Has Iran Abandoned Hezbollah in its Fight against Israel in Lebanon?

 Lebanese citizens who fled on the southern villages amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes Monday, settle at a waterfront promenade in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP)
Lebanese citizens who fled on the southern villages amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes Monday, settle at a waterfront promenade in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP)
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Has Iran Abandoned Hezbollah in its Fight against Israel in Lebanon?

 Lebanese citizens who fled on the southern villages amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes Monday, settle at a waterfront promenade in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP)
Lebanese citizens who fled on the southern villages amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes Monday, settle at a waterfront promenade in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP)

Iran appears to have withdrawn itself from the latest confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel on Monday intensified its operations against Iran-backed Hezbollah, striking targets in Lebanon’s South and eastern Bekaa Valley.

Iran seems noticeably absent as it arranges its political affairs with the United States and the West, said Lebanese political observers.

They pointed to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s recent remarks that Tehran was making a “tactical retreat” as it backs down from retaliating to Israeli strikes on Iranian interests. It also seems to have abandoned plans for avenging the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

Most notably, they highlighted the Iranian foreign minister’s statement on Monday that his country is ready to hold talks on its nuclear program in New York where world leaders are meeting for the United Nations General Assembly.

The political observers appeared divided over whether Iran has really abandoned Hezbollah and was ready to exchange it in return for political gains on the negotiations table, or whether the ideological relationship between Iran and Hezbollah was really unbreakable.

Soaid: Hezbollah is abandoned to its fate

Head of the Saydet el-Jabal Gathering former MP Fares Soaid lamented that the scenario that unfolded in Gaza for nearly year is being replicated in Lebanon.

“The coming days will reveal whether Iran is leading the Resistance Axis against Israel or whether it is fighting Tel Aviv through its allies, while it is really focused on negotiations with the United States,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“Day after day, it is becoming evident that members of Iran’s regional proxies are dying while fighting against Israel in order to improve Tehran’s negotiating position with Washington,” he explained.

“The Lebanese people are sensing that Hezbollah, which used to boast of Iran’s support for it, is now waging the battle alone. It is as if it has been left to its fate, while Iran arranges its papers with the West,” he added.

Geopolitical expert Ziad al-Sayegh said the fact that Iran has not joined the Israel’s fiercest battle against Lebanon, does not at all mean that it has abandoned Hezbollah.

He told Asharq Al-Awsat that it was naive to believe that the bond between them could be so easily broken since they share deep ideological ties.

People in Lebanon believe that Iran’s failure to react to the latest dangerous developments in Lebanon, starting with the attack on Hezbollah’s communication devices and killing of senior Radwan unit commanders last week, mean it has abandoned the party and left it to its fate.

Surviving at Hezbollah’s expense

Soaid stressed that the Iranian leadership was trying to “survive this war and perhaps strike a deal at the expense of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.”

“Unfortunately, this is not the first time that a Lebanese party ties its fate to a foreign party and bets wrong,” he added.

He recalled how the Lebanese National Movement “tied its fate” to Palestinian Fatah movement leader Yasser Arafat in the 1970s.

“Syrian President Hafez al-Assad decided to eliminate Fatah, kicking off the process by assassinating Lebanon’s Kamal Jumblatt and newly elected President Bashir al-Gemayel,” noted Soaid.

Arafat couldn’t protect Jumblatt and no foreign power was able to save Gemayel, he explained.

“Regional forces are using internal forces, not the other way around,” he noted. “The situation today demonstrates that Hezbollah is following the orders of Tehran and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, not the other way around,” he added.

Iran would never have gained so much influence in the region had the West not allowed it to run rampant.

Sayegh said the West “has granted Iran cover for years and the people of the region have played the price of this dirty work. The West won’t get out of this situation unscathed.”

“We have entered the era of eliminating extremism that is formed out of nationalist and religious ideology and Israel and Iran are best examples of this,” he stated.

“The Arab world is demanded to follow the course of the establishment of a Palestinian state. Hezbollah must read the historic and geographic truths through the lense of the Lebanese identity,” he urged.

“It must apply the constitution and respect the state’s sovereignty. Therein lies salvation,” he remarked.



Seating Plan for a Pope’s Funeral – It’s Complicated, or Compliqué

Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
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Seating Plan for a Pope’s Funeral – It’s Complicated, or Compliqué

Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)

They may be the most powerful people on earth, but for the seating arrangement at Pope Francis' funeral on Saturday, all foreign leaders will play second fiddle to the Argentines and Italians and surrender to the whims of the French alphabet.

About 130 foreign delegations had so far expressed their desire to attend the funeral, the Vatican said on Friday, and more were expected to do so throughout the day. Those include around 50 heads of state who have been confirmed as attending, among them US President Donald Trump and 10 reigning monarchs.

Apart from the VIPs, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend the funeral in St. Peter's Square, which starts at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Saturday. Italian police have laid on one of the most complex security operations in decades.

The official delegations will sit at a section to the right of the altar at the top of the steps leading toward St. Peter's Basilica.

Pride of place goes to Argentina, Francis' native country, whose president, Javier Milei, will sit in the front row. Milei, a maverick right-wing libertarian, had heaped insults on Francis while he was campaigning in 2023, calling him an "imbecile who defends social justice". But the president shifted his tone after he took office that year.

Next comes Italy, the country that surrounds the Vatican and which agreed in 1929 to recognize its sovereignty as the world's smallest state. It gets the second-best seats in the VIP section also because the pope is bishop of Rome and primate of the Catholic bishops of Italy.

That is when the alphabet in French – still considered the language of diplomacy – kicks in for the other delegations. The countries following Italy are ordered according to their names in French and not in their native languages.

So, it is Etats Unis and not United States, Allemagne instead of Deutschland (Germany), and Pays-Bas instead of Nederland (The Netherlands).

Royalty will take precedence. Reigning monarchs -- expected to include royalty such as the kings and queens of Spain and Belgium and Prince Albert of Monaco -- will be seated in front of other heads of state.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Friday that no distinction would be made between Catholic and non-Catholic royalty for the seating order. After the royals come the remaining heads of state. Trump, who attracted criticism from Francis because of his immigration policies, will sit ahead of many other leaders because Etats Unis begins with an "E".

That alphabetic logic means that Trump - currently engaged in trying to get a peace deal in the war in Ukraine - will not be sitting near Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Former US President Joe Biden, who has been the target of constant criticism by Trump, is attending the funeral, but will not be part of the official US delegation, a diplomatic source said. This means Biden, a lifelong Catholic, should be sitting further back, with other VIPs.