My thoughts turned to Plato, the inspiration of Western philosophy, as I listened to this political conversation between two cultivated Lebanese friends at a café on the bank of the Seine. Not because of any philosophical bent in what they said- their talk stayed within a purely political and intellectual frame- but because of the supreme importance Plato attached to dialogue as a means by which contradictory ideas interact, in the hope of arriving at truth.
Even so, the long Parisian conversation produced no meeting point; the two visions remained entirely apart. Its importance lies rather in what it revealed of the struggle of ideas and feelings about nations and about the world in this deeply turbulent historical moment, and in how clearly it showed the degree to which visions differ as individuals' circumstances differ and their priorities diverge. One of the two has lived in France for forty years; the other is merely passing through the city of the Seine.
And although the first affirms his concern for the land of the cedars, the logic of his speech makes plain that his priority is the French situation. The second's absolute priority is defending the Lebanese idea amid the storms of the moment. Doing justice to this conversation would require a whole volume, but I will try to summarize it as follows.
What is striking about the interlocutor whose priority is the French condition is that he adopts the logic of the liberal internationalist tendency- what is known as the left- to the letter. The axis of his talk is a comprehensive assault on the American president, Donald Trump, with the sharpest criticism directed at his decisions, his pronouncements, and his manner of expressing himself, and above all at the war he launched on Iran- a war that has plunged the world into a major crisis no one knows how will end, and for which France and Europe are paying a heavy price.
It is clear that this interlocutor sympathizes implicitly with Iran, even if he does not say so openly, much like the French and European left. And he is implicitly betting on Iran to prolong the war so as to entangle Trump and his administration further and further, in the hope that the hardline nationalist Republican tendency in the United States will fall and the Obama-era Democratic Party return to power.
For Iran's collapse in this war would mean strengthening the hardline nationalist current in France and Europe- what is known as the far right- and raising the possibility of its coming to power in the French presidential election next May, and in coming electoral battles across the old continent: in his view, an imminent danger and a great catastrophe for Europe's present and its future.
The second interlocutor, whose priority is the Lebanese question, views the Middle Eastern, European, and international situation through the window of the Lebanese project and the dangers surrounding it. He holds that the greatest danger threatening the Lebanon of pluralism, freedom, culture, quality of life, and openness to modernity is the Iran of the Khomeinist Islamic revolution, present as an armed parallel state inside the geography of Greater Lebanon, and that the existential battle of the Lebanese idea is with the Iran of the Supreme Leader.
He holds that everything which weakens Iran and its state within Lebanon serves the Lebanese project, and that all that concerns him in President Trump and his administration is the will and the capacity to weaken Iran- even though the Lebanese have no possibility whatsoever of influencing the American card in any direction.
This interlocutor draws attention to Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 "without condition or reservation," and to its demand for a return to the 1949 armistice agreement, which would have suited the Lebanese interest exactly.
But the Iranian axis, then allied with the Assad regime in Syria, rejected that equation and aborted it, choosing instead to exploit the Israeli withdrawal to consolidate its own presence and its occupation of southern Lebanon- which inflamed matters anew and led to the present destructive war.
He notes with sorrow that there is no genuine interest in the future of the Lebanese idea, not only among the forces of the French left but among the governing conservative center as well, whose first concern is maintaining the balance with the Iranian factor in Lebanon so as to play on the contradictions and secure its interests, leaving the Lebanese idea suspended where it is; and that the French left, for all its concern with the Palestinian cause, gives the Lebanese question scarcely any attention.
What actually matters to this interlocutor in the coming French and European electoral battles is the extent to which their contenders are committed to supporting the Lebanese idea "in the sea of storms surrounding it, and against the existential dangers that threaten it."
That is the sole criterion through which he views what is happening, and by which he fixes his position toward the European currents contending for power, whatever their identities. His question is one, his priority is one, and everything else is secondary.
The gap between the two remained deep and unbridgeable, each thoroughly astonished at the other's position.
