A personal interview with Antoine Basbous, Director of the Arab Countries Observatory and partner at Forward Global.

An international conference in support of the people and sovereignty of Lebanon was held in Paris on Thursday 24 October. What can we make of its outcome and the humanitarian situation?

This conference, convened by Paris, was useful and showed that Lebanon could still count on France’s friendship, which is deeply rooted in its history. But the success of the emergency humanitarian aid cannot mask the geopolitical reality. The keystone of peace in Lebanon lies rather in three decisive calls that have not been acted upon: the election of a President of the Republic, the first cornerstone of the institutions, and above all the handing over by Hezbollah of its arsenal to the Lebanese army and the call for a ceasefire so that Security Council Resolution 17 01 can finally be applied.

The conference could have produced a solemn appeal for the disarmament of the Party of God, co-signed by the Lebanese delegation which included ministers representing this militia. In 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini did call for a ceasefire with Iraq, declaring that he was ‘drinking the cup of poison’ to stop the destruction of his country.

What are Israel’s objectives in Lebanon, and what consequences could the war between Hezbollah and Israel have for the communal and political balance in Lebanon?

Tel Aviv says it wants to eliminate the threat of Hezbollah on its border, which has led 80,000 Israelis to leave their homes since October 2023, when this militia declared war on Israel, without any consultation with Lebanese institutions. All it took was an order from Tehran for the Secretary General of the Party of God, Hassan Nasrallah, to declare war on Israel in the name of ‘unity of fronts’. Hezbollah’s demonstrations of strength and the precedent of the tunnels discovered in 2006, and then in Gaza in 2023, served as justification for very severe action by Israel against the political and military commands and installations of the Party of God.

Nasrallah had boosted the morale of his militia by gratifying it with lofty qualifications such as a chosen people and the ‘noblest community among men’. The brutal decimation of the militia in September came as a shock, a bitterness that carries the risk of revenge on Lebanese civilians. In fact, the Hezbollah militiamen, despite being defeated on the military front, have behaved arrogantly towards those who have received and sheltered them since they were forced to leave their villages and seek refuge within their own country. Some of their actions border on aggression, and risk tipping the country into a confrontation between its constituent parts. For example, some refugees have sought to create faits accomplis on plots of land that do not belong to them or that are being contested in the courts, in order to build permanent structures as soon as they arrive. Obviously, if such behaviour is not curbed by the militia leaders or the Lebanese authorities, it can provoke violent reactions and resurrect the old demons of civil/regional war. For the time being, however, the other communities are not prepared to engage in conflict with Hezbollah militiamen.

Some people are talking about the risk of a regional conflagration, yet the Iranians seem to have reacted with moderation to the Israeli strikes on their military infrastructure. Is this the fault of the United States, or is it a step in a possible escalation?

The United States has no desire to manage a new conflict in the Middle East after the bitter failures it suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan. Above all, they have no desire to do so in the middle of a presidential election. This is why they have held Israel’s hand by preventing it from taking the lives of Iranian leaders or striking the Islamic Republic’s oil and nuclear facilities. In return, they deployed their THAAD anti-missile system to reassure Israel of their support, and hit the Houthis with B-2s from Missouri to remind the Iranians of the extent of their reach.

While we await satellite images of the damage left on Iranian soil, we can assume that the American instructions were respected by Israel, and that the response was negotiated and scripted to ensure that it did not get too out of hand. Israel even warned Iran of its intention to attack. Tehran had in fact announced that a reasonable attack would not provoke a reaction on its part. For the time being, a form of ‘muscular cohabitation’ has been established at regional level. Iran’s auxiliaries in the Mediterranean are badly damaged, but continue to inflict serious losses on Israel.

Will Iran and its allies Hamas and Hezbollah be the big losers in the war they started? Will the Abraham Accords be back on the agenda? Is there any other solution than the creation of a Palestinian state to establish lasting peace in the region?

The biggest losers will be the Palestinians. The Abraham Accords, which had begun to write off the ‘Sacred Cause’, will return to centre stage and flourish once Tel Aviv has re-established its deterrence on the ground and in the imagination. The Arab states are keen to build a new security architecture that takes account of the (relative) withdrawal of the Americans, which makes the Israelis the key interlocutors in containing Iran’s ambitions.

However, this is counter-productive in the long term, as the best solution for a lasting regional peace remains the creation of a disarmed Palestinian entity (so as not to threaten Israel) whose borders would be protected by the United States and NATO (so as not to be threatened by Israel). Despite everything, this ideal solution is unlikely to see the light of day due to the lack of American will and its massive rejection by the messianic supremacists in the current Israeli government. The latter’s objective is rather to recolonise Gaza and drive the West Bankers from their territory. October 7th only added fuel to their fire, and the lack of action by the United States gives them the opportunity to create faits accomplis to the detriment of the Palestinians.

 

Antoine Basbous is a political scientist and specialist in the Arab-Islamic world and Islamist terrorism

In 1991, he founded the Observatoire des Pays Arabes (OPA) in Paris, which he has headed ever since. This is a fully independent consultancy specialising in North Africa, the Middle East, the Gulf and the Islamic world in general. In 2021, OPA joined the Forward Global group, which specialises in risk management, economic intelligence, cyber, crisis communication, etc.

Antoine Basbous was born in Lebanon, where he studied law and French literature. In France, he obtained a doctorate in political science and a postgraduate diploma (DEA) in information and communication. He worked as a journalist in Beirut and Paris from 1975 to 1987.

Antoine Basbous has published several essays translated into various languages, including Guerres secrètes au Liban, Editions Gallimard, 1987; L’Islamisme, une révolution avortée? Editions Hachette, 2000; L’Arabie saoudite en question, du wahhabisme à Bin Laden, Editions Perrin, 2002. In September 2004, an updated version of the latter work was published in paperback by Tempus under the title L’Arabie saoudite en guerre ; Le tsunami arabe, Editions Fayard, 2011.

He is consulted by major companies, governments and courts in Europe and North America, and regularly takes part in debates on the crises shaking the Arab and Islamic worlds, on terrorism and on the relationship between Islam and the West.

 

Discover Antoine Basbous’ former interview in October 2021: The Middle East on fire. – Humanitarian challenges

MEAE text on the International Conference in Support of the People and Sovereignty of Lebanon (Paris, 24 October 2024) : International Conference in Support of the People and Sovereignty of Lebanon (Paris, 24.10.24) – Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères * (in French)

Text from the Elysée on the international conference in support of the people and sovereignty of Lebanon (Paris, 24 October 2024) : International Conference in Support of the People and Sovereignty of Lebanon – Elysée Palace

United Nations resolution 1701 on Lebanon

 

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• On the humanitarian front line in Ukraine. Interview with Mathieu Nabot, Country Director of Solidarités International
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• Solidarity with Armenian students.