The escalatory, nay provocative, speech by the Secretary-General of Hezbollah is not indicative of reassurance at the political and security levels as it seeks to suggest. Rather, it in reality aims at covering up two considerable failures being faced by the party, at the domestic and regional levels. The first is represented by the fact that most of the Lebanese no longer believe the claims it has been making about the integrity of its intentions and about how different its structure and working methods are from “traditional" political formations, after the series of scandals that have reached Hezbollah leaders, and the accumulated evidence that points to its implication in political assassinations and corruption. As for the second, it is the dead-end it has been brought to by its joint efforts with Iran to protect Bashar Al-Assad's regime, after the different parties to the Syrian opposition have succeeded in uniting their ranks, thus paving the way for their international recognition as legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. Nasrallah has thus returned to the old tune of the presence of “agents" of Israel to justify his rejection of any discussion into how to frame his party's arsenal and subject it to the logic of state sovereignty, after the “refrain" of the Resistance has in effect ended since the end of the 2006 war and the deployment of UN troops at the border, pretexting that those who are demanding this are groups that have in the past had dealings with the enemy (Israel). In reality, the overwhelming majority of the Lebanese, from outside Hezbollah's sectarian community, in addition to a substantial minority within it, find no great difference between having a relationship with Israel and being an agent of Iran, as they both depart from country and state, and bind one to foreign powers that seek to achieve their own interests. Yet the difference is that those who formed a relationship with the enemy during the Civil War later admitted to the mistake of their “temporary coincidence of interests" with Israel in the face of an armed Palestinian force that took control of Lebanon's decision-making, and later in the face of a Syrian invasion of Lebanon under the pretext of saving it from the Palestinians. And they are today at the forefront of those defending in words and deeds Lebanon's sovereignty and independent decision-making after the national reconciliation that resulted in the Taif Agreement and ended the internal infighting. As for those who today hold a “sacred" alliance with Iran on sectarian and religious bases, they find no fault in publicly declaring that such a relationship for them has priority over their Lebanese identity, and that they are soldiers at the service of a supreme Iranian authority embodied by the “Vali-e-Faqih", without discussion and without fail. Thus those who are up to their ears in error have no right to give lessons to those who have learned the moral and have overcome the mistakes of the past. What matters now is: what will Hezbollah do, as it clings to the government, and where is it leading the country? The answer to this question is not difficult to find, in light of the security, economic and social deterioration the country is witnessing, most of it through conscious decisions made by Hezbollah, or through it covering for what is coming from abroad. As for Nasrallah placing the accusations leveled by “some" against his party of having had a role to play in the assassination of Brigadier General Wissam Al-Hassan within the framework of causing “strife between Sunnis and Shiites", it turns the facts around, making the murderers innocent of the intent to cause strife and accusing the victim of having sought after it. Indeed, those who backed Al-Hassan's assassination logistically, politically and in the media are the same ones who had planned to ignite a sectarian eruption in Lebanon through the Samaha-Mamlouk network, who directed televised threats against Al-Hassan after he uncovered it, and who defend the ruler of Damascus who keeps saying that the region would be “set ablaze" if his regime were to fall. But such a fall is no longer far, and that is precisely what is worrying Nasrallah and driving him to take a more radical stance, in hopes of compensating for the coming grave loss, whether by clinging to his collapsing government, or through leaks about a “new Taif Agreement" that would consecrate the dominance of weapons over the state and the country's inhabitants, and would replace Damascus and Tehran's joint management of Lebanon with a purely Iranian role.
