Lebanon's leaders are faced with the choice of separating the state from the statelet, or putting their safety and the safety of the people at stake

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The issue of Hezbollah members smuggling hundreds of kilograms of highly explosive TNT and C4, especially since it comes shortly after attempts to smuggle hundreds of kilograms of TNT and C4 from Syria to Lebanon were uncovered and stopped. Since the shipment that was stopped in Dahr al-Baydar was heading from the Bekaa, adjacent to the Syrian border, to the southern suburb of Beirut, this means that there is a high probability that the source of the shipment that It was stopped by Internal Security in Syrian territory, which increases the possibility of other quantities of these materials reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon, and they may now be present in the Bekaa Valley or have fled to the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Claims by parties linked to the party that these explosives are for the purposes of resisting the Israeli occupation in the south do not correspond to the type of these materials and their uses. C-4 is not suitable for manufacturing warheads for missiles or mortar shells, or even for manufacturing rocket fuel. They are suitable for one thing, which is to blow up facilities or mountains (to dig tunnels) or for assassination operations. Hezbollah has a history and is accused by more than one Lebanese and international party of being involved in assassinations of officials. Members belonging to the party were also convicted by the International Court of assassinating the martyr Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Iran is not far from the issue, as the Revolutionary Guard is the one running Hezbollah's operations today and continues to supply it with weapons and money to keep it in the axis of the resistance and to continue supporting Tehran in its open confrontation with America and Israel. Iranian officials are expected to arrive in Lebanon to address the repercussions of uncovering the transfer of these explosive materials. Foreign Minister Abbas Araqji’s call with the President of the Republic is only one of the steps in seeking to understand the new problem.

The relationship between Hezbollah and Iran with the Presidents of the Republic and the government has worsened since the day the government took the decision to consider Hezbollah's weapons illegal and called for them to be restricted. Its insistence on the path of negotiation with Israel negatively affects Tehran’s efforts to maintain control over the Lebanon file in negotiations with America. The Lebanese leadership’s insistence on not accepting the credentials of the Iranian ambassador and requesting that he leave Lebanese territory strikes Iran’s prestige and affects the activity of the Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon. The Iranian ambassador is originally an officer of the Revolutionary Guard, and undoubtedly plays a role in operations to support Hezbollah's activities in Lebanon at this very sensitive time for Iran, which today considers itself in an existential war with America.

As a reminder, the International Court report indicated that the reason for the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri was his role in issuing UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which called for the withdrawal of foreign armies from Lebanon and the dissolution of the militias on its territory. This is precisely what the Presidents of the Republic and the Government are seeking to achieve today, amid opposition from the party and Tehran.

The Lebanese authority's greatest weakness is that it considers Hezbollah a part of it, which gives the latter the ability to obstruct its movements and weaken it from within. This coexistence between the state and the state makes the state appear to be a failure to the international community. It takes decisions that it is unable to implement, such as withdrawing the party’s weapons. The state faces threats to its leaders and people that it is unable to deal with effectively and decisively. No investigation into any act of sabotage believed to be behind Hezbollah has been able to reach its conclusion due to the party's influence through the deep state. The state has never held Hezbollah accountable for involving Lebanon in wars against Israel and for making decisions on war and peace alone, which led to woes and calamities against the Lebanese people. Today, Hezbollah still adheres to the decision of war and peace, despite the government’s claims to the contrary, and there is a great possibility that Lebanon will be involved in a new support war in the coming weeks.

Some of Lebanon's leaders today are threatened with death, and they are aware of this and know the source of the threat, but they seem unable to do anything about it, not because they do not possess the tools of force, but because they have lost the will to use them. They also know that the party will enter Lebanon into a new war of support, and they realize that their efforts to prevent this will be futile due to the continued equation of coexistence between the state and the “Hezbollah” statelet. Everything that international forces do to help state institutions, including the army and security forces, is contingent on the issue of withdrawing the party’s weapons, a step that will not be implemented as long as coexistence between the state and the state continues. It is time to separate and face the consequences before the state destroys what remains of Lebanon.