Lebanon

Last Sunday, Saad Hariri’s March 14 coalition held a rally in Beirut to commemorate the six-year anniversary of the group’s founding. In front of a crowd of thousands, Hariri questioned the usefulness of heavily armed non-state actors in Lebanon, and said that the Lebanese state should have a monopoly on the use of force. Hariri […]

Last April, an Egyptian court sentenced 22 alleged members of a Hizballah cell to prison for spying and planning attacks on tourist sites. The leader of the cell was Sami Shehab, a.k.a. Mohammed Yousef Mansoor. Hizballah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah publically confirmed that Mr. Shehab was a Hizballah operative, but he denied the men […]

Hosni Mubarak is gone and the streets of Cairo look like a million Mardi Gras. But as Egyptians celebrate their revolution, a different kind of transition has taken place in Lebanon.  In less than thirty days, the pro-Western March 14 coalition shifted from majority to opposition, leaving Washington scrambling for a strategy. The trouble is […]

On Wednesday, January 12th,  Hizballah and its allies withdrew 11 of their ministers, causing Lebanon’s  government to collapse. Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri is now a caretaker, and it is unclear what his role will be in the formation of a new government, if any.  At the heart of the dispute is the UN’s Special […]

Year in review For Lebanon, 2010 was dominated by the continued investigation into the death of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Hariri  was murdered in February 2005, sparking off massive protests that led to the end of Syria’s 30 year occupation of Lebanon. Since 2007, the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) has been gathering […]

Last Saturday, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri flew to Tehran to meet with President Ahmedinejad and other Iranian politicians. The purpose of the  visit was to secure support for his country at a particularly tense time in Lebanese history, or at least in Hariri’s tenure as Prime Minister. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which […]

Pressure continues to build in Lebanon in anticipation  of indictments in the Hariri tribunal.  Members of Hizballah are widely expected to be named in the case, which could ignite mounting tensions between the pro-West March 14 government and the Party of God. The rhetoric coming out of south Beirut has been increasingly threatening. Last week, […]

At a lecture at the Middle Ease Institute several weeks ago, Dr. Thomas O’Donnell described the modern relationship between the United States and Iran. He characterized the struggle between the two as a battle for the hegemony in the Middle East. America is still heavily reliant on petroleum and the Middle East is still the […]

Last week, Prime Minister Hariri publicly dismissed his case against Syria in the assassination of his father. His opinion on the matter carries no formal weight, but for the people of Lebanon, Mr. Hariri’s actions are indeed significant.  It was his father that was killed and if he can look past the issue in order […]

The topic of Lebanese arms is in the news once again. Externally, the United States has put on hold $100 million in military aid for fear that the weapons may fall into the hands of Hizballah. Internally, Prime Minister Hariri is talking up elevated arms control in the wake of a sectarian altercation in Beirut […]

Earlier this week, parliament voted to grant Lebanon’s Palestinian population wider employment rights. Previously, the jobs that they were aloud to do were mostly limited to manual labor, but the new legislation opens up every field that other “foreigners” are allowed to work in. This still excludes the areas of law, medicine, and engineering, which […]

If it seems like the pace of events has been accelerating since Hassan Nasrallah announced that he expects Hizballah members to be indicted in the Hariri Tribunal, it has. Immediately, leaders from Saudi Arabia and Syria rushed to Beirut to calm the situation. Shortly after they left town, an Israeli commander was killed by the […]