Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Ceasefire at Risk over Lebanon
The fragile ceasefire in the Middle East is holding, or not. It all depends on whether one believes Lebanon is part of the area to which the ceasefire among the US, Israel and Iran applies. According to Iran, which funds the terrorist Hezbollah organization in Lebanon, and according to the Pakistani PM who brokered the ceasefire, Lebanon is part of the area covered. The US and Israel claim that it is not. Israel has pounded southern Lebanon since the ceasefire started, and it has warned residents of Beirut to leave certain parts of the city. It seems Israel is going to keep fighting there, and the question becomes what will Iran do about it? If Iran strikes back, the ceasefire is over.
UN Secretary General António Guterres "unequivocally condemns the massive strikes by Israel across Lebanon on 8 April" and urges "all parties to immediately cease hostilities", a statement from his spokesperson reads.
These strikes "resulted in hundreds of civilians being killed and injured, including children, as well as damage to civilian infrastructure", it reads.
He continued that he is "deeply alarmed by the mounting toll on civilians" and has extended his condolences to the Lebanese government.
He warns that the military activity in Lebanon "poses a grave risk to the ceasefire and the efforts toward a lasting and comprehensive peace in the region", adding "there is no military solution to the conflict".
Ceasefires are always shaky at first. The order to hold fire has to make its way from the conference rooms where any such deal is struck to the battlefield, and often, communications are difficult. The good news is that since the ceasefire took effect, the US has made zero strikes on Iran. Iran has made zero strikes on Israel and the Gulf Arab states. Israel has made zero attacks on Iran. If this were the entire theatre of operations, all would be looking up. Sadly, it is not.
Israel has had trouble from southern Lebanon for decades. As far back as 1982, Israeli forces marched north up to the Litani River and occupied that region for a decade. The PLO had run things there much as Hezbollah does today, but Yasser Arafat wound up on a boat headed to North Africa back in the day. Benjamin Netanyahu wants to relive that scene with Hezbollah leaving the scene. The PLO was not funded much by Iran, but Hezbollah is the Iranian prozy in the country.
If the ceasefire applies to Lebanon, Israel is clearly violating it because it has killed 203 people in Lebanon yesterday. If the ceasefire does not apply, the ceasefire is still endangered because Iran is not going to be happy about seeing its proxies being destroyed. Either way, the odds on the ceasefire lasting the full two weeks all parties agreed to are lengthening. A resumption of combat is likely.
Iran has a couple of ways to play this. A low-level risk would be for Iran to maintain its ceasefire while sending weapons and other materiel to Hezbollah. This has become more difficult since the Al-Assad regime in Syria is gone and transshipment of stuff across Syria is no longer guaranteed to be easy. By the same token, rockets can be smuggled across the territory in question if Iran wants to do it badly enough.
Another option, and a more dangerous one, would be missile and drone strikes against Israel originating in Iran. The Iranians have a lot more missiles and drones than the Pentagon has accounted for, and it will not take many to put Israel back in the business of striking Iran. That would be the end of the ceasefire.
© Copyright 2026 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
|
|
|
