War Piles Yet More Trauma on Lebanon's Exhausted People

'People just can't anymore,' said Rami Bou Khalil, head of psychiatry at Beirut's Hotel Dieu hospital - AFP
'People just can't anymore,' said Rami Bou Khalil, head of psychiatry at Beirut's Hotel Dieu hospital - AFP
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War Piles Yet More Trauma on Lebanon's Exhausted People

'People just can't anymore,' said Rami Bou Khalil, head of psychiatry at Beirut's Hotel Dieu hospital - AFP
'People just can't anymore,' said Rami Bou Khalil, head of psychiatry at Beirut's Hotel Dieu hospital - AFP

Ask a Lebanese person how they are, and you're likely to be met with a heavy pause or a pained smile. Years of crisis have drained them, and now Israeli air strikes are pushing many to breaking point.

Cartoonist Bernard Hage, who draws under the name Art of Boo, summed it up a few weeks ago with a layer cake.

These layers are "Financial Collapse", "Pandemic", the 2020 "Beirut Port Explosion", "Political Deadlock" and "Mass Depression".

"War" is now the cherry on top.

Carine Nakhle, a supervisor at suicide helpline Embrace, says the trauma is never-ending.

"The Lebanese population is not OK," she said, AFP reported.

The hotline's some 120 operators take shifts around the clock all week to field calls from people in distress.

Calls have increased to some 50 a day since Israel increased its airstrikes against Lebanon on September 23.

The callers are "people who are in shock, people who are panicking", Nakhle said.

"Many of them have been calling us from areas where they are being bombed or from shelters."

Israel's bombardment of Lebanon, mostly in the south and in Beirut's southern suburbs, has killed more than 1,100 people and displaced upwards of a million in less than two weeks.

Tens of thousands have found refuge in central Beirut, whose streets now throng with homeless people and where the traffic is even more swollen than usual.

- 'Huge injustice' -

Every night, airstrikes on the southern suburbs force people to flee their homes, as huge blasts rattle windows and spew clouds of debris skywards.

Ringing out across Beirut, the explosions awaken terrible memories: of the massive 2020 Beirut port blast that decimated large parts of the city; of the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006; and of the 1975-1990 civil war.

This latest affliction comes on the back of years of the worst financial crisis in Lebanon's history that has plunged much of its middle class into poverty.

Rita Barotta, 45, lives near the relatively quiet Christian-majority town of Jounieh north of Beirut.

She says she cannot hear the airstrikes, but also that she no longer has the words "to describe what is happening" to Lebanon.

"I no longer know what being me 15 days ago looked like," said the university lecturer in communications, who has thrown herself into helping the displaced.

"Eating, sleeping, looking after my plants -- none of that's left. I'm another me. The only thing that exists now for me is how I can help."

Networking on her phone, Barotta spends her days trying to find shelter or medicine for those in need.

"If I stop for even five minutes, I feel totally empty," she said.

Barotta almost lost her mother in the Beirut port explosion, and says that keeping busy is the only way for her not to feel "overwhelmed and petrified".

"What is happening today is not just a new trauma, it's a sense of huge injustice. Why are we being put through all this?"

- 'Just can't anymore' -

A 2022 study before the war by Lebanese non-governmental organization IDRAAC found that at least a third of Lebanese battled with mental health problems.

Rami Bou Khalil, head of psychiatry at Beirut's Hotel Dieu hospital, said all Lebanese were struggling in one way or another.

"Lebanese have a great capacity for resilience," he said, citing support from family, community and religion.

"But there is this accumulation of stress that is making the glass overflow."

"For years, we have been drawing on our physical, psychological and financial resources. People just can't anymore," he said.

He said he worries because some people who should be hospitalized cannot afford it, and others are relapsing "because they can no longer take a hit".

Many more people were relying on sleeping pills.

"People want to sleep," he said, and swallowing pills is easier when you have neither the time nor the money to be treated.

Nakhle, from Embrace, said many people sought help from non-governmental organizations as they could not afford the $100 consultation fee for a therapist at a private clinic.

At the charity's health centre, the waiting list for an appointment is four to five months long.



Iran’s Centrifuges: The Long Road Towards a Nuclear Bomb

This photo released on Nov. 5, 2019, by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran shows centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, File)
This photo released on Nov. 5, 2019, by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran shows centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, File)
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Iran’s Centrifuges: The Long Road Towards a Nuclear Bomb

This photo released on Nov. 5, 2019, by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran shows centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, File)
This photo released on Nov. 5, 2019, by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran shows centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, File)

The UN nuclear agency has confirmed that Iran plans to install around 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium, according to a report seen by AFP on Friday.

“Iran informed the Agency that it intended to feed” around 6,000 centrifuges at its sites in Fordo and Natanz to enrich uranium to up to five percent, higher than the 3.67 percent limit Tehran had agreed to in 2015.

The Iranian decision came in response to a resolution adopted on November 21 by the UN nuclear watchdog that censures Tehran for what the agency called lack of cooperation.

On Thursday, Iran had threatened to end its ban on acquiring nuclear weapons if Western sanctions are reimposed.

The country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in an interview that the nuclear debate inside Iran is likely to shift towards the possession of its own weapons if the west goes ahead with a threat to reimpose all UN sanctions,

What are centrifuges?

They are precise devices with cylinders that rotate much faster than the speed of sound, to collect enriched uranium atoms.

To explain how centrifugation works, rotating cylinders are much like medical laboratory equipment used to test blood.

The high rotation speeds exert a rotational force that separates the various components of blood as a function of their density and quantity in the sample.

In the case of uranium, the centrifuge operates using the familiar principle of centrifugal force. This force separates two gases of unequal masses in a spinning cylinder or tube. The heavier uranium-238 isotope collects at the outer edges of the cylinder while the lighter uranium-235 collects near the axis of rotation at the center.

Around 20 kg of uranium enriched to a 90% purity level would be needed for a single nuclear weapon. It would take about 1,500 SWU to produce a weapon-equivalent of 90 percent-enriched uranium from this enriched uranium.

At Fordo, Iran is currently using the two only operating cascades of IR-6 centrifuges there to enrich to 60% from 20%.

There are 1,044 centrifuges active at the Fordo uranium enrichment plant, Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian said.

He had earlier asked the Iran Atomic Energy Agency to begin inserting uranium gas into newly activated advanced centrifuges.

Early this month, a spokesperson for the US State Department said Iran's expansion of uranium enrichment activities in defiance of key nuclear commitments is "a big step in the wrong direction”.

His statement came after Tehran announced it would start injecting uranium gas into centrifuges at Fordo.

Dispute

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed in 2015 between Tehran and Western countries, says advanced centrifuges for uranium enrichment could operate until January 2027.

The difference between the first generation of centrifuges (IR-1) and the other generations is speed. The latest generation, IR-6, could enrich uranium up to 10 times faster than the first-generation IR-1, according to Iranian officials.

During the heyday of its nuclear program, Iran operated a total of 10,204 first-generation IR-1 centrifuges at the Natanz and Fordo facilities. But under the deal, Iran's commitments included operating no more than 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges for a period of 10 years.

Although the centrifuges that Iran installed before the 2015 nuclear deal were of the first generation, Tehran’s recent uranium enrichment activity at nuclear sites has reached disturbingly advanced levels, potentially increasing the nuclear proliferation risk.

Major centrifuge activities in Iran

May 2008: Iran installed several centrifuges including more modern models.

March 2012: Iranian media announced 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz.

August 2012: The International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran had installed large parts of the centrifuges at Fordo.

November 2012: An IAEA report confirmed that all advanced centrifuges had been installed at Fordo, although there were only four working centrifuges, and another four fully equipped, vacuum tested, and ready to go.

February 2013: IAEA says Iran has operated 12,699 IR-1 centrifuges at the Natanz site.

June 2018: Iran’s supreme leader revealed Tuesday that it ultimately wants 190,000 nuclear centrifuges — a figure 30 times higher than world powers allowed under the 2015 deal.

September 2019: Iran mounted 22 IR-4, one IR-5, 30 IR-6, and three IR-6 for testing, outside the treaty boundaries.

September 2019: Iran announced it started operating advanced and fast centrifuges to enrich uranium.

November 2024: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announces that his country will operate several thousand advanced centrifuges.

November 2024: Iranian state television broadcasts AEOI Chief Mohammad Eslami announcing that “gasification of a few thousands of new generation centrifuges has been started.”