Lebanon's most embarrassing billboard problem just got fixed

Lebanon's Interior Minister Ahmad Hajjar ordered Thursday the removal of pro-Iran banners that had been displayed along the road leading to Beirut's international airport, the country's most visible gateway to the world.

The posters, featuring Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and his late father Ali Khamenei alongside the slogan "Thank You Loyal Iran," appeared in the days following the announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, a deal negotiated between Iran and the United States, without Lebanon at the table.

The airport road has long served as an ideological billboard for Hezbollah and its ally Amal. In 2022, Lebanon's Tourism Ministry was forced to ask both groups to replace their partisan signage with tourism advertisements, a request that illustrated, with painful clarity, who actually controls public space in that part of Beirut.

The appearance of banners thanking Iran on Lebanon's most internationally visible artery, celebrating a deal the Lebanese government did not negotiate, is not an accident. It is a statement, Tehran’s way of reminding the world, and the Lebanese themselves, who holds real power in the country.

Minister Hajjar framed his order in bureaucratic terms,  »organising public space and ensuring the application of laws and regulations." But the reality is starker: the Lebanese state is still fighting, street by street and billboard by billboard, to assert authority over its own territory.