Sam Azar

🚨🎖️| Deco is crazy about Luis Diaz. [@FabrizioRomano] #fcblive

Mr. President Donald J. Trump, @realDonaldTrump @potus @SecRubio @SecWar @LindseyGrahamSC @usembassybeirut @StateDept_NEA @USTreasury Today, the Lebanese Parliament has once again extended its own mandate for two additional years. This is the same parliament that has repeatedly ignored the Lebanese Constitution and treated the state as a personal instrument. Its Speaker openly delayed presidential elections for years, making it clear in practice that Lebanon would either elect a president of his choosing or have no president at all. For decades, the Speaker of Parliament mr Nabih Berri has also served as a central political broker for Syrian and later Iranian influence inside Lebanon. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Tehran has intervened directly and continuously in Lebanese affairs, gradually building a political, military, and financial architecture that penetrated the Lebanese state. The current executive authority in Lebanon is not the result of a genuine national democratic process. It is largely the product of external engineering. The so-called Quintet intervened directly in shaping the political outcome, and European diplomacy, particularly through Jean-Yves Le Drian played a decisive role in orchestrating the formation of the current power structure. Europe’s policy toward Lebanon has long been driven by naïve assumptions and short-term thinking. In the name of stability and empty democratic slogans, European actors helped weaken the sovereign and reform-oriented political forces in the country. Many of these voices emigrated or were marginalized, leaving the political landscape increasingly dominated by a dysfunctional coalition of outdated leftist currents and Khomeinist political Islam. These forces inherited ideological structures once associated with movements influenced by Gamal Abdel Nasser, Yasser Arafat, and Hafez al-Assad. It is important to state a central truth: Hezbollah could never have consolidated control over Lebanon without the active complicity of the ruling political class. Over the years, many politicians, financiers, and economic actors benefited from a system of protection, patronage, and illicit enrichment that grew under Hezbollah’s political and security umbrella. This alliance between an armed ideological organization and a corrupt political establishment created a parallel system of power inside Lebanon. In this system, Hezbollah provided the strategic shield while segments of the political class enjoyed unprecedented financial enrichment and political protection. Together, they hollowed out state institutions, undermined sovereignty, and transformed Lebanon into a platform for regional power projection. As a result, Lebanon has gradually evolved into something far more dangerous than a failed state. It has become a narco-state on the Mediterranean, a hub for illicit financial flows, smuggling networks, and large-scale drug trafficking that extends far beyond the region. The same political and security networks that protect armed militias also enable criminal economies that threaten regional stability and international security. For more than fifty years, the same political class and the same system of power have dominated Lebanon. Expecting the country to reboot while these actors remain in command is an illusion. Systems that have produced collapse for half a century cannot suddenly produce reform. Mr. President, The Lebanese crisis is not as complicated as many claim. The core problem is structural. Lebanon has become a republic that systematically consumes its own people and increasingly threatens the stability of its neighbors. The current system no longer produces a functioning state; it produces paralysis, corruption, criminal economies, and geopolitical capture.