Voices from the Arab press: Victory from which there is no escape

For more than half a century, Lebanese politicians have grown accustomed to reaching agreement on national questions only through the triumph of one side, after which the others eventually submit to its choice.

When Syrian predominance ended – or nearly ended – in 2005, it was succeeded by another prevailing force: Hezbollah, backed by Iran but also supported by powerful allies at home, a reality that continued until 2024.

Throughout these successive periods of domination – if the term is permissible – Lebanon’s official authority remained in place but overpowered, while the army and security services coordinated with the dominant side in a manner that allowed neither the wolf to die nor the sheep to disappear, as the proverb has it.

To tame political authority, whose symbol is the presidency, four consecutive army commanders became presidents of the republic, even though the constitution states that the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Among the dominant forces, the Syrians were the only ones who did not enter into a heated confrontation with Israel, except for a brief clash in 1982 initiated by the Israelis. That is why the secret of Syria’s endurance in Lebanon was that it remained outside the south, with Sidon marking its effective southern limit.

Yet in every case, once you justify your armed existence in the south, you must also control parts of Lebanon’s interior and, more importantly, the political and military leadership. That is why, during both the Syrian era and the current Hezbollah era, the two forces came to exert weight in the cabinet and parliament, and to hold a decisive say in elections of every kind, including the election or selection of presidents.

Since the late 1980s, despite the absence of Syrian forces from the south, any crisis with Israel was handled through tripartite negotiations or contacts: Syria plus the armed party, or Speaker Nabih Berri plus the Lebanese state.

After the Syrians left in 2005, negotiations became effectively bilateral: the Shi’ite forces first, and the official authorities after them. The authorities signed, but those who negotiated indirectly and decided were Berri and Hezbollah.

Even in the maritime border negotiations with Israel, the American mediator had to speak with the Israeli authorities on one side and, on the Lebanese side, with Berri, who carried a mandate from Hezbollah.

True, the army commander became president, as usual, but other political forces, most of them Christian and Sunni, led the process of electing him, while Shi’ite deputies were the last to join this choice.

The change was striking, though its effects on the question of dominance would not have appeared so quickly while Hezbollah still held its weapons had it not been for three major developments: the fall of the Assad regime and the departure of the Iranians from Syria; Hezbollah’s rush into confrontation with Israel in two “support wars,” the first in support of Hamas and the second to avenge Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which badly weakened it, killed its leaders, and cut its supply lines; and led to Israel’s occupation of vast areas of southern Lebanon, forcing Hezbollah to withdraw before it, even as it continued to resist, while masses of displaced southerners pressed upon it after fleeing the south under the force of Israel’s violent attacks.

For more than a year, relations between Aoun and Berri remained excellent, and it seemed as though the priority was to strengthen themselves against Nawaf Salam and his government, which had taken several decisions, of course in Aoun’s presence, against Hezbollah and its weapons.

But Israel’s ferocious war on Lebanese territory imposed new realities and new policies. Under pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration, Aoun agreed to direct negotiations with Israel in Washington, this time without Shi’ite participation.

Berri said they had not been consulted, that they opposed direct negotiations, and that they were relying on Iran’s talks with the United States to stop the war and secure Israel’s withdrawal from the south. This, of course, was an illusion.

Trump, who had initially appeared resigned to an Iranian role, soon moved under Israeli pressure toward an understanding with the Lebanese authorities and Israel in the fifth round of talks, centered on a complicated gradual withdrawal with political dimensions.

Since the May 17, 1983 agreement between Lebanon and Israel, which Syria thwarted, followed by field arrangements handled by armed Shi’ite actors, this is a new kind of agreement: one managed by the Lebanese authority alone, strongly supported by the Americans, and backed by Arab and international actors.

Will this new agreement succeed despite fierce Shi’ite opposition at home and from Iran? The cost is enormous either way. If it succeeds, who will disarm Hezbollah, as Israel demands, and who will rebuild?

On the surface, the dispute between Washington and Tehran over the Strait of Hormuz appears to be about transit fees. Does Iran have the right to impose a financial charge on ships passing through one of the world’s most important energy arteries? Could the strait, long used as a threat in moments of tension, become a steady source of income for an Iranian treasury exhausted by sanctions and war?

A deeper reading, however, shows that the issue is larger than money and more dangerous than fees. It is a battle over the meaning of sovereignty, and over what it means for Iran to be a party that cannot be bypassed in Gulf security.

The American message to Tehran in Doha, as reported, was clear in substance: think bigger; sanctions relief within a broader agreement is worth far more than imposing navigation fees.

This message reflects an American logic that is both economic and political. Washington is telling Iran that the road to major gains does not pass through harassing ships or charging for passage, but through a broader agreement that opens the economy, releases assets, eases sanctions, and partially reintegrates Iran into the flow of trade and energy.

In the abstract, the American argument seems strong. If Iran receives broad sanctions relief, it can benefit from oil exports, reopened investment channels, the release of frozen assets, and greater freedom of financial and commercial movement. These gains could far exceed any potential revenue from transit fees in Hormuz.

But politics is not run by financial calculations alone. The Iranian regime does not see the strait merely as a source of revenue, but as a symbol of its survival and of its ability to impose itself.

Frozen assets, even if some are released, give Tehran urgent financial breathing room. They are economic oxygen, not a change in the balance of power.

By contrast, recognizing Iran as a regulator or decision-maker in the Strait of Hormuz, even under a technical, navigational, or security label, turns geography into permanent influence and gives Tehran something more valuable than money: legitimacy of role.

Iran knows that frozen funds can be released today and frozen again tomorrow. Sanctions can be eased by agreement and then returned with a change of administration, a congressional decision, or a new regional escalation.

But if Iran succeeds in extracting explicit or implicit recognition that it has a special right to manage passage, regulate it, or collect a related charge, it will have moved its card from the category of threat to the category of order.

That is the essence of the battle. In other words, Iran does not want fees alone; it wants “paid recognition.” It wants the world, even indirectly, to pay the price of passage through an area it considers part of its vital sphere.

The framework agreement signed by Lebanon and Israel under American sponsorship limits Hezbollah’s monopoly over the decision of war and peace, and limits the tying of the Lebanese front to Tehran’s regional calculations, in exchange for saving Lebanon from Israeli aggression with whatever means are available.

It is therefore an agreement of necessity, according to the old equation: what drove you to the bitter choice? The answer: the one more bitter still.

As for the other sins attached to it, according to the resistance camp’s jurisprudence, tools, trumpets, and affiliates, they are born of motives that have nothing to do with anything except the narrow interests of malicious objectors.

The agreement that is denounced as cursed, threatening to civil peace, rejected as though it never existed, whether through linguistic devices meant to erase any role or existence for the Lebanese state, or through prioritizing Iran’s interest and enabling it to continue imposing its influence and control over Lebanon, is in fact a continuation of the November 26, 2024 agreement.

That earlier agreement was smuggled through by the same resistance camp, with provisions that can only be described as complete surrender by the party defeated since then and by everyone around it, solely in exchange for stopping the Israeli killing machine on Iranian orders.

What Hezbollah accepted, indeed begged for, and what Speaker Nabih Berri arranged, with the acceptance and submission of the caretaker government then headed by then prime minister Najib Mikati, stipulated that Hezbollah, or any other armed movement in Lebanon, would carry out no offensive action against Israel, in exchange for the Israeli state halting offensive action against targets in Lebanon.

It also stipulated the handover of weapons, not only south of the Litani River but across all Lebanese territory, as well as an end to the smuggling of weapons, funds, and mercenary fighters to the party and its Iranian operator.

It further called for dismantling all unauthorized facilities involved in the production of weapons and their components, as well as military infrastructure and sites, and for confiscating unauthorized weapons inconsistent with these obligations.

Then Israel opened the gates of hell, committing unimaginable atrocities and crimes, wiping villages, towns, and cities in southern Lebanon off the map, and adding uglier defeats to the achievements of a party clinging to imaginary victories.

Had Hezbollah’s intentions toward Lebanon as an entity and belonging been sincere, it would have been possible to engage with and discuss the provisions of the framework agreement, reaching an acceptable and reasonable understanding that preserves the state’s sovereignty and Hezbollah’s place as an unarmed political party on Lebanon’s partisan map, rather than as an Iranian legion poisoning the Lebanese entity.

At last, the Lebanese state has moved to recover its sovereignty from the mouth of the Iranian beast, after decades in which Hezbollah, Iran’s striking arm, disregarded every interest of the Lebanese state.

The framework agreement recently signed between Lebanon and Israel should be the dividing line between two eras that belong to two different worlds.

I return briefly to a television interview I watched some time ago with Samir Geagea, president of the Lebanese Forces, a heavyweight figure who summarized Lebanon’s suffocating crisis and its realistic political solution in just a few words: Iran’s exit from Lebanon.

Even if the Lebanese people fight among themselves, they will inevitably reconcile so long as Iran is outside the Lebanese frame.

One of the strange features of Hezbollah’s behavior is that only a few years ago it was at the heart of the Lebanese scene during the demarcation of the maritime border with Israel, despite the injustice inflicted on the Lebanese side in the results, yet the party accepted that unfair division without uttering a single objection.

Now the moment has come for Hezbollah to hand its weapons to the Lebanese state so that sovereignty may be realized over all, and so that the Lebanese army may assume responsibility for defending the homeland, even with a slingshot if need be.

Under the illusion of resistance and amid the mobilization of emotions, how much damage has Hezbollah’s weapon inflicted on Lebanon and the Lebanese compared with the limited damage it inflicted on Israel?

Over the four decades of Hezbollah’s existence, Lebanon has faced an unparalleled descent down the slope of politics and the collapse of buildings and roofs over the heads of innocents.

I personally attended the celebration of the liberation of southern Lebanon on May 25, 2000, after 22 years of Israeli occupation. But the joy that swept the Arab and Islamic worlds that day did not last long.

Lebanon then lived through 26 lean years, during which it reached the edge of the abyss, though we once sang its praises and called its capital, Beirut, the Paris of the East.

All of this because Iran’s planting of Hezbollah in Lebanon yielded nothing but bitter fruit and sour grapes: Iran’s harvest gathered by the hands of its sons in the party and those loyal to it.

The time has come for Lebanese national sovereignty to raise its voice and say to Iran and its party: enough tampering with and playing with the Lebanese state.

The national army is coming, peace is inevitably coming, and only in this way can there be effective treatment after the bitterness of destruction that has struck all of Lebanon in vain.

The voice of reason is more useful than the roar of reckless bullets, and the act of peace lasts longer than the clatter of useless weapons.

Lebanon, in its present moment, faces the greatest political test of its modern history. Today’s negotiations will lead to a better future in the end, once Lebanon recovers the voice of full national sovereignty without Hezbollah’s sinful whip over the Lebanese.

This is the voice of diplomatic reason expressed clearly by Dr. Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the president of the UAE, who wrote that the framework agreement between Lebanon and Israel, under American sponsorship, represents an important and positive step toward the state’s restoration of full sovereignty over its territory, adding that the Lebanese have suffered for decades from the consequences of others’ conflicts on their land and paid a heavy price.

He also said that entrenching the logic of the state and its sovereignty remains the true guarantee of Lebanon’s stability and future.

We want Lebanon to return as a civilizational paradise for all Arabs, as it was in its past, before Tehran entered the line of sabotage through its armed proxies.

Hezbollah is trying to cling to Iran’s ropes until its last breath, rejecting the framework agreement as “nonexistent” and calling for it to be replaced by the Iranian-American memorandum of understanding.