I returned to Beirut on the Sunday that fell between the US-Iran talks in Geneva and the signing of the trilateral framework in Washington. As always when coming home, I lowered my expectations. To my surprise, the airport looked cleaner and more orderly than usual. Twenty minutes after touchdown, I was in my car, still cautiously optimistic. It took less than a minute of the drive home to lose any enthusiasm I had.

On both sides of the airport highway stood enormous posters of the Ayatollah Khamenei, his late predecessor, and the late Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, in bright yellow letters: “Thank you, loyal Iran.” As I drove past them, I felt my throat tighten, my mouth drying, my blood pressure rising. It was not anger I was feeling, it was fear.

I had written about this in 2006, and again a few weeks ago.

In Lebanon, posters are rarely just marketing or propaganda. Across the country, they remind communities who protects them, who speaks in their name, and ultimately who governs them. Along the airport road, which for over a decade has been entirely under Hezbollah’s control, they have functioned almost as a constitutional text, stipulating Hezbollah’s interpretation of power sharing.

The Israeli drone hovering mercilessly over my head, and the thousands of displaced people hosted in the Cité Sportive just a few kilometers down the same road, are clear reminders that Lebanon is still in the middle of a war it didn’t choose to fight. But that doesn’t matter. Hezbollah is already presenting itself as part of a broader regional success story. It is already claiming victory and already thanking Iran for it. Try questioning how Lebanon and its citizens are benefiting from this “victory” and be prepared to be called all kinds of names, from defeatist to collaborator.

In Beirut, this is how the narrative goes. In its negotiations with Washington, Iran has the upper hand, and it has succeeded in including Lebanon as an ambiguous footnote in the talks. That is the only fact that should matter, leaving very little room for any form of debate. Never mind what an Iranian win means for Lebanon, its territory, its institutions, its citizens. Never mind the villages now destroyed, whose reconstruction will require billions no one has committed to finance. Never mind that more land is under occupation than at any time in the last two decades. Never mind the more than four thousand Lebanese killed since the beginning of this war. True, the life of every civilian matters, whether in Lebanon or Iran, but how do we make sense of the fact that the number of Lebanese casualties is roughly comparable to Iran’s, while our population is nearly sixteen times smaller?

When I say this, I do not mean in any way to exonerate Israel from the crimes it committed and continues to commit. Countless Lebanese, including my two co-founders at Daraj and many on our team, carry losses no communiqué can measure: villages, orchards, olive trees, homes filled with memories no ceasefire can bring back. It does not escape me for a second that it is Israel that is first and foremost responsible for those losses. But except for a fringe of amnesic enthusiasts hoping, and pushing, for Israel “to finish the job,” I don’t see anyone thanking Israel for destroying Lebanon, let alone flashing it on huge posters along the airport road.

An anti-Iran position is not pro-Israel, it’s pro-Lebanon

Over the last few weeks, the US has put two possible tracks before Lebanon, one in Geneva, the other in Washington. If we take the first, we accept that Iran negotiates on our behalf and Lebanon remains its proxy. If we take the second, we swallow the bitter pill of direct negotiations with Israel, talks we know we don’t have the upper hand in, and we open a Pandora’s box of possibilities. In other words, at a moment when a new order for the region is being decided, Lebanon is given two bad choices, both largely imposed by the war that Hezbollah decided unilaterally and in defiance of the Lebanese state and the government it represents, and in full and direct coordination with Tehran.

Both as a citizen and as a professional, and despite its being far below my lowest aspirations, I find the framework to be the lesser evil we could pick.

As a citizen, I want an agreement that guarantees an unconditional withdrawal, names the crimes Israel committed in Lebanon, makes it pay for them, and deters it from new ones. Those are demands I know I share with most Lebanese, including those I oppose politically, because let’s face it: who doesn’t want justice?

What the framework is proposing is as far from justice as imaginable, and I know without a shred of doubt in my mind that without justice, no peace will be possible. But as someone who spent much of her adult life covering wars and conflicts, I also know that the big deals are never made around justice, and for a small country like Lebanon, the windows for a breakthrough rarely last long.

The road to peace, as impossible as it is today, has to start somewhere, and a framework with bad terms and high risks might be a better bet, because at least it doesn’t imply a de facto continuation of the Iranian rule over Lebanon.

Does that mean we have to replace Iran with Israel? 

The answer is an absolute No. The No vote for Iran is not a concession to Israel or the United States. It is a vote for Lebanon. Saying yes to the framework does only one thing. 

It reserves Lebanon’s seat at the table so that it speaks for itself, no more, no less.

The chances for failure or success, more than most Lebanese imagine, can depend on us and on how we present our case to the world. We continue to present Lebanon as an unsolvable nuisance, the moment will pass, and Lebanon will be once more made someone else’s problem, if not Iran, or Israel, then maybe even Syria, as Trump suggested recently. 

History has taught us this, and there’s nothing about what’s happening now that we haven’t already seen and tried as a nation.

When I read the text of the trilateral framework, the first person whose thoughts I sought was former U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker, who was a Foreign Service officer in Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion and the subsequent embassy bombings. His answer came short and clear: “Beware the May 17 Agreement. President Joseph Aoun must avoid any Israeli overtures for direct bilateral contact without the United States; the Israelis will overreach in any case, and a Washington focused on Iran may not stand up to them.”

Knowing my country’s history and its fragmented communities, I share Crocker’s fears. But in moments like these, as a Lebanese citizen, the only choice I have is to stand by my state. 

That is where I see something workable in the framework.

For all its shortcomings, the framework, unlike every deal ever negotiated between Israel and Lebanon, makes Lebanon’s sovereignty the destination, rather than treating the conflict as a purely Lebanese security failure. This could matter more than it looks.

Under the Trump administration, Hezbollah’s disarmament was the only item Washington was interested in. Any attempt to raise issues of reform, reconstruction, or the return of the displaced has, for months, been met with complete indifference. It should in no way be assumed that having those items put on paper was easy, because while it’s true that a process gives Israel a free hand, not that it isn’t acting on it anyway, it also gives the Lebanese government what it needs to rebuild its infrastructure, including its military. 

Though the text is careful to condition every dollar on milestones and oversight, Washington is pledging to train and arm the Lebanese army in earnest. That’s significant because it addresses a part of the problem that Israel has been imposing for decades.

The equation is such: if Israel wants to get rid of Hezbollah, the only choice it has is to accept a strong Lebanese army. Such an army exists to hold the state’s monopoly on force and protect civil peace in Lebanon. Its job is not to guard Israel’s border but to defend Lebanon’s. A safe northern border would be the result, not the goal.

Disarming Hezbollah only makes lasting sense if the state offers something to replace what those arms provided for a large part of the population — protection, dignity, and a role in defending the country. A national army that becomes a credible, shared alternative is what makes Hezbollah’s military role unnecessary, not the removal of the weapons alone. Peace with the Shiite community that constitutes a majority in South Lebanon, including the constituency Hezbollah represents, has to be part of the goal, not an afterthought to it.

Do the Lebanese want a strong army? Even the most radical will run out of arguments if such an army can guarantee that Israel will stop its crimes and start respecting Lebanon’s sovereignty. By the same token, even those most open to the idea of peace with Israel, outside of those working day and night to keep the status quo here, can’t fathom a conversation about peace today. Not as long as Israel is committing its crimes. Not as long as the likes of Ben Gvir and Smotrich remind us every day of the expansionist plans they have.

Lebanon’s interest today is to stop the war and start rebuilding its institutions, and as small and imperfect as the window that the framework provides is, it is the best choice we have.

The bigger question is, will the US really deliver? And if it does, will Israel accept? This is where the framework could offer something, because it doesn’t place the entire burden on Lebanon. Israel’s superiority over any potential combination of regional adversaries,  better known as the qualitative military edge (QME), is written into US law. 

The law doesn’t forbid arming the Lebanese military, but Israel has nonetheless historically objected to the rebuilding of a strong army in Lebanon, and today, if its goal is truly simply defending its northern border, it doesn’t have a choice. 

If it wants to get rid of Hezbollah, it has to accept a strong army. Another May 17 agreement will not lead to better results, and even if Hezbollah is decimated, as was the PLO was in 1983, the state’s weakness and the absence of a capable military will lead to the emergence of another one. Another April 1996 agreement to co-exist with Lebanon’s right to resistance outside of a relation with a sovereign state will lead to another round of violence down the line. The best chance that Israel has today is a return to the armistice agreement of 1949, and that could be a good choice for Lebanon as well.

The Lebanese army is the red line that no Lebanese today wants to cross, including Hezbollah’s base, which, at the end of the day, wants what every human being wants. Justice, security, and peace. This is a good place to start working on rebuilding our country.

Since my return, the “Thank you, loyal Iran” posters along the airport road have come down, replaced by ones reading “Lebanon first.” Angry protesters have already burned some. My wish is for the day we stop wondering what posters along the airport road greet us.