There is no doubt that the region’s confrontation with the Iranian regime and its militias has begun to take a different course than what we have witnessed in recent years because of Russia’s failure to achieve its goals in its war against Ukraine, among many other reasons.
It is also no secret that the goals of the Iranian regime to control the Arab region and interfere in its internal affairs are faced by fierce Arab resistance, led by Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf and around the world. Their resistance aims to curb the ambitions of this tyrannical, expansionist and sectarian regime, which has established terrorist militias in countries such as Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
In Lebanon, the same scenario was applied with Hezbollah, where Iran armed the party and trained it to become an auxiliary army to the country’s official forces, using it as a political tool to manipulate, according to its own desires, against the existing regime. It adopted this militia as an army to work under the directives of its supreme leader, aiming to divide the country, fragment its social fabric, control it and use it as a platform to attack and blackmail surrounding countries.
But what is ironic now is that the Iranian regime suffers from a real crisis due to the stumbling nuclear program negotiations and the economic sanctions against it, which threaten the future of its militias in Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon. In order to compensate for this loss, Iran has resorted to more immoral activities, relying on drug trafficking and human trafficking in a number of countries such as in South America and Africa.
Whoever has followed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s recent stances, in which he called on the Arab Gulf states to financially support Lebanon, is well aware of the immense scale of the catastrophe that his party and its allies are suffering from. Nasrallah is the one who used to brag that his funding, equipment, employees’ salaries and his incubating environment came entirely from Iran, and that he was proud of what he called “clean money.”
But whoever reads history well can realize that, for some time, it was impossible for Iran to take control of Lebanon, despite the existence of Hezbollah’s weapons, because one solid man stood still in the face of this project and spared no attempt to deter it from expanding and reaching the state institutions — and there he prevailed. He is the martyr Rafik Hariri, who — after becoming a real obstacle in the face of the Iranian regime — was assassinated in order to change the general situation in Lebanon and allow Hezbollah to take control.
Hariri had many political and diplomatic weapons, but the most important of them was his adherence to a bilateral Islamic-Christian approach to confronting any danger to the Lebanese interior and its fabric of coexistence. He always considered that the union of Muslims and Christians constituted a force capable of preventing Iranian control over Lebanon, thus securing internal stability and providing Beirut with the cover required to restore prosperity, secure job opportunities, build the state and institutions, and maintain coexistence with the components of all other sects.
So, today’s password to restore the glories of the past starts with a real partnership and a golden equation — a joint Islamic-Christian approach — to face the trio of militias, weapons and corruption. This trio has brought Lebanon nothing but destruction, wars, isolation, poverty, starvation and political, economic and social collapses. It has displaced and starved tens of thousands of Lebanese and destroyed their future in a homeland in which they believed.
Today — by monitoring Bahaa Hariri’s initiatives and efforts, the meetings he held in Cyprus with Christian and Islamic personalities, his openness to everyone to discuss all ideas and plans to build a better future for Lebanon, and to discuss the reasons for its collapse in such a rapid manner — we feel hopeful that this country will be saved. The armed militias and the corrupt political class will vanish through restoring the vision and project of the martyr Rafik Hariri.
Today, justice is achieved through the fires we are witnessing inside Iran, most notably the recent bombing of military installations in Isfahan and the demonstrations pervading the Iranian lands. Iran has been poisoned with the same potion it used to poison Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. And Just as Lebanon succeeded in expelling the Syrian occupation after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, this united people will succeed in expelling the Iranian regime, its militias and its corrupt subordinates.
In the end, there is no doubt that Iran and its proxies are experiencing unprecedented conditions that highlight the international discontent with their behavior and a clear desire to curtail their ambitions. Thus, the following question is raised: What has changed after decades of international tolerance for all of Tehran’s violations of the sovereignty of states and its threats to the stability of the region, including the security of maritime navigation? Has Tehran now crossed the world’s red lines?
