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Iran Permitted Lebanon Ceasefire to Protect Hizbullah
(Ha'aretz) Zvi Bar'el - Under the ceasefire agreement, Hizbullah won't be disarmed. Its thousands of long-range and short-range missiles, its arsenal of drones, its advanced ballistic technology and all its other military infrastructure will continue to exist. If the agreement is implemented in full, Hizbullah will move farther away from Israel, north of the Litani River. But it won't disappear. Moreover, southern Lebanon won't remain empty of its inhabitants like a buffer zone, even though Israel has destroyed numerous villages near the border. As far as the Lebanese government is concerned, the residents who were displaced or fled their villages will return home. While 15,000 Lebanese army soldiers alongside UNIFIL troops are to be deployed in the area between the Litani River and the Israeli border, the weak Lebanese army is incapable of confronting Hizbullah's military strength. In Lebanon, Hizbullah is an integral part of the government and parliament and represents the Shi'ite majority. Unofficially, it has received the status of a "defense force" necessary for national security for as long as the Lebanese army in incapable of handling external threats. Lebanon's government, which has been a temporary transition government for the past three years, is at most the mediator between Israel and Hizbullah, and its signature on the agreement is meant to grant it a legitimate formal framework. Iran is a full partner in the agreement. Without the strategic decision made in Tehran that allowed the separation between the fronts in Gaza and Lebanon, and which, in practice, broke up the unity of the "support front" for Hamas, the negotiations over the agreement may never have moved forward. The fear of the loss of their asset in Lebanon seems to have tipped the balance.