a joint assault on the 120 Km² border area in an operation called Fajr al-Jouroud (Dawn of the Highlands). It is no mystery that Hezbollah did most of the heavy lifting, having better equipment and far more experience fighting Salafi militants in the vast open landscapes of Syria. But the presence of the Army was essential to avoid portraying the operation as a Shia vs. Sunni war.

When the remaining 250 Salafi militants were cornered in a tiny pocket area, political pressures started to mount on the Army and Hezbollah to stop the assault. Fearing that a bloody last stand would inspire more Salafi attacks in Lebanon, a deal was reached with the Syrian government to move the fighters to Deir-Ezzor in Syria in exchange for the location of the remains of the 9 Lebanese soldiers they had killed in captivity.

This marked the end of a terrible and bloody episode in Lebanon that spanned more than 18 years.

Political fallout

The end of the Salafi reign of terror over Lebanon did not come without its domestic political repercussions. Through its sponsorship of these groups, Saudi Arabia was hoping to embroil Hezbollah in a Sunni vs. Shia all-out war and topple Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

One thing Saudi Arabia did not expect was that its political proxy, PM Saad Hariri, would refuse to foment sectarian violence and distance himself from the groups that launched suicide attacks, beheaded soldiers, and murdered civilians. Hariri was indeed under a lot of pressure to condemn Hezbollah, call off the Army, and openly foment a Sunni uprising.

The Saudis would not forgive Hariri for his refusal to start a civil war. In November 2017, he was summoned to Riyadh by MBS. He was beaten and placed under house arrest. He later announced his resignation from a Saudi TV channel, citing Hezbollah and Iranian security threats to his person.

The Lebanese Presidency under Michel Aoun would not have it. It mounted a diplomatic campaign announcing to the world that Hariri had been kidnapped and asked France to intercede on his behalf.

In a cynical skit, current reformist MP Paula Yaacoubian, who was a journalist at the time, was asked by the Saudis to interview PM Saad Hariri and convince the world that he was not kidnapped. A terrified Hariri could be seen in an hour-long interview looking sideways at his handler before answering any question, constantly on the verge of tears, and a jovial Yaacoubian would repeat enthusiastically that he was, in fact, a free man.

France eventually succeeded in extricating Hariri from Saudi Arabia. This marked the end of direct Saudi involvement in Lebanese affairs until 2025, following Hezbollah’s 2024 defeat, the fall of Assad in Syria, and the designation of PM Nawaf Salam.

The revival of the dalliance

Since the assassination of PM Rafik Hariri, Sunni representation in Lebanon’s sectarian regime has been in shambles, with many contenders to the crown ranging from the Salafi fanatic to the billionaire businessman, and the secular politician. Yet none would succeed.

The many attempts to establish Islamic emirates in Lebanon all failed mainly because of Lebanon’s codified pluralism and the fresh memory of the Civil War. Supporting any faction that seeks to eliminate others is bad politics in Lebanon’s precarious sectarian balancing act.

That is why even the politicians who supported and financed Salafi groups in Lebanon and Syria could not openly support them, particularly when they killed soldiers and massacred civilians.

However, this precarious domestic balance, which is based on foreign sponsorship, must also mirror the foreign balance of power.

As soon as Mohamad Jolani, the HTS leader, seized the reins of power in Syria, talk of freeing Salafi prisoners in Lebanon, particularly Ahmad al-Assir, started to make the rounds. A delegation from Tripoli also went to Damascus to request their annexation to the new Islamic state in Syria. And border clashes between Salafi groups (the new Syrian army) and Lebanese Shia clans in the Bekaa, and later the army, immediately degenerated into skirmishes, kidnappings, and incursions that involved heavy artillery and drones.

These two domestic (Sunni representation) and foreign (the fall of Assad and the return of Saudi Arabia) imbalances are being dangerously corrected with a renewed dalliance with Salafism whereby al-Sharaa (Jolani) would be granted the de facto leadership of Lebanese Sunnis.

Why not go down the secular Sunni path? Because the Saudi wrath on Saad Hariri has not subsided. It is maintaining a rigid veto on his return to the political scene by even pressuring the UAE, where he currently resides. Despite his humiliation, no other secular Sunni figure has the pedigree to assume the mantle of leadership.

To that end, the Lebanese Parliament passed two laws under the guise of addressing prison overcrowding. The first ended capital punishment, effectively commuting the sentences of Salafi militants from being sentenced to death to long-term imprisonment. The second, a general amnesty law, commuted their prison sentences even further.

Following these two reductions, Ahmad al-Assir is expected to be released in two years.

These laws did not pass without controversy, as the years of terror under Salafi militancy are not so easily forgotten. The Minister of Defense, an ex-soldier who was tasked with presenting the Lebanese Army’s perspective on the amnesty law to Parliament, was shouted down and silenced by PM Salam. He was said to have exited Parliament in tears, later stating:

“I apologize to the families of the martyrs. I was not able to raise the voice of the army.”

Conclusion

This long history of Salafism in Lebanon reveals a correlation: the more the secular Assad regime withdrew from Lebanon, the more Salafi militancy reared its ugly head, until the break of 2017 when most of the major Salafi forces were defeated.

This is not a praise of the Assad regime, which acted in its own self-interests as all regimes do, but a condemnation of the Lebanese regime that is structurally incapable of building up immunity to any domestic or foreign threat to its stability.

Now that the tempering secular force of Damascus has been replaced by the bastion of Salafi militancy in the Levant, Lebanon is more exposed than ever.

Ahmad al-Sharaa (Jolani) does not need to invade Lebanon to embolden local Salafi forces to carve out their own Islamic emirates. In fact, even if he and his Turkish sponsors may not want to destabilize Lebanon, an uprising in Lebanon remains likely, and would put him in an awkward position vis-a-vis his fragmented band of fighters that would force his hand to support the uprising.

Meanwhile, the merry band of Lebanese elites does not recognize this threat to their own rule and still refuses to address the socio-economic disenfranchisement that breeds Salafism and refuses to build political immunity by embracing some form of secular political representation.

The contents of the MoU made it clear that it was a capitulation document unilaterally written by Israel. Its unrealistic and maximalist demands also made it clear that Israel understood it could not be implemented, and at best, it would try to foment a civil war in Lebanon.

It is based on that understanding that Israel did not cease its fire, as it expects the war to restart at any moment. In the interim, Israel decided to do its best to improve its conditions by quite literally reshaping the battlefield through demolitions and inflicting as much destruction as possible on the areas it occupies in case it is forced to withdraw eventually.

According to the Lebanese disaster management unit that is part of the office of the Prime Minister, 3,751 Israeli attacks were counted between July 1st and July 29th, 2026.

Israel’s modus operandi is diametrically opposed to President Aoun and PM Salam’s many statements in defense of the MoU, that it is the best deal one could have negotiated to end the war and prevent further Israeli attacks and destruction.

Since the disaster management unit does not publish daily data, I have run an analysis of media reports from two Lebanese outlets, one politically close to Hezbollah, the other in no way aligned with the party, that report on Israeli attacks between June 27th (after the signing of the MoU) and August 1st, 2026.

The goal was to identify patterns and types of attacks, using media reports as a sample of the 3,751 attacks. The findings are approximations.

The pattern of destruction

All in all, 316 unique attacks were reported by the two media outlets. Not a single day went by without at least one Israeli attack, with varying levels of intensity that increase around the weekends, in parallel with Trump’s escalatory threats against Iran that usually come on the weekends.

Looking at the types of attacks Israel launched, we find that around 40% of them were demolitions, all of them in the occupied area it calls the “Yellow Zone”.

However, 34% of these attacks were airstrikes, drone strikes, and artillery shelling that extended to unoccupied towns and villages at the outskirts of the Yellow Line.

Israel’s demolitions in South Lebanon serve two purposes:

1. Increase the cost of war on the civilian population that supports Hezbollah, which Israel calls Hezbollah’s “nurturing environment”.

2. Reshape the field of battle by demolishing buildings and possible infrastructure that can be used as cover or forward bases by Hezbollah in the upcoming battle.

These demolitions are not inconsequential. It is worth remembering that Israeli demolitions during the 15 months of the 2024-2026 ceasefire enabled it to occupy Lebanese territory further north than it ever had since its expulsion from south Lebanon in 2000, when the war restarted in March 2026.

Israel is clearly preparing for the next battle and reshaping the Lebanese battlefield to its advantage.

Why hasn’t Hezbollah responded?

Hezbollah has not fired a single shot at Israeli forces since the signing of the MoU, with the exception of an attempted Israeli incursion into the strategic hill of Ali Taher, which allegedly houses an underground ballistic missile facility.

Hezbollah’s reasons are based on domestic and military considerations, with more weight now being given to Lebanon’s political situation:

1. Hezbollah does not want to take the blame for the failure of President Aoun’s MoU with Israel. As Israel continues attacking Lebanon, it bolsters Hezbollah’s argument to restart the war at a time of its choosing.

2. Israel has been sidelined by the US from the war on Iran. It has not partaken in any of the tit-for-tat attacks. Israel was not targeted by Iran either, as it remains conscious of keeping it out of the fight. An attack by Hezbollah could be used as a pretext to drag Israel back into the fray.

3. Demolitions are confined behind enemy lines. Hezbollah fighters have repositioned themselves beyond the Yellow Line, where they are regrouping, restocking, and recuperating in preparation for the next battle, just as they did during the 15-month ceasefire. With the use of FPV drone technology, hideouts behind the Yellow Line are less useful to Hezbollah fighters; their destruction may also leave Israeli soldiers exposed when the war restarts.

Conclusion

The Lebanon-Israel war has returned to the same untenable dynamic of the 15-month ceasefire that preceded the 2026 war.

This means the war is far from over, and Hezbollah, more than Israel, sees another battle as necessary to try again to overturn this untenable status quo.

While President Aoun and PM Salam both claim that Lebanon is now independent from the unfolding of the US-Iran war, they are mistaken.

Israel signed this agreement precisely because of its considerations for the Iran war, while the fate of the entire region is tied to its outcome.

Claiming Lebanon is the only exception is ludicrous at best.

The US’ erratic behavior can be attributed to Trump’s psychological profile, but it doesn’t give the full picture since the US is not an absolute monarchy (yet). This flailing about is the result of a refusal across the American regime to accept the limits of US power and the immutable material constraints to their war on Iran.

1. The availability of oil.

2. The ability to produce enough bombs and interceptors.

Constraint 1 - Oil

It is no secret now that the Trump administration is manipulating the oil market.

Trump’s many well-timed statements every Monday morning that a deal with Iran was imminent as markets were opening, while leaving escalations for the weekends, clearly showed an intent to keep the oil price down with false statements and the manipulation of AI algorithms that automate trading on the stock market.

Keeping oil prices artificially low also required that the US dump its strategic oil reserves at a rate of 1 million barrels/day and that public US and (possibly) private institutions set money on fire by betting that oil futures will go down, knowing full well that they won’t.

Why go through all this trouble?

Because people will always oppose a war they have to pay for. Back in the old days, monarchs instituted new taxes to finance their wars, which was a sure way of galvanizing people against them and their wars. Financing wars with debt has been a neat contemporary loophole in which governments make their people pay for the cost of war later and discreetly.

US voters do not give much weight to foreign policy. What matters most at the voting booth is the domestic US economy, employment, inflation, the cost of living, and… the price of gas at the pump.

The scrapping of the US-Iran MoU has extended the oil shortage and driven prices up. There are now serious doubts that prices could normalize before the US midterms in November, even if another agreement is reached today, which does not bode well for Trump and the Republicans.

The US escalation has even unleashed two new forces that have increased upward pressure on oil prices:

1. The Houthis’ Red Sea maritime siege on Saudi Arabia, which removes an additional 5 million barrels/day from the global market.

2. China’s return to purchasing oil from the global market after halving its imports for 60 days as part of an agreement with the US to promote the sustainability of the MoU.

Separately, the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war is worsening the supply of refined oil products, mainly diesel fuel, the lifeblood of transportation and industry. The US may be congratulating itself on enabling Ukraine to launch deeper strikes on Russian oil facilities. However, Russia is the second largest producer of diesel in the world, and the US needs every bit of Russia’s production capacity at this time.

This is a perfect example of the imperial trap, typical of a declining empire: attempting to win one peripheral war considerably worsens the other, and neither can be won.

At this rate, keeping oil prices down will exhaust US strategic reserves by the end of August, and make financial market manipulation far more costly. When these buffers fail, oil prices will skyrocket, industries will shut down, and inflation will soar.

Despite saying “I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover” (the US President largely blamed for the 1929 Great Depression), Trump’s scrapping of the MoU is clearly accelerating the course towards a global economic catastrophe.

Constraint 2 - Bombs

Trump’s second term was won with the support of a coalition of actors that clearly saw the waning of US hegemony and sought to reverse it with Project 2025.

The deindustrialization and financialization of the US have served it well from 1971 to 2008. But this restructuring of the US and global economy was predicated on the assumption that the intricate, globe-spanning economic ties of globalism would ensure that the US remained at the top as the policeman of the world and as the vacuum that absorbs the world’s surpluses through government debt ad infinitum.

This scheme kept the US at the top of the pyramid, and made its economic elite accumulate historically unprecedented wealth. But Lenin’s saying held:

“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

The US’ deindustrialization, the stretching out of its supply chains, and its Cold War-era strategy focused on limited, expensive, high-tech military production at the expense of cheaper mass production have left it in a bind. The US can neither produce enough interceptor missiles to defend its bases and allies nor enough bombs to ravage Iran.

During the first attack on Iran that lasted 40 days, the US had spent:

• 30% of Tomahawk Cruise Missiles ($2.6 million each and 1,000 used)

• 50% of Patriot interceptors ($3.9 million each and 1,200 used)

• 75% of THAAD interceptors ($15.5 million each and 290 used)

The expected delivery time of a new batch of each of these weapons is, respectively, 47, 42, and 53 months.

On the other hand, Iran still retains 80% of its ballistic and drone capabilities that are cheap, locally sourced, and mass-produced. It has also refined its offensive tactics, and the further destruction of US radar systems in the region has exposed US military assets to massive damage during the tit-for-tat attacks that followed the scrapping of the MoU.

While Iran’s own air defense is not impregnable, it has shown an impressive ability and willingness to absorb damage to its infrastructure and was still able to hit an F-35 jet, shoot down F-15 jets, Blackhawk helicopters, and tens of drones during the 40-day war.

Additionally, Iran has drawn lessons from the targeting of its radars and restructured its air defenses, turning its radar systems on for brief moments and moving them around, making them harder to target.

The “possibility” of getting shot down is enough for the US to prioritize deploying long-range air-to-surface missiles, which are much more costly and in shorter supply, over the much cheaper and abundant short-range missiles.

This poses two problems for any US escalation:

1. The US can’t restart another massive bombing campaign as it did in the 40-day war.

2. The US can’t protect its regional bases or allies from Iranian retaliation.

Conclusion

The US has caught itself in an escalation trap: every US military escalation is met by a stronger Iranian response, and every military option is strengthening Iranian resolve instead of breaking it.

Getting some oil out of the Gulf during the MoU may have bought the US some time. But most of it was Iranian oil headed for China, whose hunger for oil will only increase over time.

Moreover, the limits of the US’ military arsenal have been reached, as evidenced by Iran’s latest wave of highly destructive attacks on US targets across the region.

According to the IRGC spokesperson, during the tit-for-tat attacks of July 8-21, Iran has heavily damaged or destroyed:

• 47 radars and air defense systems.

• 44 fuel and ammunition stores, and other logistics infrastructure.

• 49 operational infrastructure such as Patriot and HIMARS launchers, jet and drone hangars, and intelligence facilities.

• 49 fighter jets, drones, helicopters, and refueling aircraft.

The US has not only cancelled its escalatory operation on Friday, but has cancelled all attacks since then.

Does that mean the US has finally internalized the limits of its power?

Probably not, but we’re getting there.

Lebanon’s anti-resistance camp was the only one reading too much into the visit as they still overestimate Lebanon’s value to the US and the West.

What the Protocol Revealed

Aoun’s visit was treated as a diplomatic working visit, rather than a ceremonial state visit, in which the president stays at Blair House for a multi-day ceremony.

The same arrangements were made for the last Lebanese president to visit the US 17 years ago, President Michel Sleiman’s (notorious for treating the presidency like a travel agency).

Moreover, Aoun had to travel to the Department of State to meet with Marco Rubio, contrary to protocol, which requires the lower-ranking official to travel to the higher-ranking one.

Judging strictly from the aesthetics, Aoun’s visit was not nearly as momentous as Lebanese media made it seem. The coverage of Aoun’s every move, including the generic White House Guest Book inscription he left, attempted to portray it as the beginning of a new era in US-Lebanon relations, when this visit was no different than President Sleiman’s uneventful 2008 and 2009 visits.

What the Discussion Revealed

Aoun was well-advised to shower Trump with extravagant praise to avoid humiliation à la Zelensky.

After that supplicant opening, however, Aoun remained silent for the duration of the 45 min press meeting with two brief exceptions: the first time Trump diverted a question about Speaker Nabih Berri to him, and the second, towards the end of the meeting, a Lebanese MTV reporter threw him a soft-ball, clearly just so that the Lebanese President would be directly addressed with a question at least once in that meeting.

The non-Lebanese press could not have been less interested in Lebanon. They asked Trump about Iran, the FIFA World Cup, immigration, and other US domestic issues…

This goes to show how little interest the world has in Lebanon. If anything, Lebanon is only as important as Iran makes it. The international press and the West care about Hezbollah insofar as Israel’s security is concerned. The wars, mass displacements, massacres, ethnic cleansing, and economic crisis of Lebanon do not fall under that category.

What the Outcome Revealed

Answering the only question addressed to him, Aoun said he came to ask Trump for “political support and support for the Lebanese Armed Forces”. It seems he came back with none.

Trump did not deign to provide Aoun with rhetorical support even when he so blatantly supplicated for it.

When asked if there is a timeline for Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, Trump simply replied that they are in the process of redeploying their forces.

When asked if he will pressure Israel to withdraw and to comment on its attack on the Lebanese Army that entered the “pilot zones” as per the agreement, Trump simply replied that he’ll look into that.

Even when asked about material support for the Lebanese Army, Trump said “they’re becoming much more self-sufficient”, a clear sign of the US’ ongoing reticence to finance the army.

Back in Lebanon, there is not a word in Trump’s speech that Aoun could point to as evidence of US support.

In a pathetic conclusion to this non-committal affair, the only “win” the US administration deigned to hand Aoun was the reinstatement of direct US-Lebanon flights, lifting the 1985 ban by the Reagan administration.

Conclusion

Lebanon’s body politic is plagued by an unfounded and inflated sense of self-importance. The country sits at the extreme periphery of the US Empire, and its strategic and economic roles of the 1960s have been relegated to the history books.

Today, the only reason one hears of Lebanon in the West is in relation to Hezbollah and its implications for Israeli security. There is nothing else the West wants from Lebanon, and there is nothing else the country has to offer.

With the start of the second round of the US-Iran war, which is promising to be much more violent and decisive, all eyes are on Iran. Nobody’s interested in splitting hairs over an agreement single-handedly drafted by the Israelis that has little hope of succeeding. That is why Trump offered Aoun no commitments, and the press corps was barely bothered to ask about Lebanon.

It is the war in the Gulf that will decide the fate of Hezbollah and Lebanon. The Trump administration and the press have both clearly demonstrated that understanding.

Instead, as perverse as it sounds and a telling sign of the era we’re living in, kinetic warfare should be seen as a negotiation tactic.

Behind the blaze of US strikes and Iranian retaliations are three events to monitor as they can change the trajectory of this war.

1- The Erdogan-Trump Meeting

On July 7, President Trump and Turkish President Erdoğan met on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Turkey.

Trump made a show of praising Erdoğan repeatedly and announced he would lift the sanctions imposed on Turkey’s military industry following its acquisition of Russian S-400 air defense systems in 2019, and much to Israel’s dismay, he would consider selling them F-35 fighter jets.

This all sounds great for Turkey, but the question is what is Trump getting in exchange for all this cajoling?

• Is the US trying to get Erdoğan on board with the plan of moving Iraqi Kurdish fighters into Iran?

  During the first phase of the war, Turkey opposed the use of Kurdish forces, fearing a Kurdish resurgence after years of successful containment in Syria and Iraq. Iran has already mobilized its ground forces at its borders in anticipation of such a move.

• Is the US trying to get Turkey on board with the plan of involving Syria in Lebanon?

  Turkey has opposed the US-Israel plan for Al-Sharaa to enter Lebanon and attack Hezbollah from the rear. Turkey fears it would reignite the Syrian civil war after it had done its level best to stabilize what it considers to be the crown jewel of its regional ambitions, and won’t risk losing Syria for the sake of an openly hostile Israel.

• Is the US simply bribing Turkey to de-escalate tensions with Israel?

  I think that’s unlikely since the promise of F-35 jets will have the opposite effect.

Trump’s remarks that “Turkey could have chosen another side. They could have joined the fight.” tell us that Turkey is certainly leveraging its on-the-fence position, but what remains to be seen is whether it would remain there or tip the scales in favor of the US and Israel.

2- The Netanyahu-Trump Meeting

Netanyahu’s visit to the White House is set to take place next week. Originally, this visit should have been a display of apologetic submission on behalf of Netanyahu, considering the disastrous outcome of the war and the mounting criticisms of pro-Israel policies among the American public.

The breakdown of the US-Iran MoU, however, has presented Netanyahu with a new opportunity.

First, as a master of Trump-psychology, Netanyahu is enabling his current mood swing by “sharing intelligence” that Iran was plotting to assassinate him.

Second, a new agenda has been set for this meeting:

1. Stopping Turkey’s acquisition of F-35 jets.

2. Encouraging Trump to start another all-out bombing campaign against Iran.

3. Expanding Israeli military action in Lebanon (more on that in a future post).

Considering that Netanyahu has previously succeeded in weaponizing Trump’s ego, close attention should be paid to the outcomes of this meeting.

3- The US Primary Elections

I believe that, ultimately, Trump will return to the negotiation table for one reason only: the midterm elections.

The US regime is a duopoly with no policy daylight between Democrats and Republicans. Whoever wins makes no difference to the US deep state since they both abide by the core tenets of capitalism, minimal state market intervention, and militarism.

The Oct 7th wars and Gaza genocide have made a crack in the duopoly. Candidates running on social-democracy and anti-war platforms are winning Democratic Party primaries, particularly in New York, where all three candidates were of that political current.

This is a real threat to the US deep state, and it will prompt it to intervene to make sure these candidates do not make it to Congress, notably by pressuring Trump to end the war on Iran to lower gas prices and boost Republican chances.

Despite the many other factors at play in this war, ultimately, it will simply come down to gas prices in the US. Globalism is funny that way.

Now, domestic and regional factors are coalescing into what may be another round of war between Lebanon and Israel.

Lebanon

The Lebanon-Israel agreement is unenforceable and reminiscent of the November 2024 ceasefire, which paved the way for the 2026 war.

Despite having managed to sign an agreement that is entirely in Israel’s favor, placing the responsibility completely on the Lebanese side, Israel has not deigned to boost its chances by ceasing its fire.

Every day, Israel is targeting Lebanese civilians and demolishing houses. Trump’s definition of a “ceasefire in that part of the world” as a lower rate of fire is not an acceptable definition to Hezbollah nor Iran.

Last time around, Hezbollah had to endure the 15,000 Israeli ceasefire violations until it had recovered from the major blows of the 2024 war. This time around, however, if the choice is between enforcing the deadly Lebanon-Israel agreement, or acquiescing to a status quo where it ceases and Israel fires, or another round of war, Hezbollah will choose the latter.

Israel seems intent on taking the Ali Taher hill under which, it is said, Hezbollah has built a ballistic missile facility. Having repeatedly failed to take the hill, it will surely try again.

This may be the fuse that reignites the war.

Syria

In parallel, the Lebanese government is playing a more dangerous game reminiscent of the Civil War. After inviting Israel to occupy Lebanese territory until Hezbollah is disarmed, it has now invited Syria into the fray.

Syria’s foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani, visited Lebanon last week. His last stop on his government-approved itinerary was in the city of Tripoli, where he received a hero’s welcome from a large crowd.

Tripoli hosts a solid Salafi presence from which many were recruited to fight alongside the Sunni extremist factions in Syria, including the Jolani-led HTS.

This is an attempt to give the HTS leader-turned-Syrian President ample influence over the disenfranchised population of Tripoli and the larger Sunni component of the Lebanese regime, which has remained leaderless since PM Saad Hariri’s kidnapping by Saudi Arabia and later resignation in 2019.

The US administration has made many insinuations through President Trump and Special Envoy Tom Barrack that Lebanon could be placed back under Syrian tutelage just as it had been from 1991 to 2005.

Syria’s President had made it clear that he does not intend to invade Lebanon, as he would most certainly suffer another defeat at the hands of Hezbollah and the armed clans of the Bekaa, having fought them and lost in 2017 during the ‘Fajr Al-Jurud’ operation. An adventure into Lebanon would also leave his very precarious home front undefended and reignite the Syrian civil war.

The Salam government’s cooperation offers Jolani/Al-Sharaa a better alternative: meddle in Lebanon’s affairs by becoming the de facto leader of the Sunnis rather than through direct military engagement.

Should the Syrian president succeed in assuming this mantle, it would severely constrain Hezbollah’s domestic range of political maneuver by solidifying a large block against it. This in turn would breathe new life into Salafi terrorism from which Lebanon had suffered for years, and revive the dangerous Sunni vs. Shia conflict, which PM Hariri had refused to foment at great personal expense.

French President Macron’s visit to Damascus yesterday also addressed the Lebanese file as Macron announced that France will send a military general to oversee the deployment of the Lebanese army in the “pilot zones” alongside the US general that is set to arrive imminently.

However, meddling in Lebanese affairs is akin to jumping into a snake pit for the inexperienced. The three bomb attacks that shook Damascus in the past week had both interesting timings: the first, during the Syrian Foreign Minister’s visit to Lebanon, and the two others during Macron’s visit to Damascus.

Iran

US machinations have successfully eroded the MoU, with Trump declaring it dead in the water earlier today.

However, this is nothing to celebrate since it does not fix the US’ problems. The US still has no viable military option against Iran, its weapons stocks are still too low for another massive air campaign, and there is no appetite for a disastrous ground invasion.

Additionally, the flow of oil through Hormuz, necessary to avoid a major global recession, has not been restored. Global oil reserves have not been reconstituted and are still set to run dangerously low by August.

The US’ about-face on the MoU is a reaction to Trump’s domestic critics and is the result of chaotic improvisation in the face of helplessness.

Faced with the erosion of its control over Hormuz and the tightening of the noose around Hezbollah, Iran would sooner abandon the promise of an elusive deal with the US to secure its two very real strategic interests.

While the restart of a US-Iran war remains unlikely, restarting the Lebanon-Israel war with Iranian participation could be the only way for Hezbollah and Iran to reassert their leverage both in Lebanon and Hormuz, to put to rest the follies of the Lebanon-Israel agreement, and reposition negotiations on a more favorable track.

The US may still be upping the ante only to cave at the very last minute, just as it did before signing the MoU, but the more tricks it tries to pull, the less inclined Iran will be to play along another time.

The only remaining question is: if the war restarts, will the US come to Israel’s aid again?

Lebanon lies in the eye of that storm. Contrary to all other areas, it is the only one that has remained consistently in a state of active war with varying degrees of intensity over the past three years.

As the battlefield shifted from the military to the political arena since the announcement of the US-Iran ceasefire on April 8th, 2026, the sound of bombs relatively quieted, leaving room for Lebanese voices to surpass them.

These voices proved to be an equally terrifying sound, as they not only revealed that some Lebanese minds drew no lessons from the rivers of blood that have been shed in the past years, but that the majority still grounds its reasoning in long-debunked delusions and magical thinking. A lethal mistake during unprecedented times of geopolitical upheaval.

While I speak only of Lebanon here, this is not to say that other communities are faring any better. The alienation of people from politics has led to the replacement of political critical thought by magical thinking, each with its own local flavor, such as “deporting all immigrants will bring prosperity”, “Ukraine is crushing Russia”, “China will save the world”, or “trillionaires are good for the economy” and many others…

Understanding how this “Lebanese mind” came into being requires a dive into Lebanon’s communitarian formation and the structure of the political regime, which sets the rules of political action and therefore the framework of mainstream political thinking.

Lebanon, the first colony

Lebanon was the first Asian territory to be colonized by Europeans in the contemporary sense. It took the form of Jesuit missionaries who established religious institutions across Lebanon in the 16th century, first to wrench the Christian Maronite sect from the grasp of the Eastern Orthodox church, and later to shape this community’s culture and worldview into a communitarian foothold for European colonial powers, mainly France.

It is indeed one of history’s many ironies that the first colony would be at the center of the struggle to liberate the last colony of Palestine.

This new worldview did more than bring Maronites into the fold of the Roman Holy See. As Edward Said pointed out in his canonical book Orientalism on the writings of 20th-century Scottish Orientalist, Hamilton Gibb:

“There is a note of grim prophecy in Gibb’s singling out the Zionists and the Maronite Christians, alone amongst ethnic communities in the Islamic world, for their inability to accept coexistence.”

The adoption of the European colonial worldview was so complete that it became commonplace for members of the Maronite community to perceive themselves as Übermensch, superior to Arabs and Islam. French worldview-building also equipped them with the argumentative backing of colonial archaeological practices that sought to draw a fictional continuity between the Phoenicians and contemporary Lebanon, as has been the traditional practice of European nation-state identity-building. This, of course, is poor historicism, as the history of the Levant is far more complex, interactive, and a true hotpot of civilizational and cultural exchanges.

This manufactured superior identity led to the catastrophic events of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1991), during which the Maronite-Zionist alliance ravaged the country. Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon breathed new life into the civil war, which had been dying down at the time. Most of the human and material losses of the war and the fragmentation of the state occurred as a result. The majority of kidnappings and mass incarcerations in notorious torture camps were perpetrated by the unholy Maronite-Zionist alliance.

Despite the catastrophic outcomes of the war, including the erosion of the political privileges of Lebanese Christians, the colonial worldview endures to this day.

The blatant racist/Islamophobic narrative came back with a vengeance after Hezbollah joined the war on March 2nd, 2026. No longer exclusively Maronite Christian, the narrative was adopted by liberals of all sects who oppose armed resistance against Israel.

Expressions such as “they don’t look like us”, or “they are a death cult”, and “this is a foreign war on Lebanese soil” became commonplace in local media outlets. Internally displaced members of the Shia community were denied rent, sometimes threatened and attacked, and polemics were fomented over the location of government-run shelters in majority Christian areas.

The volume of this rhetoric died down as it became apparent that neither Iran nor Hezbollah were getting crushed by Israel and the US. The sentiment, however, has been revived by this war and will persist after it is over.

A regime built on foreign intervention

Notions of “sovereignty” and “state monopoly of arms” were projected to the forefront of the national conversation since the election of President Aoun and Prime Minister Salam, ironically as a result of immense US, Saudi, and French pressure.

The paradox between the discourse and the obvious foreign interference that led to it does not register in the public mind, because foreign interference is not seen as an aberration when the Lebanese regime structurally invites it.

Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing agreement is predicated on each sect receiving foreign backing. The strength and influence of a foreign backer is directly reflected in the domestic balance of power. If a sponsor’s position is improved in the region or it dedicates more of its power and resources to the region, the political position of its corresponding sect in Lebanon is automatically improved, and vice versa in the opposite scenario. The demarcating line between “domestic” and “foreign” is so porous it barely exists.

This too is a relic of the colonial era. It originated with the French and British attempts to use the Levant as a foothold to weaken the Ottoman Empire by declaring themselves protectors of specific sects or communities. In 1860, following the outbreak of intercommunal violence in Mount Lebanon, Emperor Napoleon III dispatched troops to “protect the Christians of Syria”.

This set the modus operandi of Lebanese sectarian politics, and as more interference was invited after Lebanon’s independence, it convinced members of each sect that their safety and squabbles are of the utmost priority to their respective foreign backers.

This juvenile fantasy is a recipe for disaster as it equips each member of the body politic with a disproportionate sense of importance combined with a paralyzing anticipation of every shift in foreign dynamics that might alter their domestic fortunes. Sectarian dynamics turn every minor disagreement into an existential issue, and resolution becomes all the more difficult when every leader looks to the outside for a sign that might never come.

The Civil War pushed this dynamic on steroids as it invited any country that would care to dip its toe in the Lebanese quagmire: Syria, Israel, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the US, France, and Italy were invited into the fray.

The October 7th wars, and the regional tornado that ensued from the battering of Hezbollah and the fall of Assad in Syria in 2024 to the 2025 and 2026 attacks on Iran and resurgence of Hezbollah, were nothing short of a dizzying nightmare for sectarian leaders who had to constantly preempt how the political winds were shifting and adjust accordingly.

That is how leaders with less political acumen upped the ante against Hezbollah in March only to sound much more conciliatory in June. While others, with no acumen at all, are still waging a crusade against the party as if it has been annihilated.

Similarly, Hezbollah is abiding by the same logic. The party opted to reference avenging the assassination of Ali Khamenei as the reason to join the war on the side of Iran in 2026 instead of the 15,000 Israeli violations of the 2024 ceasefire agreement and its killing of 500 Lebanese citizens in the 15 months that followed. It was only later during the war, when Hezbollah could no longer ignore the domestic opposition to the war, that the party’s official narrative shifted to the protection of Lebanon.

In the political phase of the war, this behavior remains unchanged. The anti-resistance camp is expecting the US to win in diplomacy what it could not win in war, and the resistance camp is expecting Iran to impose a fait accompli on Israel and the US.

Behind the veil of delusions

Lebanon stands today as the linchpin of the prospective US-Iran agreement. While the country has gained some relevance today as a testing ground for US goodwill to strike a deal, an opportunity for Israel to undermine it, and a priority for Iran to restore its forward defense, it remains, for all intents and purposes, a backwater country.

Plans for China’s Belt and Road initiative, India’s IMEC, and Turkey’s revived Hijaz Railway are all crisscrossing the region. One country features in neither of these plans: Lebanon.

Lebanon’s only relevance stems from two factors:

1. Israel’s security: Israel’s interest in annexing Lebanese territory up to the Litani River and the power of the resistance that has grown as a result.

2. A proxy battlefield: The use of Lebanon as a battleground for regional competition and to eventually reach a settlement. This role had been drastically reduced since the outbreak of the war in Syria in 2011, when Lebanon fell into near complete irrelevance, and is only now being revived again.

The aforementioned delusions have reimagined Lebanon’s role as the center of global preoccupation in the Lebanese mind. When pressed, however, those who claim Lebanon’s importance could never explain why.

At a time of great geopolitical upheavals and regional plans and counterplans, Lebanon can indeed restore its relevance by reviving its historical role as the Levant’s outlet to the Mediterranean and as the decisive player that tips the scales in the Israel-Iran competition over the region’s future.

However, the nature of its regime and the entrenchment of these delusions prohibit any constructive role. Magical thinking is dangerous on a good day; in the midst of the October 7th wars, it is suicidal.

However, there are still many legal and domestic considerations in Lebanon that will prohibit its implementation.

While I am not naive enough to consider legalities sacred, the legal obstacles are important because they provide “exit routes” that Lebanese political actors can take to annul the agreement when the time is right.

How power operates in the Lebanese regime

Lebanon follows a consensual sectarian power-sharing system. Every sect has a foreign sponsor, representation, and a share of the levers of power (public institutions, security forces, the judiciary, and the economy).

This arrangement was born from the French colonial era and was modified and complexified over the years with every episode of sectarian strife.

One notable episode was the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1991) that ended with the signing of the Taif agreement. The agreement was deeply flawed and partially implemented. It did, however, recognize Israel as an occupying force on Lebanese soil and dispensed Hezbollah from disarming, as they were still engaged in the struggle to liberate the south (Beirut’s disregard of the south is nothing new).

Each decision is taken with the collective approval of all sectarian leaders, not to be confused with MPs who represent the interests of the sectarian leader in parliament only.

When consensus cannot be reached, no decision is taken. This is how, for example, the lack of consensus over something as basic as waste management led to the 2015 garbage crisis when trash piled up in the streets across the country for months.

When consensus is reached, decisions move forward with or without the necessary legislation and regardless of whether they are in complete violation of the constitution. For example, the arbitrary capital control that banks enforced in the wake of the 2019 economic crisis in violation of existing laws and without the necessary legislation.

Aoun and Salam’s position in that architecture

President Joseph Aoun was elected in the wake of the 2024 Lebanon-Israel war that left Hezbollah severely weakened. Foreign powers, notably the US and Saudi Arabia, threw their weight behind his candidacy. Foreign interference is not unusual in Lebanese presidential elections, but the public display of that pressure was notable, particularly the threats that were issued by the Saudi envoy to MPs and his presence in the upper gallery of parliament to “supervise” Aoun’s election.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam was designated with Saudi and French backing. Contrary to most PMs that preceded him, however, he has no popular “Sunni” backing. Other PMs also did not benefit from that backing during their accession to power, but they successfully positioned themselves as the representatives of Sunnis, at least for the duration of their tenure. Salam could not pull it off despite some limited attempts that came across as comical.

In short, neither Aoun nor Salam fits into Lebanon’s sectarian architecture; neither claims “Christian Maronite” or “Sunni” representation. This is probably why they even managed to get elected at such a critical time, since sectarian leaders are constantly terrified of each other and would not dare trust each other to take over these critical offices during such a volatile period.

How this reflects on the Washington agreement

The Lebanon-Israel agreement effectively uproots the power-sharing agreement that has governed Lebanon since 1991. Its implementation would practically eliminate the “Shia” component of the arrangement, as it places most demographically Shia areas under Israeli occupation and will also set the multi-sectarian Lebanese Army against them.

Since Aoun and Salam do not represent any sect, their approval of this agreement does not cascade into a “Christian” and “Sunni” popular support.

Despite the Lebanese Forces, the largest Christian party, supporting the agreement, other Christian parties condemned it. No Sunni groups or notable political figures backed it either. Other sectarian leaders also condemned it, in addition to powerless yet notable nationalist and progressive parties.

This comes as no surprise, since the agreement is so domestically destabilizing that even political opponents of Hezbollah refused to endorse it. This is due to the memory of the Civil War being so vivid that nobody’s willing to sacrifice the current order for another round of unpredictable domestic free-for-all, except the Lebanese Forces and Kataeb, who have a particular knack for being consistently on the wrong side of history.

As it stands today, the Lebanon-Israel agreement has no cross-sectarian champions. Aoun and Salam are hollow figureheads, and the far-right Christian supporters of the agreement have no chance of getting other sects, let alone other Christian factions, on board.

The legal exit

The Lebanon-Israel agreement is so riddled with legal loopholes that either Aoun and Salam did not consult legal advisors, or they are well aware but weary of following legal procedures.

First, while international treaties and foreign agreements must be negotiated by the President and consented to by the Prime Minister, they must also be approved by the government with a two-thirds majority. To date, the Lebanese government has not approved the agreement.

Second, Lebanese law states that Parliament must also ratify by a simple majority any agreement that is not renewed on a yearly basis. Since this Lebanon-Israel agreement does not provide a timeline and stipulates a peace agreement and military coordination, they inherently extend beyond a year, which means the agreement must be ratified by Parliament.

Third, since the negotiations involved direct contact with Israeli officials, they were in violation of the Lebanese Anti-Israeli Boycott Law (1955) and Article 275 of the Lebanese Penal Code that criminalizes conspiring with “the enemy”, which is Israel’s current status under Lebanese law. These laws must be retroactively annulled to validate the agreement.

Finally, ending the state of enmity between Lebanon and Israel as stated by the agreement violates the Taif Accords that recognize the right to resist Israeli occupation.

At the level of international law:

• According to the Vienna Convention, treaties signed under duress are invalid. Israel’s active occupation of Lebanese land and its continuous bombing and public threats to “burn all of Lebanon” are a clear-cut case of duress, which invalidate this agreement.

• According to the Geneva Convention, protected persons in occupied territories cannot be deprived of the benefits of the Convention “by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power." This renders Article 13 of the agreement, which commits Lebanon to not filing a complaint against Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law, invalid (this was highlighted by Craig Mokhiber).

The Lebanon-Israel agreement, better called the Aoun-Salam-Israel agreement, has no domestic backing. Hezbollah has its share of domestic opponents, but only a minority of them is reckless enough to cede territory to Israel and wage civil war on its behalf.

The aged Lebanese warlords who brokered the power-sharing agreement with blood spilled during the Civil War will not risk it all once again only to undo their personal successes for the sake of Israel.

The enforcement of this agreement is therefore exceedingly more complex than the fait accompli Aoun, Salam, Netanyahu, and the Christian far-right are announcing on every platform.

The stipulations of the agreement

To avoid rehashing each of the 14 clauses, I will focus on the overall stipulations of the agreement:

1. Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon will follow this sequence:

   Lebanon and Israel establish working groups → they finalize the Security Annex defining the pilot zones, verification mechanism, and sequence of Lebanese Army (LAF) takeover/Israeli withdrawal → a program begins to strengthen LAF capacity → the two initial pilot zones are activated → in each zone, the LAF disarms Hezbollah and dismantles its military infrastructure → Israeli/US verification confirms LAF performance → the Israeli army redeploys and the LAF takes full security control → the process is repeated zone by zone → full Israeli withdrawal.

2. Lebanon and Israel start normalizing relations through direct negotiations on a “comprehensive peace agreement” and military coordination.

3. Lebanon commits not to file any lawsuit or complaint at the ICJ or UN Security Council against Israel’s innumerable violations of international law in Lebanon, including its killing of around 10,000 Lebanese civilians since Oct 2023 and its targeting of healthcare workers, journalists, civilian infrastructure, and use of prohibited weapons.

4. The US pledged $100 million in humanitarian aid to Lebanon and $30 million in conditional assistance to the LAF.

A setup for failure to legitimize Israeli occupation

The withdrawal sequence is a minefield that guarantees permanent Israeli occupation:

• It demands that the Lebanese Army wage civil war against Hezbollah on behalf of Israel.

  This will not happen. First, because if Israel, with one of the most advanced armies and intelligence capabilities in the region, had a hard time defeating Hezbollah after 3 years of infiltration operations, assassinations, and continuous warfare, it is hard to imagine that the Lebanese Army will have better chances when it has the capabilities of a police force.

  Second, because there is no appetite for a civil war in Lebanon, neither on behalf of the army that would immediately split along sectarian fault lines, nor the general population, who have spent the last 35 years being terrified by far lesser events that might reignite a civil war, and have spent that time intermingling to the point where alienation, a necessary ingredient for civil wars, is no longer present.

• It expects that the Lebanese Army will develop its capacity to be the sole guarantor of Lebanese security.

  The numbers alone show how impossible that task is. In 2025, Lebanon’s defense budget was $800 million, much of which is financed by foreign US and Qatari aid. Once we deduct salaries and operating costs, a meager $24 million is left for training, modernization, and equipment. Lebanon’s political economy used the LAF as a welfare program that absorbed excess unemployment that could not be absorbed by migration, effectively outsourcing border security to Hezbollah. The US itself recognizes the impossibility of that task, which is why it committed a conditional $30 million to the LAF as it pours more than $3 billion into the Israeli army annually. Any capacity building of the LAF is a long-term project that will require billions of dollars that are currently unavailable and years of procurement, recruitment, and training.

• The verification process of the pilot zones is left entirely to the US and Israel, the occupier with a long track record of expanding its borders with “buffer zones”. It is preemptively guaranteed that the LAF will fail Israeli verification.

Ink on paper

The intent of the Washington negotiations was first to cement a premature Israeli political victory in Lebanon before the battle was over. When the US-Iran MoU revealed that the balance of power was highly skewed in favor of Iran, its new purpose became to undermine Iran’s leverage through this parallel track.

What is surprising, though, is President Aoun’s doubling down on handing out political concessions to Israel despite the massive political resurgence of Hezbollah in Lebanon. It was also reported that Aoun forced the Lebanese Army’s hand to acquiesce to the agreement on Friday after they had vehemently objected to it the day before.

I previously expected the Washington process to lead to a choreographed Israeli withdrawal to deliver Aoun a win and restore a modicum of his influence. Instead, he has willingly sacrificed his political standing in Lebanon to hand Netanyahu a rhetorical victory for his reelection campaign.

While Hezbollah and many others are rightly rejecting the agreement, it is unlikely to lead to a massive reaction, such as the overthrow of the precarious Salam government, because it is clearly unenforceable and does not change the real conditions that govern the situation:

1. Hezbollah remains the most powerful actor in Lebanon, and its FPV drone program is far deadlier when Israeli forces become stationary, making any long-term occupation untenable.

2. Iran cannot let go of its demand for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon because it is a national security imperative for it to restore the forward defense that had reliably protected it from 2006 to 2024, even if it comes at the expense of an easily reversible deal with the US.

3. Trump needs a deal with Iran to restore oil flows through Hormuz unless he wants to watch the global economy, along with his legacy, crash and burn.

These realities cannot be overcome by a simple piece of paper. The agreement may hand Netanyahu the short-term PR win he’s desperate for, but not much else.

These tracks also reflect a split inside the administration: JD Vance is competing for the America First base, Marco Rubio for the Zionist lobby, while Trump, desperate for any win, is letting both run before choosing the best option.

This is sowing confusion until these tracks begin fusing into a final outcome cemented in a deal.

1- Lebanon and Israel

Iran undercut Israel by establishing the Switzerland “deconfliction cell” to manage the ceasefire. The US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar insisted on keeping Israeli withdrawal within the Washington negotiations.

As round 5 was closing yesterday, Rubio tried to extract a major concession from Lebanon, possibly an Israel-Lebanon coordination framework and an agreement on the “experimental zones.”

The round was extended until today because the Lebanese side could no longer accept any concession that would expose President Aoun to further attacks from a politically ascendant Hezbollah.

Even a PR win failed as the Lebanese military delegation refused a commemorative photo with the Israeli side, responsible for killing 40 soldiers over the past year.

2- The GCC and Reconstruction

Rubio ended his GCC tour yesterday with demands that went far beyond the MoU: curbing Iran’s ballistic missile program, limiting support for its regional allies, and attaching political conditions to the $300b reconstruction fund.

Trump and JD Vance had previously taken the opposite line, saying Iran cannot be banned from having ballistic missiles when its neighbors have them, or from defending itself.

At the same time, Riyadh is hosting a Gulf meeting to negotiate a new regional security framework with Iran.

3- The Strait of Hormuz

After Rubio’s visit, Oman and the International Maritime Organization announced a new route out of Hormuz through Omani territorial waters, aimed at weakening Iran’s control of the strait.

In the afternoon, Iran struck a commercial vessel and stated that the only safe passage through Hormuz is the one designated by Iran.

Oman is still negotiating with Iran over how to manage the strait, and the discussion has now expanded to all GCC countries over transit fees and revenue-sharing.