Israeli Gas to Be Pumped to Syria and Lebanon through Arab Pipeline to Curb Iran’s Influencehttps://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3269386/israeli-gas-be-pumped-syria-and-lebanon-through-arab-pipeline-curb-iran%E2%80%99s
Israeli Gas to Be Pumped to Syria and Lebanon through Arab Pipeline to Curb Iran’s Influence
In this Monday, March 29, 2021 file photo, the capital city of Beirut remains in darkness during a power outage as the sun sets, in Lebanon. (AP)
The gas that will be pumped to Lebanon through the Arab pipeline, which stretches from Egypt, Jordan and Syria, is mostly Israeli. The electricity that will be sent to Lebanon through Syria and Jordan is also mostly Israeli, in line with an agreement that was drafted years ago by senior US diplomat Amos Hochstein.
Just days ago, Hochstein himself sponsored border negotiations between Lebanon and Israel. He informed Beirut that the Arab Gas Pipeline will be exempted from the Caesar Act sanctions imposed by Washington on Syria. The US official was also behind a Jordanian-Israeli deal in 2014 that sought to promote an “axis of moderation in the Middle East between moderate Arab countries and Israel.”
Beyond the technical and economic aspects of the new gas deal, several signs indicate that it is ultimately aimed at confronting Iran’s influence in Lebanon and Syria. The greatest evidence of this is that the deal was announced just days within Tehran’s announcement that it was sending oil derivatives to Lebanon through Syria. Beyond the region, Moscow and Washington are also seeing eye-to-eye on this issue despite their varying motives and goals.
A western official quoted a senior Russian official as saying that Israel was the one who encouraged Russia and the US to force the return of the Damascus regime to southern Syria and agree to delivering energy to Lebanon. Israel believes that such a move will help confront Iran’s influence in Lebanon and Syria, said the Russian official. Furthermore, CIA chief William Burns, who had toured the region in recent months, was also involved in the gas deal, which was also backed by National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk.
Drafting the deal demanded extensive efforts and coordination: Establishing security in southern Syria where the gas and energy networks will pass through. Indeed, Russia led “settlements” in recent months that have seen the return of government forces along the border with Jordan. The opposition was forced out of the area, mines are being removed and Amman has since improved its relations with Damascus, with Jordan’s King Abdullah and Syrian President Bashar Assad holding a telephone conversation early in October. Moreover, the Amman-Damascus highway was reopened and discussions have been held over border security and providing incentives to Damascus.
Ministerial meetings between Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Syria have also been held to overcome obstacles in the operation of the gas pipeline and energy network. Also part of the deal is Washington’s pledge to Moscow that the World Bank will fund the project through assistance to Lebanon’s Electricite du Liban (EDL).
Notably, US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea informed Lebanese President Michel Aoun that Washington had agreed to the proposal after holding telephone talks with the Egyptian and Israeli energy ministers. Those talks focused on “future plan to deliver Israeli gas for liquification in Egyptian plants before their export.” Israeli sources said the plan called for “delivering the Israeli gas through natural gas plants in Egypt ahead of their export to a third country.”
Egyptian and Israeli companies have struck several agreements over the years. In 2018, they agreed to the delivery of 64 billion cubic meters of Israeli gas from the Tamar and Leviathan Mediterranean fields to Egypt. The deal is valid for ten years and was worth 15 billion dollars. After Egypt declared self-sufficiency in gas production, it announced that the import of Israeli gas transforms it into a regional energy hub.
On the Jordanian front, Hochstein had kicked off negotiations over an electricity deal between Amman and Tel Aviv in 2012. Years later, Jordan’s National Electric Power Company reached an agreement with the American company representing the Leviathan field over the delivery of 45 cubic meters of gas for electricity production.
Washington’s interest in this project was piqued in order to provide political cover for the gas and electricity projects for Lebanon. American officials informed their Arab counterparts that the projects will be exempt from the Caesar Act that came into effect in mid-2020. Beirut, Cairo and Amman still demanded written guarantees and Hochstein informed the Lebanese officials of the exemptions.
In spite of the technical and political challenges, such as fixing the actual pipeline, removing mines and protecting the border, Washington has sought to remove legal obstacles and Moscow has sought to remove the military ones all for mainly political purposes, as opposed to economic ones.
Lebanese-Born US Envoy Michel Issa Arrives with High Expectationshttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5280966-lebanese-born-us-envoy-michel-issa-arrives-high-expectations
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Issa outlined the contours of his policy, setting out several themes that later became central to his performance
Lebanese-Born US Envoy Michel Issa Arrives with High Expectations
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Issa outlined the contours of his policy, setting out several themes that later became central to his performance
When the new US ambassador to Lebanon arrived in Beirut, he did not need a learning period or special State Department training before taking up his first diplomatic post after a brief retirement from the world of business and automobiles.
Ambassador Michel Issa knows Beirut and the rest of Lebanon better than he knows the corridors of the State Department, with which he had no connection before President Donald Trump appointed him.
Issa was returning to the city where he was born, and to a country he had carried with him on a journey from Lebanon to France and then the United States.
Today, he is coming back as the representative of the world’s most powerful country at one of the most sensitive moments in Lebanese-US relations.
From the moment Issa was appointed US ambassador to Lebanon, it was clear his selection was no routine decision inside the US administration. Washington did not send a traditional career diplomat to Beirut, nor a former security official.
It chose a veteran businessman and banker with deep Lebanese roots and a direct relationship with Trump.
But more importantly, Issa’s appointment came as Lebanon was passing through a historic turning point.
The country was trying to emerge from the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history, while the repercussions of the war on the southern front and the future relationship between the Lebanese state and Hezbollah dominated international and regional discussions.
More than one message
Many saw Issa’s selection as carrying multiple messages.
“On one hand, Washington wanted to send a figure who knows Lebanon from the inside and understands its complex makeup,” his friend, Lebanese lawmaker Fouad Makhzoumi, said.
“On the other hand, it wanted to rely on a man who has the personal confidence of the US president and can convey the White House’s direction directly to one of the most complicated arenas in the Middle East.”
Among the notable steps that accompanied Issa’s move into diplomacy was his decision to renounce Lebanese citizenship before taking up his duties as US ambassador, aimed at removing any potential legal or political ambiguity over dual allegiance.
From Bsous to Wall Street
Michel Issa was born in 1955 in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, but traces his roots to the town of Bsous in the Aley district, in the Mount Lebanon governorate.
He grew up in Lebanon during the years of relative stability that preceded the civil war, and received his school education in Beirut before his family left the country as part of the Lebanese emigration wave of the 1970s.
France was his first stop. There, he continued his studies in economics and finance, and his professional identity began to take shape. He earned a DEUG (Diplôme d'Études Universitaires Générales) in economics from Paris Nanterre University and also studied at the Graduate School of Banking Studies in Paris.
In the late 1970s, he moved to the United States, the country where he would build his career and achieve his biggest successes.
Finance and banking
For decades, Issa worked in finance and banking, moving between prominent international institutions.
He held executive posts at well-known banks and investment firms, gaining broad experience in debt management, corporate restructuring, investments, and financial markets.
In American finance, he built a reputation as a man able to handle complex files, manage risk, and find solutions to financial crises.
Over the years, his name became known in economic and investment circles, especially in New York, where he settled and built a wide network of professional relationships.
Entering Trump’s circle
Perhaps the most intriguing part of Issa’s biography is his relationship with Trump. He was not merely a political supporter of the US president.
US media reports have described him as close to Trump and as one of his golf partners. Their relationship goes back years before they both entered direct political work.
When Trump announced Issa’s nomination as US ambassador to Lebanon, he used striking words to describe him, praising his broad financial experience and his career in business and international trade.
In Beirut, as in Washington, that relationship is not viewed as a secondary detail.
“An ambassador who has a direct channel to the White House has a wider margin of movement than what is usually available to traditional diplomats,” Makhzoumi said. “For that reason, Issa’s appointment gained added importance in Beirut.”
He said Issa “does not represent only the State Department, but also carries the confidence of the US president himself.”
For Lebanon, that relationship gives the post a different weight. Every message Issa conveys or position he announces, is read as closer to the political mood of the White House than to a routine diplomatic view.
An ambassador under scrutiny
From his first weeks in Lebanon, Issa found himself drawn into files that went beyond traditional diplomacy. He took part in meetings on the future of US support for the Lebanese army, economic reform files, and international efforts to consolidate stability along the southern border.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Issa outlined the contours of his policy, setting out several themes that later became central to his performance.
He spoke of the importance of supporting Lebanon’s “legitimate” institutions, strengthening economic reforms, and “empowering the state to extend its authority” across all its territory.
Those positions were welcomed by some Lebanese forces, while drawing reservations and criticism from others who saw them as an extension of the traditional US approach toward Lebanon.
But what made his presence different from many of his predecessors was his Lebanese background.
Issa speaks Arabic fluently, understands the details of Lebanese political life, and knows the fine distinctions among its forces, parties, and sects. These elements give him a greater ability to read the local scene.
At the same time, that background has made him a target of greater scrutiny. Every statement he makes is sometimes read from two angles, that of the US ambassador and that of the Lebanese who knows the details of the country where he serves.
A very private life
Away from politics and diplomacy, Issa appears different from the stereotypical image of many financiers. Sport plays an important role in his life.
Official information says he was an international athletics competitor in his youth, before his interest later shifted to other sports, most notably tennis and golf.
That sporting background also reveals an important side of his character. Discipline, competition, and the pursuit of results are qualities many link to his long career in finance.
Golf also played a role beyond personal hobby. It became one of the bridges that connected him to Trump, who is known for his passion for the sport.
At the family level, unlike many public figures, Issa is careful to keep his family life out of the spotlight. Available information about his wife and two sons is extremely limited, reflecting a clear desire to separate his private life from his public work.
Between Lebanese roots and US interests
In reality, Issa stands at the intersection of two parallel paths. The first is personal, beginning in the neighborhoods of Beirut and the town of Bsous more than half a century ago. The second is political and professional, leading him to the heart of the US administration.
Perhaps the uniqueness of his experience lies in combining these two paths. He understands the complexities of the Lebanese system, but is tasked with implementing policies set in Washington, not Beirut.
Makhzoumi said Issa is “clear, bold, and transparent.”
“He wants Lebanon, and we are betting on his Lebanese origins and on what he is trying to do, because it leads us toward a better Lebanon,” Makhzoumi said. “He is building good relations with everyone, and that is the reason for the ambassador’s strength.”
“Lebanon exists in areas where Israel is on one side, and Syria is on the other, and it has the Palestinian file. Here, there is also the distinctive Christian presence in the region,” he added.
“All of this creates a unique case. But if there is no one to convey the picture to the White House, as Ambassador Issa does, that will not happen.”
“Ambassador Issa can speak directly with those who make decisions in the United States, and this gives us a point of strength. We can build on it to obtain a better understanding in the US of the Lebanese position.”
When Hafez al-Assad Opened Lebanon’s Gate to Tehranhttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5280719-when-hafez-al-assad-opened-lebanon%E2%80%99s-gate-tehran
When Hafez al-Assad Opened Lebanon’s Gate to Tehran
Hafez al-Assad made it easier for Khamenei to consolidate control over Lebanon through Hezbollah. (AFP)
One week after the Iranian Revolution declared victory on February 11, 1979, two photographs emerged from Tehran that, in retrospect, help explain many of the storms that would later sweep the Middle East, from Iran’s expanding regional influence to what the author calls “Sinwar’s Flood."
In the first image, two men sit side by side on a carpet. It is impossible to tell the story of the modern Middle East without dwelling on both of them. One is Ayatollah Khomeini, the architect of the Iranian Revolution. The other is Yasser Arafat, the founder of the modern Palestinian national movement.
Standing near Arafat are the Lebanese cleric Hani Fahs, the Iranian cleric Sadegh Khalkhali, and Ahmad Khomeini, the revolutionary leader’s son. Near Khomeini stand Mahmoud Abbas — today president of the Palestinian Authority — and Hani al-Hassan, a senior Fatah leader who would become the first Palestinian ambassador to revolutionary Iran.
In the second photograph, Arafat is shown addressing a crowd after the Palestinian flag was raised over the building that had housed the Israeli embassy in Tehran.
Arafat and Khomeini, with Mahmoud Abbas standing next to his right.
The symbolism of those scenes was profound. During his long years in exile in Najaf, Khomeini had understood that Palestine was the magic word that opened Arab and Muslim hearts. He may have believed that embracing the Palestinian cause would provide a passport for a Shiite revolution seeking entry into the vast Sunni world. It was natural that Tehran would celebrate Arafat, whose legitimacy was unrivaled after he had become the global symbol of the Palestinian struggle. It was equally natural that Arafat would welcome Iran’s dramatic shift from a state aligned with Israel to one proclaiming full support for the Palestinian revolution.
As always, Arafat lavished praise on his hosts. Yet experience had taught him not to surrender his cards to anyone. He had spent years dealing with powerful leaders who sought to use the Palestinian cause either to legitimize their own regimes or to project influence far beyond their borders.
Palestine was not Arafat’s only asset. He operated on Israel’s border through southern Lebanon, a frontier that had effectively become a Palestinian-Israeli border before eventually evolving into an Iranian-Israeli one. Although Lebanon at the time lay under the domination of Hafez al-Assad and the Syrian army — and despite Assad’s deep hostility toward Arafat — the Palestinian leader still controlled the decision of war and peace in southern Lebanon. That authority would later pass to Hassan Nasrallah, the late secretary-general of Hezbollah.
Arafat quickly grasped the sensitivities surrounding relations with Iran. Here was a Shiite revolution emerging in a predominantly Sunni world. The new regime’s commitment to “exporting the revolution” alarmed governments near and far. When the Iran-Iraq War erupted, Arafat attempted to play the role of mediator. He recalibrated his calculations, preserving room for strong relations with the Gulf Arab states, whose financial support remained indispensable to the Palestinian movement.
Any reading of 1979 must also account for another major development. That year Egypt completed its departure from the military front of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The process culminated in the signing of the Camp David Accords by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin under the sponsorship of US President Jimmy Carter. The agreement completed the geopolitical earthquake Sadat had triggered in 1977 when he traveled to Jerusalem and offered peace to Israel.
Egypt’s departure left a vacuum in the Arab world. That vacuum made it easier for Khomeini’s revolution to advance across the region.
Beginning in 1990, Iran would receive three major unintended gifts. The first came from Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait and redirected global attention toward the “Iraqi threat.” The second came from Osama bin Laden, whose attacks of September 11, 2001, focused the world on al-Qaeda terrorism. The third arrived when the United States toppled Iraq’s Baathist regime in 2003, allowing Iranian influence to flow into Iraq’s institutions and political structure.
What many overlooked was that Iran had already received two crucial gifts during the 1980s from Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.
The first came after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Assad agreed to allow hundreds of members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to enter Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley and train Lebanese Shiite Islamist groups seeking to organize resistance against Israeli occupation. From those groups, Hezbollah would eventually emerge.
The second gift arrived in the mid-1980s, when Assad decided to subordinate the Lebanese National Resistance Front — known by its Arabic acronym, Jammoul — to the Islamic resistance led by Hezbollah.
Elias Atallah, one of Jammoul’s coordinators, later recounted to Asharq Al-Awsat a dramatic meeting that preceded a series of assassinations targeting Communist Party leaders.
According to Atallah, Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon Major General Ghazi Kanaan summoned him and Lebanese Communist Party Secretary-General George Hawi to an urgent meeting at a hotel in the Beqaa Valley.
Speaking on behalf of “Mr. President,” Kanaan bluntly informed them that Jammoul must coordinate its operations in advance with Syrian intelligence. He demanded more than that. Jammoul, he said, should coordinate with Hezbollah, or even merge with it.
The two men refused. Relations between the Communist Party and Hezbollah were already extremely tense. Kanaan abruptly ended the meeting with a warning: “You will pay a heavy price.”
A campaign of assassinations followed, targeting prominent communist figures. Kanaan scarcely concealed his satisfaction. At one funeral, he reportedly approached party members and remarked: “Is this better?”
An undated photo of Nasrallah during his youth. (Iran supreme leader’s office)
The Syrian intervention dealt a devastating blow to the leftist resistance. Islamic resistance became the sole banner of armed struggle against Israel. Hezbollah reaped the benefits. In 2000, Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon under fire and without extracting political concessions from Beirut. Iran now stood on Israel’s northern frontier through Hezbollah.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein, the road linking Tehran to Beirut through Baghdad and Damascus opened fully. What some called the “Axis of Resistance” and others the “Shiite Crescent” had taken shape.
At the beginning of the 1980s, many believed Saddam Hussein’s war had trapped the embers of Khomeini’s revolution within Iran’s borders. Then, in June 1982, an unexpected window opened.
Israel invaded Lebanon, besieged Beirut, and forced the Palestine Liberation Organization to leave the country. The image of Beirut bidding farewell to Yasser Arafat as he departed into another exile marked the end of an era.
Amid the invasion, George Hawi, Elias Atallah, Mohsen Ibrahim — the secretary-general of the Organization of Communist Action in Lebanon — and several comrades launched the Lebanese National Resistance Front against Israeli occupation. Their operations forced Israeli troops to withdraw quickly from Beirut.
At the same time, three Shiite Islamist groups inspired by Iran’s revolution entered discussions aimed at creating a unified resistance movement. The talks produced what became known as the “Document of the Nine,” which was taken to Tehran and received Khomeini’s blessing. He instructed the Revolutionary Guards to support the unity of these groups, which would eventually dissolve into Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s current secretary-general, Naim Qassem, later recounted the organization’s founding in his book Hezbollah: The Method, the Experience, the Future. He identified the movement’s three pillars as Islam as a way of life, resistance to Israel as the highest priority, and allegiance to Wilayat al-Faqih as the ultimate reference point.
Hafez al-Assad often told visitors that the Iranian Revolution compensated for the strategic loss of Egypt. Those familiar with his thinking, however, suggest additional motives.
He was deeply hostile to Saddam Hussein. He also believed that Gulf Arab concerns about revolutionary Iran would make Syria indispensable to the Gulf states, bringing political and financial advantages. Allowing Hezbollah to grow in Lebanon fit neatly into that calculation.
Hezbollah was born under the mantle of the Wilayat al-Faqih and on the front line with Israel. It soon found itself on a front line with the United States as well.
In October 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into the US Marine barracks in Beirut, sending a convoy of coffins back to Ronald Reagan’s America.
Syria later played a crucial role in exempting Hezbollah from the disarmament provisions imposed on Lebanese militias after the Taif Agreement. Iran spared no effort in supporting the movement, enabling it to build a steadily expanding military and political force. Together, Tehran and Damascus also helped consolidate the Lebanese Shiite political order, bringing Hezbollah into partnership with the Amal Movement, led by Nabih Berri, who has served as speaker of parliament since 1992.
Old conflicts between Amal and Hezbollah gradually faded. Berri became a nearly permanent necessity for Hezbollah, helping shield it from political isolation, though never fundamentally altering its deeper ideological program.
The first decade of the twenty-first century produced scenes whose consequences extended far beyond their immediate settings. On April 9, 2003, an American armored vehicle pulled down Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. The man whose statues inspired fear simply by their presence was denied the final showdown he had imagined. The army that had fought Iran for eight years evaporated before the American military machine.
From left to right: Qasem Soleimani, Hassan Nasrallah and Ali Khamenei. (Iran supreme leader’s office)
Saddam was not far from Firdos Square when his statue fell. He chose resistance, badly misjudging both American power and the depth of Iraqi opposition to his rule.
Another defining image followed.
On December 13, 2003, Saddam was captured by US forces near Tikrit. Soldiers pulled him from a small underground hideout on a farm in al-Dawr. Television screens around the world carried the image of an American soldier inspecting the former Iraqi president’s mouth. He offered no resistance. Stories that he always carried a final bullet to avoid the humiliation of capture proved false.
Yet Saddam, obsessed with his place in history, succeeded in shaping part of his legacy. He denied the legitimacy of the court trying him and repeatedly insisted that he remained Iraq’s lawful president. Judge Raouf Rashid Abdel Rahman, who presided over the tribunal that sentenced Saddam to death, later told the author that “he was a difficult man, but he never asked for anything for himself.”
Saddam remained composed when the noose was placed around his neck.
The new Iraqi authorities made a grave mistake by scheduling the execution for December 30, 2006, the first day of Eid al-Adha. Another error followed. According to former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Saddam’s body was brought to his residence in Baghdad’s Green Zone after the execution, where Maliki briefly viewed it and reproached the dead man.
The images of Saddam’s capture, trial, and execution — combined with other factors — helped inflame Sunni-Shiite tensions inside Iraq and beyond. For many Iraqis, regardless of Saddam’s crimes, the execution appeared less like justice than revenge carried out on behalf of the United States, Iran, and Iraq’s pro-Iranian opposition.
Qassem Soleimani would soon devote himself to destabilizing the American military presence in Iraq, aided by Bashar al-Assad and Hassan Nasrallah.
Then another dramatic event emerged from Beirut.
On February 14, 2005, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in a massive explosion that tore through Beirut and scattered his body across the scene. The murder shook Lebanon like an earthquake. Huge crowds poured into the streets demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops, which had been stationed in Lebanon since 1976.
Later that month, the author met Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and repeatedly asked whether Syrian security services had been involved.
Assad categorically denied any connection.
“Not from near or far,” he insisted.
Yet questions multiplied. Had he spoken with such certainty because he knew who was responsible?
The international investigation wandered through years of political interference, misinformation, and false witnesses. Eventually, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon indicted members of Hezbollah.
British soldiers are seen in Iraq’s Basra on April 7, 2003. (AFP)
The case generated enduring questions. Was Hariri killed on the fault line between Sunnis and Shiites? Was he eliminated because of regional rivalries? Was he seen as an obstacle to a broader strategic project? Was he punished for trying to restore Lebanon as a normal state rather than leave it a missile platform in the conflict with Israel?
Hariri’s assassination transformed both Lebanon and Syria.
Bashar al-Assad was forced to swallow the bitter pill of withdrawing Syrian troops from Lebanon, a country his father had dominated for decades. Hafez al-Assad had bent much of Lebanon’s political class to his will and established the rules of the Syrian era. Governments bore the fingerprints of Syrian intelligence officers. Parliament was summoned and complied.
That era exiled General Michel Aoun and imprisoned Samir Geagea.
One major figure remained: Rafik Hariri. He had accepted operating under the Syrian umbrella but never abandoned his dream of rebuilding a functioning Lebanese state. His growing domestic, Arab, and international stature worried the narrow circle around Assad, and later worried Hezbollah as well.
Syria lost its Lebanese foothold, a platform that had amplified its influence and enriched many of its officers.
What followed was a Syria trapped within its own borders, relying on coercion and burdened by economic failure, while Lebanon became polarized between the March 14 movement and the March 8 alliance led by Hezbollah.
Many believe these developments helped set the stage for the July 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, a conflict in which Qasem Soleimani played an active role behind the scenes.
After the war, Bashar al-Assad openly emphasized the importance of Syria’s strategic depth for Hezbollah. He even acknowledged that Syrian soldiers in civilian clothing had transported missiles to the movement and sometimes all the way to southern Lebanon.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 ended the war, deploying the Lebanese Army alongside UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon. The conflict partially altered the political landscape created after Hariri’s assassination and gave Hezbollah another justification for retaining its arsenal.
Many Lebanese politicians fundamentally misunderstood Hezbollah and its weapons. They assumed that Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon should have been enough for the movement to disarm, just as other militias had done after Taif. They overlooked the regional dimension of Hezbollah’s arsenal and its connection to Iran’s broader project.
In May 2008, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government challenged Hezbollah’s private telecommunications network, declaring it illegal. The response was swift. Hezbollah turned its weapons inward and effectively seized control of Beirut, sending a clear message: the arsenal was here to stay.
The episode inflicted a deep wound on relations between Hezbollah’s community and many other Lebanese groups.
When the first spark of the Arab Spring erupted in Tunisia on December 17, 2010, Bashar al-Assad felt little concern. He believed Syria was different. More likely, his confidence reflected faith in a vast security apparatus whose brutality would deter dissent.
On March 15, 2011, Assad’s security services dealt with the children of Daraa according to that same doctrine of repression. Protests spread and became a nationwide uprising.
Assad showed little genuine interest in compromise. His generals viewed the revolt through the lens of minority insecurity and foreign conspiracy. The regime escalated from repression to barrel bombs and chemical weapons.
As opposition forces approached Assad’s presidential palace, two men rushed to his rescue: Qassem Soleimani and Hassan Nasrallah.
Iran had no intention of allowing Syria — the central link in its regional axis — to be torn away.
Rafik al-Hariri’s assassination was a turning point that allowed Iran to impose control over Lebanon. (AFP)
Soleimani persuaded Russian President Vladimir Putin to commit Russian air power to Assad’s defense. Hezbollah deployed fighters into Syria in 2013, while militias organized by Soleimani poured into the battlefield.
The regime survived. The cost was enormous.
The intervention deepened Sunni-Shiite wounds that remain visible today, not least in the rhetoric that dominates Syrian social media.
Years later in Paris, after defecting from Bashar al-Assad’s regime, former Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam remarked that Hafez al-Assad could never have imagined Iranian influence in Lebanon growing to such an extent, or that his son would one day depend on pro-Iranian militias, including Hezbollah, to save his rule.
By then, Hezbollah was widely described as a regional force too large to fit within Lebanon’s political equation.
The author recalls a conversation with former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh before the end of the decade. In his characteristic style, Saleh asked: “Why is Hezbollah taking young Houthis to Damascus, sending them on to Lebanon without passport stamps, and training them in camps in the Bekaa Valley?”
The question hinted at a wider regional project already taking shape.
When Hezbollah launched its support front for “Sinwar’s Flood,” and later its support front for Iran itself, many Lebanese were reminded that their country had been living under the echo of Iranian power since the 1980s.
By the second decade of the twenty-first century, talk circulated within the so-called Resistance Axis of a coming “major blow” - a strike that many believed Yahya Sinwar dreamt of delivering through a rain of rockets and drones launched from multiple fronts across the region.
Trump’s ‘Crazy’ Rebuke Undercuts Netanyahu at a Critical Momenthttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5280695-trump%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98crazy%E2%80%99-rebuke-undercuts-netanyahu-critical-moment
US President Donald Trump points his finger towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they shake hands during a press conference after meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, US, December 29, 2025. (Reuters)
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Trump’s ‘Crazy’ Rebuke Undercuts Netanyahu at a Critical Moment
US President Donald Trump points his finger towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they shake hands during a press conference after meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, US, December 29, 2025. (Reuters)
Benjamin Netanyahu has long portrayed himself to the Israeli public as being uniquely adept in dealing with Donald Trump, capable of winning and sustaining the US president's backing.
But an acrimonious phone call this week where the president called the prime minister "[expletive] crazy", first leaked to the media and later publicly confirmed by Trump himself, laid bare the strains that have at times emerged between the two leaders.
Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged the call was among the most heated the premier has had with Trump. One of the officials said the leak had damaged Netanyahu politically ahead of this year's national election.
The US website Axios broke news of the call on Monday, saying Trump had angrily confronted Netanyahu over Israeli threats to resume air strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs. "Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this," Trump was quoted as saying.
The US president told Netanyahu not to target Beirut after Iran had warned that Israeli strikes in Lebanon were undermining talks to end the war, which began with joint US-Israeli attacks and which is deeply unpopular among Americans.
US-ISRAEL DIFFERENCES 'NOW VERY PUBLIC', SAYS THINK-TANK HEAD
A senior Israeli official told Reuters that Netanyahu had made clear to Trump that any pause in Israeli plans to strike Beirut would only work if Hezbollah stopped hitting northern Israel. Trump was receptive to this position, the official said.
Following their call, Trump said Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to stop shooting each other, prompting accusations by Netanyahu's political opponents, and some within his own government, that he had ceded Israel's sovereignty to the US.
"A total protectorate," said opposition leader Yair Lapid, suggesting Netanyahu had put Israel in the position of an American client state.
Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving prime minister, has repeatedly clashed with Republican and Democratic administrations. Yet, Israel has remained Washington's closest Middle East ally.
Nimrod Goren, the president of Mitvim, an Israeli think tank, said "the differences are now very public", unlike in the past when they were usually quietly managed behind closed doors.
Trump told the New York Post on Wednesday that he was "a little bit perturbed" by Netanyahu constantly attacking Lebanon, but added: "We've worked very well together."
Trump's decision to join Israel in striking Iran, not once but twice in the space of a year, appeared to mark a major victory for Netanyahu, who had spent decades urging Washington to use its military power to halt Tehran's nuclear program.
But Trump has also taken a series of steps that many in Israel have viewed as cutting against the country's interests, including ending US strikes on Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis and ordering a halt to Israel's 12-day war with Iran in June 2025.
ISRAEL NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN US-IRAN PEACE TALKS
And while the United States and Israel jointly launched the campaign against Iran in February, Israel has not been directly involved in the US-Iran talks to end the war. Those negotiations have been conducted through Pakistan, a rare intermediary that has no formal diplomatic ties with Israel.
The wars with Iran and Hezbollah have been widely popular in Israel, including among supporters of Netanyahu's political rivals, and much of the public wants the fighting to continue.
That stands in contrast to the US, where many voters, including members of Trump's conservative base, oppose the war.
Trump has repeatedly said that the US was close to an agreement with Iran on ending the war. Tehran insists any deal include Israel halting attacks on its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.
"We are basically being forced to stop," said Israeli pollster Mitchell Barak. "We don't have a say in this anymore."
At the start of this year's war with Iran, Netanyahu said that the Iranian government would be toppled, and its nuclear and missile programs destroyed. He has also said that Hezbollah, which attacked Israel in March in support of Iran, must be disarmed in southern Lebanon. So far, none of these goals have been achieved.
Recent domestic polls have repeatedly shown that Netanyahu's coalition government, the most right-wing in the country's history, would fail to win a majority at the next election.
Netanyahu, Goren said, was working to accommodate Trump's demands because the Israeli premier will need the president's support closer to the elections, including a possible visit by the US leader to Israel. Before the war with Iran, Trump was widely expected in Israel to visit in April to be awarded the state's highest civilian honor. He last visited in October.
NOTION OF TRUMP-NETANYAHU RIFT OVERSTATED, EX-ADVISER SAYS
But some Israelis were not comfortable with the extent that Trump appears able to influence Israeli military decisions, Goren said. In contrast, in the US, some Trump critics say that Netanyahu has outsized influence on US foreign policy.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu's national security minister said on Thursday that there are times when an Israeli leader must know how to say "no" even to the US president.
Nadav Shtrauchler, a former Netanyahu adviser, said the Israeli premier was counting on Trump's support in the election.
"The way the war (with Iran and Hezbollah) will end will affect, more than anything, the result of the election."
Trump has often lavished public praise on Netanyahu and has publicly lobbied Israel's president to pardon the prime minister, who is on trial in Israel on corruption-related charges.
But Trump has also publicly emphasized how much, he says, Israel needs Washington, and has used expletives in the past when talking about Israel, including publicly saying last year that Israel and Iran "don't know what the [expletive] they are doing."
For his part, Netanyahu describes Trump as "the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House", offering the kind of public praise that resonates with the Republican president, who is known to prize personal loyalty and validation.
Since the US and Israel opened the war with Iran, Netanyahu has at times said that he speaks with Trump almost daily, often characterizing their relationship to the Israeli public as one between peers who make decisions together.
Asked about the call in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, Netanyahu said that like in the "best of families" there at times had been "tactical disagreements" with the US president.
A US official told Reuters the phone call was one of several in which the president has been very direct with Netanyahu but that the two remain friends and close allies.
"Their conversations are pretty direct," the official said.
The official, and another Israeli source briefed on the US-Israel relationship, dismissed any suggestion of a material change in the relationship between Netanyahu and Trump.
However, the Israeli source acknowledged that the leak of the call - and Trump's subsequent confirmation of it - was not helpful to Netanyahu ahead of an election that he is polling to lose.
Shtrauchler, the former adviser to Netanyahu, said the perception of a rift with Trump was overstated and that the two leaders still appeared to remain aligned on most major issues.
But an abrupt end to the wars with Iran and Hezbollah, however, would pose a "huge problem": for Netanyahu, he said, as many Israelis would see it as Trump having forced his hand.
"No one wants here to feel like we are another star on the (US) flag. We want to feel independence," Shtrauchler said.
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