BEIRUT—As regional and international powers escalate what can only be described as a sustained hybrid war against the Iranian people, Lebanon finds itself perilously exposed—trapped in a web of pressures it neither commands nor can evade.

While the Iranian front is shaped by sanctions, cyber operations, internal destabilization, and diplomatic siege, the Lebanese front represents the parallel theatre of this same confrontation: unrelenting pressure on Hezbollah, translated into military escalation by the Israeli enemy and political coercion imposed on the Lebanese state.

Political circles in Beirut increasingly acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: Lebanon’s resistance stands largely alone.

There is no genuine external readiness to shield it from a sudden crisis, including the risk of open confrontation with the Israeli enemy.

This strategic isolation has emboldened the enemy to intensify its aggression, launching repeated strikes across southern Lebanon and escalating into heavy aerial bombardment in the western and northern Beqaa.

These attacks are neither random nor reactive; they are calculated signals, synchronized with the broader campaign targeting Iran and its regional allies.

Faced with this reality, official Lebanon has adopted a strategy of deliberate delay. Its cautious engagement with the Israeli enemy and the conditions embedded in the unilateral November 2024 ceasefire arrangement are grounded in a single assumption: that time itself can function as a protective buffer. 

By postponing decisive action on the issue of Hezbollah’s weapons, the state hopes that impending regional shifts—whether toward wider war or political accommodation—might eventually generate conditions for internal recalibration. 

Hezbollah, for its part, appears to be operating within the same logic of strategic patience, creating an implicit convergence with the state around deferring the resolution of explosive files.

Lebanon is therefore watching developments in Iran with intense scrutiny, fully aware that the outcome of the hybrid war there will reverberate directly across its own fragile landscape. 

Despite the announcement of an international conference in March to support the Lebanese Army, the underlying signals are far from reassuring. 
The delay preceding the conference functions less as goodwill and more as a conditional grace period, explicitly linked to demands for advancing the second phase of the army’s plan—namely, extending control and addressing weapons north of the Litani River. 

Hezbollah’s categorical rejection of this phase exposes the depth of the domestic impasse and the limits of coercive timelines.

Simultaneously, Israel continues to test red lines with increasing audacity. 

The UNIFIL has publicly condemned Israel’s actions that endangered peacekeepers, including drone attacks carried out in close proximity to patrols—clear violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. Yet these violations persist without consequence, reinforcing the perception that international law is applied selectively, suspended whenever Israel is involved.

On the diplomatic front, another layer of the same war is unfolding. The Israeli enemy, backed tacitly by Washington, is actively working to marginalize France’s role in Lebanon, seeking to remove Paris from the monitoring “mechanism” committee and weaken UNIFIL ahead of its mandate renewal. 

Israeli media have openly framed this effort as part of a broader struggle over power and influence in West Asia, where Washington favors bilateral, U.S.-dominated security arrangements over multilateral frameworks that dilute its control.

All these trajectories converge on a central reality: the pressure exerted on Hezbollah is not an isolated Lebanese matter. It is an integral extension of the hybrid war on Iran, designed to fracture regional alliances, exhaust resistance networks, and recalibrate the balance of power without igniting a full-scale war—at least for now. 

Lebanon’s predicament lies in its dual role as both instrument and casualty of this strategy.
History warns against ignoring such linkages. As long as the hybrid war on Iran remains unresolved, Lebanon will continue to function as an exposed arena—its airspace violated, its political decisions constrained, and its stability held hostage to a confrontation far larger than itself.