One month into the resumption of open warfare between Hezbollah and Israel, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam delivered a frank admission: his government is intensifying diplomatic efforts to end the fighting, but the war goes on.
Nawaf Salam © LPS
One month into the resumption of open warfare between Hezbollah and Israel, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam delivered a frank admission: his government is intensifying diplomatic efforts to end the fighting, but the war goes on.
"One month has elapsed since a devastating war, against which we had warned and which most Lebanese feared, a war that has been imposed on our country," Salam said following a cabinet session.
The Lebanese front opened on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel three days after the outbreak of the broader Iran-U.S.-Israel conflict. Since then, the group has continued daily attacks from southern Lebanon, despite the Lebanese government having formally declared all Hezbollah military activity illegal.
More damning still: some of these attacks have been claimed as "joint and simultaneous military operations with the Revolutionary Guards », a formulation Salam said "further entrenches the intertwining of the conflict on our soil with the wars of others, in which we have no national interest whatsoever."
The cabinet has taken measures against Iranian diplomats and Revolutionary Guards operatives in Lebanon. It expelled - or tried to expel - Iran's ambassador Shibani, giving him until March 29 to leave. He is still there. The ultimatum, like so many Lebanese government decisions, remained a dead letter.
Lebanon has a government that speaks with clarity. It has a militia that answers to Tehran and ignores it entirely. One month in, that gap has never been more painfully visible.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a stark and personal threat to Hezbollah leader Naïm Kassem on Thursday, after dozens of rockets were fired at northern Israel at the start of the Jewish Passover holiday.
The scale of Iran's assault on Bahrain is staggering. Since the onset of Iranian aggression, the Bahrain Defence Force (BDF) has intercepted and destroyed 188 ballistic missiles and 429 drones targeting the kingdom, nearly 620 projectiles aimed at a country of barely 1.5 million people.
Emmanuel Macron has spoken. The Strait of Hormuz will not be forced open by military means. It would be "unrealistic," he told reporters during a trip to South Korea, a location that, one must admit, puts him admirably close to the action.
To make this website run properly and to improve your experience, we use cookies. For more detailed information, please check our Cookie Policy.
Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.
