A few days ago, my son called from London. He and his family had been planning to spend part of the summer in Lebanon. My first grandchild would finally be here. We had imagined long lunches, noisy evenings, those ordinary family moments that have become precious precisely because they are ordinary. But he told me they had decided not to come. The situation is “too volatile,” he said. I understood. How could I not? For months now, we have all been living with the feeling that the ground beneath us could shift at any moment. We make plans cautiously. We buy plane tickets cautiously. We dream cautiously.
Then, shortly afterward, I read the news: Iran and the United States had reached an agreement. My first impulse was almost immediate. I picked up my phone, ready to send Mounir a message: “Maybe you should reconsider. Maybe things will calm down now. Maybe this changes everything.” But before pressing send, I stopped.
Does it?
The truth is that, for many Lebanese, life has been a sentence bound by a single word: if.
Does an agreement between Washington and Tehran mean peace for Lebanon? Does it mean that the fear which has settled into our daily lives will finally begin to lift? Does it mean that families separated by uncertainty can once again make plans with confidence? Or does it simply mean that yet another chapter of our history is being written elsewhere while we wait to discover what it will mean for us?
The truth is that, for many Lebanese, life has been a sentence bound by a single word: if. My son will visit this summer if. My new novel will be launched this autumn if. My business will survive if. This country will remain standing if. We have become experts at existing inside uncertainty, at treating instability not as an exception but as a permanent condition. We have been suspended between sirens and statements, missiles and mediators, threats and negotiations. We watched men in distant capitals discuss our region as though it were a chessboard, and its inhabitants as pieces to be moved, sacrificed, or exchanged. We learned once again the old Lebanese lesson: That decisions capable of changing our lives are often taken elsewhere. And that what happens to Lebanon, when the people who have been using it as a battlefield decide to stop fighting, isn’t necessarily a cause for celebration. Experience has cured us of such illusions.
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This also, perhaps above all, applies to the emerging deal between Iran and the United States. The preliminary framework agreement speaks about ending hostilities and de-escalation, but there is still ambiguity regarding Lebanon’s place, and Israel has already indicated that it does not consider itself bound by all aspects of the US-Iran understanding. So for us, the picture remains grim. All indications suggest that Israel will remain in parts of the south. That Hezbollah will remain armed and the government weak. That reconstruction will remain stalled and businesses paralyzed. That countless families will remain displaced and towns devastated. What part of this can be considered a “solution”?
as Washington and Tehran attempt to redraw the contours of their relationship, Lebanon once again finds itself waiting for the consequences of a conversation in which it had no seat at the table.
For decades, we have been told that our fate is inseparable from larger struggles. The struggle against imperialism. The struggle against Zionism. The struggle for regional influence. The struggle for security. One by one, these grand narratives have passed through our country, leaving behind martyrs, slogans, ruins, flags, and cemeteries. The names changed. The wreckage remained. How many times must a country pay the bill for conversations conducted elsewhere?
Today, as Washington and Tehran attempt to redraw the contours of their relationship, Lebanon once again finds itself waiting for the consequences of a conversation in which it had no seat at the table.
That is perhaps the deepest humiliation of all. Not that powerful nations negotiate. They always have and always will. But we have become accustomed to being an object of negotiation rather than a participant in our own destiny.
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The announced breakthrough raises difficult questions, especially for Lebanon. If Iran chooses diplomacy over confrontation, what becomes of the logic that has governed so much of our political life? What happens when the sponsor changes course while the local structures built around permanent conflict remain intact? What happens when a movement accustomed to defining itself through resistance discovers that the regional environment is changing faster than its narrative?
These questions are not directed only at Hezbollah. They concern all of us. For years, Lebanese politics has functioned as a system of mutual hostage-taking. Every camp justified its failures by pointing to the dangers posed by the other. Every crisis became an excuse for postponement. Reform could wait. Accountability could wait. State-building could wait. Everything could wait because the nation was supposedly engaged in a larger existential battle. But what if the larger battle begins to recede? What excuse will remain?
Neither war nor peace. Neither state nor non-state. Neither democracy nor dictatorship. Neither collapse nor recovery. A permanent waiting room disguised as a country.
My greatest fear is not war. War at least forces clarity. My fear is a frozen peace. A Lebanon where the destruction remains but reconstruction stalls. Where illegitimate weapons remain but strategy changes. Where sovereignty remains a slogan rather than a reality. Where everyone declares victory while ordinary citizens continue paying the price. Where we are a mere afterthought, a footnote in an agreement whose main chapters are Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions, Hormuz, oil, and regional balances of power.
We know this condition too well. We have lived inside unresolved situations for generations. Neither war nor peace. Neither state nor non-state. Neither democracy nor dictatorship. Neither collapse nor recovery. A permanent waiting room disguised as a country.
Meanwhile, the people continue their exhausting acts of survival. Families return to villages that might be bombed again. Men rebuild homes they may lose again. Entrepreneurs reopen businesses they may have to close again. An endless loop of resurrection and destruction.
The day we stop being a battlefield may not be the day powerful nations sign an agreement. It may be the day we finally refuse to be one.
That is why this agreement provokes emotions that go beyond geopolitics. It forces us to confront a possibility we have long preferred to avoid: The possibility that our future may depend less on Tehran and Washington than on ourselves. This is not a comfortable thought. It is easier to blame empires than to examine our own failures. Easier to denounce foreign interference than to ask why we repeatedly create the conditions that allow it. Easier to wait for salvation from abroad than to undertake the painful work of becoming a functioning nation.
Perhaps the greatest danger facing Lebanon is not that others continue deciding our future. It is that we continue believing they can, and should. The day we stop being a battlefield may not be the day powerful nations sign an agreement. It may be the day we finally refuse to be one.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MBN’s editorial stance.
