People escape an Israeli airstrike on a building in Beirut's Bashura neighborhood on March 12.
Photographer: Wael Hamzeh/EPA/Shutterstock
Israel’s War to Crush Hezbollah Leaves a Weakened Lebanon Near Ruin
Hundreds of thousands of people are displaced and huge swathes of land lie in ruins, but Beirut is virtually powerless to protect its people.
When Lebanon’s foreign minister, Youssef Raggi, summoned Iran’s chargé d'affaires to the grand halls of Bustros Palace in east Beirut, he asked his secretary general to deliver an unusually blunt message: tell Tehran to stop interfering in Lebanese affairs. Last week’s rare diplomatic rebuke highlighted a shifting mood in a country long influenced by Iranian-backed Hezbollah but shattered by a renewal in major fighting between the Shia militant group and Israel — the fifth outbreak in just three decades.
The summons came after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for a joint missile and drone strike on Israel with Hezbollah. Raggi said the cross-border attack violated Lebanon’s sovereignty and countered government policy, in a statement on social media.