Social media users recently unearthed a tweet from former Lebanese interior minister and MP Suleiman Frangieh, in which he suggested that his closeness with Syria’s president gave him a political advantage.
“I have something that many do not have: the trust of Hezbollah and the trust of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,” the Marada Movement leader posted on 23 April 2023. “I can achieve with them what others cannot.”
Frangieh—a Christian politician whose grandfather was the Lebanese president—was suggesting that his ties to the dominant forces in Lebanese politics would open doors others could not access. Less than two years later, that tweet is now the subject of mockery, some even joking that with friends like those, he would struggle to chair the committee of his own residential building.
Joking aside, it illustrates the rapid and dramatic changes reshaping the Arab world in the last 18 months. When Frangieh posted that tweet, Hezbollah and al-Assad were indeed dominant players in Lebanon’s politics. Today, al-Assad has vanished into Russian obscurity, while Hezbollah has been so battered it will take perhaps a decade to recover if it ever does.
Dismantling the old
Israel killed Hezbollah’s first- and second-tier leaders, exposed its vulnerabilities, destroyed its communications systems, struck its financial, administrative, and media structures, bombed much of its weaponry and missile stockpiles, and wrought widespread destruction across Lebanon.
Israel also bombed Damascus and other Syrian sites associated with Hezbollah operations, including Albukamal near the Iraqi border, Qusair, and the countryside of Homs and Hama. All the while, Iran proved incapable of stopping the Israeli attacks on its interests or those of its proxies and allies. Indeed, Iran had its own problems: its consulate in Damascus was targeted, and its commanders assassinated.
Iran did not want a full-scale war with Israel, for which it was unprepared and for which it would not win. It knows that Israel has far superior intelligence, military, and technological capabilities, with advanced methods of information collection, classification, and precision targeting, which now uses AI.
Without Iran's help, Israel's war against Lebanon, which ended with a ceasefire at the end of November, radically transformed Hezbollah's regional role, effectively ending its influence. Whereas in the past, its fighters had come to the aid of Bashar al-Assad's regime, which cost the militia hundreds of lives, in 2024, it could not.
And when al-Assad fell, so too did his security and media apparatus and its extensions in Lebanon, which facilitated money laundering, smuggling, drug manufacturing, and the import of luxury goods. This will have repercussions on the many Lebanese politicians who served the interests of Damascus for decades.
Loyalty and domination
There is already a lot of backtracking, with declarations of "disassociation," clarifications, and expressions of goodwill for Syria issued by factions that once thrived under Syrian influence. They are all fully aware of the magnitude of this geopolitical earthquake. Lebanese politicians who once cosied up to al-Assad now worry that they may share his fate.
