Small, economically hollowed out by years of devastating crisis and torn apart by a war that is slowly erasing its southern flank, Lebanon has never mattered more to the world than it does right now. With only weeks left to settle their accounts, the Americans and Iranians opened their Swiss negotiations with a bitter, hours-long quarrel—over Lebanon. Only once Iran had extracted something on the Lebanese front—a tacit acknowledgment of its role as the country’s patron—did the two sides find a way to get to the matters that were really theirs to discuss. Tehran clearly sees Lebanon as an extension of itself: proof of its regional reach, recognition of which it is determined to secure—and to some degree, it has.
Only a few hours have passed, and now a separate negotiation is underway in Washington—hosted by the Trump administration—between the Israeli government, which had no seat at the Swiss table, and the Lebanese government, equally absent from it. The arrangement may seem odd, but it isn’t really—because Lebanon never negotiates alone.
In Switzerland, the talks are with Hezbollah’s patron—Iran—which operationally directs this Khomeinist militia based in Beirut. Since Trump surprisingly announced that he had held productive conversations with Hezbollah’s leadership (designated by Washington as a terrorist organization to be dismantled), direct lines of communication with the United States appear to have been established. Iran certainly has them: it is negotiating its own peace and wants it understood that the partial ceasefire in Lebanon is its doing—as reflected in the Memorandum of Understanding that was signed.
But so far Israel, effectively opposed to the negotiating process, is not playing along—though it now appears willing to reduce fire while stopping short of withdrawing from Lebanese territory. Hezbollah, for its part, endorses this ceasefire precisely because Iran is driving it, while still holding firm on its non-negotiable demand for full Israeli withdrawal. This is what gives the Swiss standoff its logic: Iran is weaving its bilateral negotiations with the United States together with the Lebanese file, using the interplay between the two to extract recognition of its regional influence.
At the other negotiating table—the one in Washington—Israel is dealing with the Lebanese government, which for many years has in practice been stripped of authority by Hezbollah (with no shortage of Lebanese complicity). Having remained the only armed militia after the end of the Lebanese civil war, Hezbollah gradually assumed control of the country’s national defense policy. And since it is far stronger than the Lebanese army, that control cannot be contested.
Looking ahead, what might the Lebanese government realistically hope to gain from the Swiss table? A US-Iran agreement on the disarmament of Hezbollah—conceivable, but only over a long timeframe, and only through a national negotiation. A process that would require a different Lebanon: one in which the Shia community carries greater political weight, an outcome that, under the right conditions, could allow Iran to claim the coveted recognition of its regional role. A deeply complicated conversation, and above all not a short one, tied to much else besides. And this is where the other table enters the picture—the one between Israel and Lebanon, neither of whom was in Switzerland.
Lebanese diplomats have put forward an idea that has received little attention in the international press but is of undeniable significance: “pilot zones.” If Israel says it has no intention of annexing southern Lebanon but cannot withdraw for security reasons, then Beirut’s position is that it must begin doing so in defined, circumscribed areas—in exchange for which those areas would be handed over to the Lebanese army, free of Hezbollah fighters. These pilot zones are at the heart of the negotiations between the Israeli and Lebanese governments. Beirut will push to start with an area that, once under government control, would halt the feared expansion of Israeli forces deeper into Lebanon. Could American pressure, applied in parallel at the Swiss table with the Iranians, eventually produce a yes on these terms? Who knows.
But at this point it is worth explaining why these two blocs have been irreconcilable for so long. If Hezbollah believes in unrelenting struggle against Israel—whether under occupation or not—what does the other Lebanon believe in? It is too easy to say it believes in peace. I don’t think there is a single answer that holds for everyone, except on one point: they refuse to submit to Hezbollah’s militia hegemony—Iran’s hegemony. Less well known than it should be, the history of Hezbollah includes a history of turning its weapons on fellow Lebanese: the physical elimination of its principal political opponents, of major intellectuals from that world, and of the few Shia voices who managed to express open dissent against Khomeinism—among them Lokman Slim—right up to the explosion at the port of Beirut, a commercial port that Hezbollah had packed with ammonium nitrate. This history has run through many other chapters too, including the occupation of Sunni Beirut, and over time has hardened an opposition that is above all a popular one, cutting across different political persuasions.
Hezbollah’s “unconstitutional” grip on power was the product of Assad’s Syria and its tutelage over Lebanon—yet Hezbollah presents itself as the guardian of the homeland against every Israeli occupation. But there was another occupation too: the Syrian one, allied with Iran and guaranteed by Hezbollah. Many figures within Lebanon’s political establishment took their orders from Damascus. This was true in many cases of Christian politicians, forever in search of a protector — a cultural legacy of the Ottoman era, when the sultan watched over the minorities, a pattern that hardened into a political system under French colonialism, which was expert at stoking tensions between religious communities in order to rule undisturbed.
With the fall of the Assads, the Syrian protectorate has come to an end, and the new government and new president — in order to truly be such — believe the moment has come to put an end to the Hezbollah ambiguity.
If this were to succeed, another task no less daunting would have to be tackled: building a state. One question says it all: why does Lebanon’s last census date back to 1932? Because that census set the boundary markers of the confessional political system. There is something admirable in the current confessionalism: the provision, enshrined since the end of the civil war, that Parliament be composed of fifty percent Christians and fifty percent Muslims—a way of affirming that the country recognizes the equal dignity of the other, that no one will try to take everything. But everything else, and it is no small matter, follows a different logic entirely. Consider what the Maronites control within Lebanon’s “material constitution”: beyond the presidency of the Republic, the governorship of the Banque du Liban, and command of the army.
If Lebanon could set out on a path that might, at the end of a long political process, allow it to overcome—through an extraordinarily difficult national consensus—the obstacle of a “private” militia more powerful than the army, then this next, equally important road could begin to be travelled. It would have to be reckoned with, however, that were such a thing ever possible, it would almost certainly pass through an Iranian demand: greater weight for the Shia community, and specifically for Hezbollah, reinvented in this hypothetical scenario as a purely political party, yet still capable of guaranteeing Tehran’s interests. And so the system would have to retain a confessional imprint.
For now, though, the priority is preserving the country’s territorial integrity—after which the journey toward building a state could begin, a transformation that many would find hard to swallow, since it is difficult to imagine without the emergence of genuine political parties, free from family or clan ties, open to members of every confession. Looking at the Lebanese political landscape today, one finds that its leading figures are largely the same ones who shaped the civil war. It is time to move on.
The Lebanese government’s hopes can only rest on the prospect of American goodwill—the United States being the only party seated at both tables where Lebanon’s fate is being discussed. As for building a system compatible with the new realities, meaning one that guarantees Iran’s role, there would be many possible paths. One, for instance: the division of seats between Christians and Muslims need not be incompatible with a non-feudal system. Looking at the current Constitution, one could envisage bicameralism—a Chamber of political parties and a Senate of Communities, elected by different electoral systems. The obstacle would be overcoming the refusal of the political establishment, which legitimizes itself through the very clan system that would need to be dismantled. But the important thing would be to make a start—after having succeeded in the prior and essential effort of preserving the country’s territorial unity.
The one who got off to a poor start was US Vice President JD Vance. A proponent of the deal with Iran, and under pressure from Lebanese Americans—Christians, in the vast majority—who are largely opposed to any agreement with Tehran, he arrived in Switzerland and gave an interview directed squarely at Lebanese Christians, in which he sharply criticized Hezbollah and lavished praise on the Christian community. Yet at that very moment, the White House—of which he is nominally the second-in-command—was imposing sanctions on the leader of a Christian party, Suleiman Frangieh, for providing support and banking cover to Hezbollah. This is hardly the first such case—politicians of greater standing have already been caught in the same net. Vance’s confessional register does not help, as it gives the impression of remaining firmly within the grooves of confessionalism rather than helping Lebanon move beyond it.
Lebanon did, of course, turn its back on French colonialism a century ago—and it did so through a confessional pact. That made sense then; it does not today. And besides, at the time, cross-confessional parties existed—today they do not. Amin Maalouf, the great Lebanese writer and now Permanent Secretary of the Académie française, has written that the meeting rooms of the Communist Party brought everyone together—Christians, Sunnis, Shia—and that it was the only place he ever saw Lebanese people unite across the communal divide. None of this featured in Vance’s remarks. But since the immediate priority is creating the conditions to preserve territorial integrity, no one will hold it against him. And yet, strange as it may seem, the current government—the one pinning its hopes on the Americans—was born of precisely this idea, one especially dear to the current Lebanese Prime Minister, the jurist trained in Europe on European legal codes, Nawaf Salam. And yet his name is almost nowhere to be found among the handful of Lebanese politicians cited by the major international press.
Cover photo: A yellow flag belonging to the Iran-backed Shia Muslim party Hezbollah flutters on top of the rubble of a building in the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre on June 23, 2026. Hezbollah chief on June 23, 2026, demanded a full, scheduled withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon to make way for a Lebanese army deployment in the south following the US-Iran deal to end the Middle East war. (Photo by Joseph EID / AFP) /