A fragile year for Lebanon’s president amid global earthquakes

A year into the term of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, the debate rages on amid a political environment that can hardly agree on a vision or an approach and a population that harsh experiences have not taught the importance of reaching a bare minimum consensus.

Today, Lebanon’s problems seem like a drop in the ocean of the region’s troubles and indeed the troubles of the world as a whole. Let us begin with our immediate surroundings and then move farther afield: geographically, no countries are closer to Lebanon than Syria and Israel. While the shadow of the Assads (father and son) has gone after decades, the situation with Israel is entirely different. Syria is a fraternal entity, indeed a twin. That, of course, has never been the case for the relationship with Israel since it was established on the ruins of Palestine, its identity and the interests of its people, Arab brothers to the Lebanese people, after the Nakba of 1948.

Indeed, Lebanon and the Lebanese have long stood by their brothers and sisters and have paid, and continue to pay, the price for Israel’s insistence on erasing Palestinian identity and denying Palestinians their human and political rights. The assaults on Lebanese territory, including Palestinian refugee camps, led to the emergence of resistance movements — Arab nationalist and leftist before they acquired an Islamic identity, with direct support from Iran through Hezbollah.

Today, however, Iran itself finds itself in the eye of the storm. Israel succeeded in weakening Hezbollah and cutting off supplies through Syria following the fall of the Assad regime. Accordingly, developments in Iran will inevitably affect Lebanon and others across the Near East. There is also a broader dilemma: the fate of a regional actor the size of Iran, with its influence, reach and the cultural and sectarian loyalties tied to it. One of the real dangers in the region, particularly for Arab states neighboring Iran, lies in what the current developments will produce, regardless of the final outcome.

One of the real dangers in the region lies in what the current developments in Iran will produce, regardless of the final outcome

Eyad Abu Shakra

The “virus” of a fragmented and divided Iran will not necessarily be confined to its territory; the contagion may spread among all its ethnic, linguistic, religious and sectarian components beyond its borders. At that point, redrawing maps becomes very likely.

Conversely, if the major adversaries of the Tehran regime, led by the Washington-Tel Aviv axis, succeed in toppling the rule of the mullahs, while preserving the state under a Persian nationalist leadership like that of the former shah’s regime, the prospects for reassuring coexistence with Arab neighbors may be slim. Here, history stands as a witness: the era of the “policeman of the Gulf,” the problems of the Shatt Al-Arab and the occupied Gulf islands.

These memories are not easy to erase and will most likely never be erased if Israel’s Likud imposes its vision for the region’s future and presses ahead, fragmenting any large, viable entity across West Asia.

Accordingly, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon (and of course the Gulf states and the Arabian Peninsula, not to mention Turkiye and Egypt) will feel the impact of events in Iran, whatever the final outcome.

In other words, the regional order is now facing a serious and dangerous test. It could disappear before a clear vision of an alternative order has had time to mature. We are no stronger than Europe, which wakes up and goes to sleep anxious. There too, a regional order has been threatened with collapse since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intervention in Ukraine and then US President Donald Trump’s intervention in Venezuela.

In Europe as a whole, NATO stands on the brink of the abyss. The island of Greenland is turning into a detonator that could wipe out all the political convictions around which political elites and networks of strategic interests were shaped.

The European-American scene has grown even more complex with the decline of many moderate parties in Western Europe

Eyad Abu Shakra

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose country shares the longest land border with the US, last week broke a taboo by concluding a massive trade agreement with China. Western analysts immediately interpreted this step as a “practical response” to Washington’s demand that Canada become the 51st US state.

Likewise, the successive signals of solidarity with Denmark by a number of Western European countries over Greenland point to the collapse of trust in the US, their strongest Western ally. It is well known that these two factors have changed the calculus of Europe’s institutional elites, who sense a degree of harmony between Trump and Putin.

The European-American scene has grown even more complex with the decline of many moderate parties (on the right, center and left) in Western Europe and the rise of the hard right across the continent. In parallel with this rise, the far right has won several battles in Latin America, while ambiguity around BRICS, the silent political and economic bloc, remains.

Many eyes are now fixed on the options available to BRICS, especially whether Washington can weaken China’s momentum by prying India away from the group.

Beyond all that, the future of Africa will be particularly intriguing.

• Eyad Abu Shakra is managing editor of Asharq Al-Awsat, where this article was originally published. X: @eyad1949