It was expected that angry reactions would come in response to President Joseph Aoun’s positions regarding Hezbollah’s weapons during his recent interview on Tele Liban, the state-owned Lebanese TV channel. What he said largely destroyed, in just a few minutes, Hezbollah’s narrative which was built on the principle of refusing to comply with the decisions taken by the Lebanese government in the Council of Ministers on August 5 and 7. Even worse, that narrative was built on the principle that the weapons are outside any discussion and an imposed reality that the state and Lebanese components must adapt to in whatever form.

The angry reactions we are talking about are those issued by officials in the party (Hezbollah), in addition to voices from the party’s electronic army, as well as some prominent clerics affiliated with the party who are deeply involved in politics. Speaker Nabih Berri also made sure to respond in his own way through some journalists who visited him the day after the interview.

President Joseph Aoun destroyed the narrative that Lebanon needs the party’s weapons to defend it, to achieve liberation, and to prevent Israeli attacks. He also placed these weapons in the past tense, saying that the need for them has ended.

Therefore, there is no longer, at least in the words of Presidents Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam, any room to assign either of them an ambiguous position regarding the weapons, which remain, despite everything happening around us, a central issue due to their connection with the project of establishing the state desired by the overwhelming majority of Lebanese.

Aoun’s words, along with Salam’s, combined with the Cabinet decisions that are based on international legitimacy resolutions, reaffirm what we have written more than once: that the armed party lost all legal and legitimate cover for its weapons with the beginning of Aoun’s term and the formation of Prime Minister Salam’s government.

Regardless of the criticism directed at the Lebanese state, both the presidency and the government, regarding the delay and slowness in disarming the mentioned party, which is often justified, what the party’s leaders and followers did not realize is that Lebanon has changed, and what was previously accepted through coercion and violence is no longer so. Moreover, the international and regional situation has been turned upside down over the past two years. Even the Iranian regime, the first and last point of reference for Hezbollah, is currently living a reality very close to the death rattle. If the current protests do not topple it along with the expected American strike at any moment, it has entered a dark tunnel from which it will not emerge again.

The regime has ended in the historical sense, in a way that recalls previous experiences where regimes collapsed before being removed from the political map. From here, Hezbollah’s options, which were built on unlimited support from the current Iranian regime, will see their doors close one after another.

And we ask the “other side”: What were you expecting from the President? That he follows you into the abyss?