BEIRUT — Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem's speech on Saturday, addressed to Israel’s and America’s tools in Lebanon under the striking declaration, “We are the most rational,” was not a rhetorical flourish, but rather a political indictment. 

At the core of Sheikh Qassem’s message lies a fundamental truth often distorted in Lebanese discourse: Iran and Hezbollah are not reckless projects of chaos, but a sovereign project that categorically refuses submission to imperial guardianship.

The timing of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s interview—marking one year since his election—coincided with escalating talk of a potential American strike on Iran. 

Though no organic link exists between the two events, Aoun’s remarks unmistakably reflected a prevailing assumption within his political environment: that Iran’s time is up, that regime change is imminent, and that Hezbollah will soon be strategically weakened.

From this flawed premise came his renewed calls to ‘confine weapons to the state’ and his lectures to Hezbollah about ‘rationality.’”

These statements were not neutral or accidental; they were a calculated wager on foreign intervention to resolve an internal Lebanese balance that the state itself has failed to manage.

However, Sheikh Qassem’s response was measured and politically lucid, reaffirming Hezbollah’s commitment to its weapons as a means of protecting Lebanon, while reminding the state of its unfulfilled responsibilities.

Further, he exposed the dubious agendas of political actors who speak the language of sovereignty while outsourcing national decisions to Washington and Tel Aviv. 

When Sheikh Qassem emphasized that the ceasefire agreement constituted a single, indivisible phase—fully implemented by Lebanon and violated entirely by Israel—he dismantled the selective legalism used to pressure the resistance while excusing the aggressor.

Predictably, the anti–resistance team rushed to distort his words. Within minutes, his speech was repackaged as a threat of civil war, his warning that “no one will be safe if the resistance is not safe” twisted into an alleged menace against Lebanese civilians. 

This tactic was neither new nor spontaneous. It echoed the same methods once used against his predecessor martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: fabrication, truncation, and deliberate misrepresentation.

Ironically, the shift from mockery to fear reveals that Sheikh Qassem has succeeded in imposing his own political rhythm.

Even Israeli analysts have noticed. Former head of Israeli military intelligence Tamir Hayman recently acknowledged that time is working in Hezbollah’s favor, citing the restructuring of damaged units, the appointment of new commanders, and the growing confidence and fluency of Sheikh Qassem himself. 

Such assessments underscore the hollowness of claims that the resistance is collapsing or acting irrationally.

President Aoun’s interview, marking one year of his presidency, by contrast, projected resignation rather than leadership. His recycled mantra—“Lebanon’s strength lies in its weakness”—now repackaged as realism, amounted to an admission of strategic bankruptcy. 

While Israeli aggression continued unabated, villages were evacuated, and civilians killed, the president spoke of “state protection” as if it were anything more than a theoretical aspiration.

Invoking the army without addressing its structural limitations reduced defense to symbolism and sovereignty to ceremony.

Most revealing was the broader trajectory emerging behind the scenes: American-Israeli pressure to dismantle existing monitoring mechanisms and replace them with a political-military committee tasked with “ending hostility” with Israel. 

The price is explicit—dismantling all forms of armed resistance. In other words, normalization disguised as security reform, surrender framed as diplomacy.

Sheikh Qassem’s insistence that “it is not rational to give Israel concessions without a price” cuts to the heart of the matter. Rationality, in this context, does not mean disarmament under threat, nor faith in imperial guarantees. 

It means preserving national power, deterring aggression, and refusing to build a state on dependency. Iran and Hezbollah understand this equation. Their opponents, bound by external directives, do not lack intelligence—they lack freedom.

In today’s Lebanon, the tragedy is not the presence of resistance, but the inversion of politics itself: where the victim is asked to appease the aggressor, and sovereignty is measured by obedience. Against this logic, the resistance’s claim to rationality stands—not as defiance, but as the last coherent defense of national dignity.