Fadi Nicholas Nassar is director of the Institute for Social Justice and Conflict Resolution, an assistant professor at the Lebanese American University and director of the Lebanon Program at the Middle East Institute. Ronnie Chatah is a political commentator and host of The Beirut Banyan podcast. He is the son of assassinated Lebanese diplomat Mohamad Chatah.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri are calling for a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel. This is a ruse.
It is a ruse aimed at exploiting international reluctance to confront the inconvenient truth: Lebanon isn’t a state broken by corruption and poor leadership, rather it is one coerced into failure by the world’s most powerful paramilitary force.
For two decades, Lebanon’s failed political class has proven only one thing — a consistent commitment to dismantling the state. Deliberately undermining the opportunities provided by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which was drafted with the goal of ending the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, they entrenched a status quo that all but ensured a perpetual cycle of war between Lebanon and Israel. And for the past year, they stood by Hezbollah’s gamble to turn the country into a battlefield, on the pretext of saving Hamas.
Believing that these spoilers have suddenly changed their tune isn’t just misguided, it’s dangerously naïve and will only lead to another failure. Yet, the conversation with Washington inevitably circles back to the same tired question: “What’s the alternative?”
All too often, this narrative has suggested the U.S. can’t help Lebanon if the Lebanese don’t help themselves. But that line of thinking is an abdication of responsibility. The political partners Washington claims to yearn for in Lebanon have been methodically erased, their leaders assassinated by Hezbollah, all while the Lebanese people have tried every democratic avenue at their disposal to escape their oppression. The regime left in the wake of this is designed to preserve Iran’s security interests at the expense of Lebanon’s sovereignty.
It wasn’t always this way. During the 2006 war, it was the Lebanese government — the first one free from Syrian occupation — that was determined to represent Lebanon’s interests and helped bring about UNSCR 1701.
But that isn’t the Lebanese government we have today. And the spirit of UNSCR 1701 is as dead as the leadership that helped craft it.
This resolution’s purpose wasn’t just to bring about a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel — it was to remove Lebanon’s entanglement in regional conflict. This isn’t Lebanon’s war. Despite being caught in the cross fire, the Lebanese people overwhelmingly reject both Iran’s imposition of conflict and Israel’s bombardment. They stand abandoned by a caretaker government beholden to Hezbollah — one that took over a week to even acknowledge the war, as hundreds of thousands fled their homes.
This government’s goal is to buy time for Hezbollah — not to save Lebanon. And if Washington doesn’t act now, the country as we know it will cease to exist.
The first step now is to deal with the elephant in the room. The U.S. must — as it did last October — stop Israel from pursuing a major military invasion that will only fuel endless war.
It must cease the quasi deals and tepid calls for a cease-fire that have failed since then, and make clear that the only credible political solution will require the actual implementation of UNSCR 1701 and 1559 — meaning, Israel withdrawing from Lebanon, Hezbollah disarming and the Lebanese state gaining sole authority over the country’s territory.
Israel may control the escalation ladder, but it doesn’t have a political solution. The time has come for the Lebanese state to be country’s only future.
Washington, for its part, has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) over decades, and it is now the sole institution capable of uniting the country’s people, rebuilding trust, securing borders and ensuring a peaceful transition of power. But to help bring this about, the LAF needs the U.S.’s political, economic and logistical support — as well as a broad coalition of regional and international partners.
This war was never just about Lebanon. Iran has now lost the war of deterrence. And if confronted with firm international resolve, it can be compelled to cease its destabilization of the Levant and accept that Lebanon is no longer its front line against Israel. For the first time in its modern history, Lebanon could be free of a dominant military spoiler, with the power to effectively kill the state.
However, key to mounting the political will needed for such successful diplomacy is the understanding that Lebanon’s importance extends far beyond its geographic location or its potential as a regional flashpoint. It’s a crucial battleground in the fight over the future of the Middle East. It can either succumb to collapse, pervasive corruption and militia dominance, or it can transform into a functioning democracy with a stable economy and credible institutions — one that offers a stark contrast to Iran’s failing authoritarian vision for the region.
What’s needed now is the effective and urgent mobilization of international and local political will in order to leverage these resources, so that we can finally make sure this is the last war between Israel and Lebanon.
