A familiar sense of irritation arises whenever a foreign official presumes to dictate how we should manage our own affairs. What to do and what not. Hardly a week passes without statements from envoys, ministers, ambassadors, or representatives of economic institutions. Their tones range from candid to insolent, yet the underlying message is constant: that we are lost, without direction, and that they know our interests better than we do.
The latest example came from Morgan Ortagus, US deputy special envoy to the Middle East, who declared that “Hezbollah does not represent the Lebanese people.” Pro-Hezbollah accounts quickly moved to denounce her words in Beirut, offering lectures on diplomatic etiquette while pointing to the party’s broad representation within the Shiite community, its role in resisting Israeli occupation, and its influence in domestic politics.
Similarly, a few weeks earlier, Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was at the centre of a counter-campaign after stressing Hezbollah’s importance to Lebanon’s stability and sovereignty. Other Iranian officials, including members of the Revolutionary Guard, echoed the same message. During his visit to Beirut, Larijani was met with sharp objections from Lebanese officials; yet he departed repeating almost word for word the remarks he had made upon arrival.
Neither Ortagus nor Larijani needs a lesson in diplomatic conventions. They, like other foreign politicians, make such statements to send signals to more than one audience. The implicit message is that Lebanon’s sovereignty is deficient, hostage to a balance of power far greater than itself, and liable to collapse whenever outside actors deem it expedient.
Foreign influence over Lebanon is nothing new. Before US and Iranian envoys entered the picture, another generation of ‘colleagues’ made the town of Anjar their base, dictating every detail of political life for three decades. Their dominance was living proof of Lebanon’s failure to build a truly sovereign state—a failure that paved the way for Syrian occupation and decades of violence, assassinations, and coercion. That occupation later acquired international legitimacy with Hafez al-Assad’s participation in the Gulf War of 1990.
