Geagea: Hezbollah is "Finished" in Lebanon

Lebanese Christian leader Samir Geagea delivered a verdict Tuesday that many Lebanese have long wanted to hear but few dared to say out loud: Hezbollah is "finished" in Lebanon,  and Iran, not the Lebanese state, will foot the bill for the destruction it caused.

"All losses sustained by Lebanon must be charged to Iran," declared the leader of the Lebanese Forces on MTV, calling on the Lebanese government to prepare a full damage report and submit it directly to the Islamic Republic. "It is not the Lebanese government that made the decision to go to war,  and we will not accept a single penny being paid by the state to compensate for the losses."

The Militia That Destroyed Lebanon - Now Facing Its Own Destruction

Let us be clear about what Hezbollah has done to Lebanon.

For four decades, this Iranian-funded, Iranian-commanded, Iranian-armed militia held Lebanon hostage, dragging a sovereign state into war, diverting reconstruction funds to its own coffers, embedding its weapons in civilian neighborhoods and using Lebanese soil as a launching pad for Iranian regional ambitions.

It assassinated Lebanon's prime ministers, terrorized its politicians, paralyzed its institutions and turned the country's south into a military zone serving Tehran's interests rather than Beirut's citizens.

And now, after unilaterally opening a new front against Israel on March 2 in solidarity with Iran, without a single vote in the Lebanese cabinet, without a single debate in parliament, without the consent of a single Lebanese citizen outside its own ranks, Hezbollah has brought yet another devastating war to a country already broken by economic collapse, institutional failure and years of criminal governance.

The Agony of a Dying Militia

The signs of Hezbollah's terminal decline are everywhere. Its supreme military commanders have been systematically eliminated. Its Al-Radwan special forces have lost their leadership. 

Its financial networks are being dismantled by US Treasury sanctions. Its Iranian patrons are reeling from the most devastating military campaign against the Islamic Republic since its founding. Its Lebanese political cover is evaporating, with the government banning its military activities, arresting its members and expelling Iran's ambassador.

Even within the Shia community - Hezbollah's traditional base - voices of dissent are growing. The displaced, the bereaved, the economically ruined are asking the question Hezbollah cannot answer: what exactly did this war achieve for Lebanon?

The answer, of course, is nothing. It achieved nothing for Lebanon. It served Iran. It served the Islamic Republic's regional agenda. It served Khamenei, the dead one and the invisible one.

Geagea Is Right - And History Will Vindicate Him

Samir Geagea has spent his entire political career fighting Hezbollah's stranglehold on Lebanon. He was imprisoned for eleven years by a Syrian-dominated state that served Iranian interests. He has watched his country be destroyed, again and again, by a militia that answers to Tehran rather than Beirut.

His demand is not just politically courageous. It is legally and morally correct. Iran made the decision to use Lebanese territory for its war. Iran armed, funded and commanded the force that launched the rockets. Iran must pay.

The Lebanese state - broken, indebted and struggling - should not pay a single cent for a war it did not start, did not want and could not stop.

Hezbollah is not merely weakened. It is politically delegitimized, militarily degraded, financially strangled and diplomatically isolated, in its own country, by its own government, before its own people.

The militia that once called itself the "resistance" has nothing left to resist except the inevitable,  the loss of the political cover, the weapons monopoly and the Iranian lifeline that kept it alive for thirty years.

Samir Geagea called it Tuesday. History will confirm it.

Hezbollah is finished. And Iran will pay.