Shaibani’s call to confine weapons to the state in Lebanon and Iraq appears to set conditions for future ties with Hezbollah, while leaks point to a possible Syrian return to Lebanon under Arab cover.
The day after the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, announced his party's openness to a meeting with representatives of Syria’s current regime, as a prelude to turning a new page and closing the chapter on what came before, an announcement whose reverberations are still being felt and which remains the subject of debate and various interpretations, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani recently appeared in Ankara alongside his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, announcing a new position there, namely that “confining weapons to the state in Lebanon and Iraq is a key factor in ending the state of instability in the region, which is moving toward ending the presence of weapons outside the state.”
Observers believe that Shaibani’s remarks added new weight to the intriguing political scene that has recently emerged in Beirut, following Qassem’s announcement of openness to meeting with Damascus. This position did not come without groundwork and precedents that encouraged him to take it. It was not an improvised, spur-of-the-moment decision, but rather part of a new development.
While the Hezbollah's relevant sources preferred to postpone commenting on Shaibani’s remarks from the Turkish capital, sources close to its decision-making circles revealed that the remarks by the powerful figure in the Damascus regime are being examined and analyzed for their implications within relevant circles in Hezbollah.
The initial reading of these remarks in those circles is that they constitute a double message that the Damascus regime sought to convey to two parties.
The first was directed at the party itself. The remarks appeared to constitute an indirect response to Qassem’s latest announcement, and they contain a “list of conditions” that Damascus wants to establish for any potential future relationship.
The message is essentially that we cannot move forward with a future relationship with you if you remain outside the framework of the overall national decision-making process, which, as we know, has banned all your military activities, in implementation of successive decisions adopted by the current government since last August 5. If this is indeed the case, Damascus is setting what amounts to an impossible condition for Hezbollah to move forward in building ties with it.
For this reason, the aforementioned circles have taken Shaibani’s remarks seriously and are subjecting them to analysis and scrutiny in order to determine the appropriate course of action based on the findings.
As for the second part of his message, according to the same sources’ reading, it was directed at the regional axis that Damascus now sees itself as having become part of. Consequently, it is fully adopting the substance of its regional political discourse, particularly since, during his remarks in Ankara, Shaibani referred to “ending weapons outside the state in both Iraq and Lebanon.”
It is well known that calls to place weapons exclusively under state control in Lebanon and Iraq essentially amount to an explicit call to end all forms of Iranian expansion and presence in both countries. They are, consequently, the other side of the calls that have long been made by more than one Arab capital to eliminate the “Iranian arms in the region,” particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon and the factions of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. Calls for this have intensified following the strikes that Hezbollah suffered at the hands of Israel beginning in 2023.
The sources see a continuation of Shaibani’s remarks in leaks recently attributed to the authorities in Damascus, according to which the authorities are now prepared to respond to the repeated calls directed at them to enter Lebanon, provided that such an entry receives Arab support in the form of the participation of units from Arab armies.
This has brought back to the minds of many the scene of the entry of the former Syrian regime’s army into Lebanon in 1976, an intervention that was at the time covered by Arab military units, which soon withdrew, leaving the Syrian army alone with the freedom to exercise control and impose its will in Lebanon.
Accordingly, it appears that Damascus, whose current president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was quick to openly reject calls for entering Lebanon, has in one way or another been enticed by that call. However, it chose to provide it with Arab cover and, consequently, to ensure that the influential Shiite component would not object. It therefore sent it messages of openness, which it was quick to embrace.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar.
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