A Bizarre Diplomatic Showdown Tests the Lebanese Government’s Waning Authority
What happens if a government orders the expulsion of a foreign state’s ambassador, but the ambassador doesn’t leave? Lebanon may be about to find out.
On Tuesday, Lebanon’s foreign ministry declared Iran’s newly appointed ambassador, Mohammad Reza Shibani, persona non grata, giving him until Sunday to depart the country. This remarkable break with precedent — Iran is accustomed to deferential treatment from Lebanese governments — quickly ignited furious protest from powerful Lebanese parties and figures close to Iran, not least the armed group Hezbollah, as well as longtime Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, an octogenarian pillar of the system. On Thursday, a rally was held outside the Iranian Embassy in Beirut at which a Hezbollah official vowed that “Ambassador Shibani … will remain in Lebanon, and will not leave Lebanon, no matter what you try to do,” adding a personal attack on Lebanon’s foreign minister in threatening tones: “This foolish minister … you think you’re going to do something? You’re too small. You’re playing a big game, one you’re much too small for. Don’t play with fire, because the fire will burn you, and burn your people, and burn those behind you!”
With Iran’s allies adamant that Shibani is staying, and the Lebanese government standing — so far — by its decision to expel him, what exactly happens now? No one knows, is the short answer. Perhaps Shibani will end up quietly leaving as requested after all. If he doesn’t, it would theoretically fall to Lebanon’s security agencies to arrest and deport him by force, though this seems unlikely. As farcical as it may sound, the latest Lebanese media reports at the time of writing suggest one possible outcome is that Shibani will both stay and not stay: He will remain at the Beirut embassy, and be considered Iran’s ambassador by Hezbollah and other friends of Tehran, while the Lebanese government will regard someone else, such as Iran’s charge d’affaires, as their diplomatic interlocutor. Thus would the crisis pass and everyone be able to claim victory.
That so half-baked a compromise is even thinkable highlights the magnitude of the challenges now facing Lebanon’s government, whose control over the country has steadily diminished in recent weeks. When Hezbollah brazenly defied the government’s demand that the armed group hand over its weapons by launching rockets and drones at Israel on March 2, it made a mockery not just of President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam but also of the Lebanese army, which had declared in January that it had cleared southern Lebanon of Hezbollah’s arsenal.
Nor is Hezbollah the only one in Lebanon undermining the government’s authority. The Lebanese army leadership, which is constitutionally obliged to take its orders from the elected civilian government, has in practice defied the latter’s instructions on several significant occasions. Most notably, after the government announced an “immediate” ban on all Hezbollah’s military and security activities on March 2, and tasked the army with enforcing this by physically preventing Hezbollah’s military operations and arresting anyone found to be engaging in them, the army issued a statement which amounted, in effect, to a rejection of the order. The military leadership, it said, took decisions based on its own independent assessment of what, “in the present complex circumstances,” would best protect Lebanon’s “internal stability and national unity,” adding that the army “stands at equal distance from all Lebanese” — implying no distinction between law-abiding civilians and heavily armed militiamen. As though to thank the army’s commander, Hezbollah supporters have lately taken to placing his image next to that of their revered former leader Hassan Nasrallah.
And then there is, of course, Israel, whose massive military response to Hezbollah’s rockets has not only killed over 1,100 Lebanese and displaced more than 1 million in under a month, but also seen the Israeli army seize and occupy an expanding zone of territory in southern Lebanon, which Israeli officials say will soon extend up to the Litani River, almost 20 miles north of the border, representing nearly 10% of the country. This forcibly depopulated Lebanese land — all bridges to which across the Litani have just been destroyed by the Israeli military — will remain in Israeli hands as long as Israel deems necessary, according to its defense minister, who added that Israel would demolish homes in the area “in accordance with the model of Beit Hanoun and Rafah in Gaza.”
Between the Gaza “model” and Hezbollah’s rockets fired — in its own words — “to avenge the pure blood” of Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the space appears to be shrinking for those Lebanese who would prefer to live under a government loyal to no country but their own.