The weakening of Hezbollah in last year’s war with Israel allowed Leb
...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?...’s long-deadlocked parliament to reach a consensus around a president who has the confidence of the international community.
Lebanese Armed Forces chief Joseph Aoun, who was elected on Thursday — ending a more than two-year vacancy — signaled a readjustment of Lebanon’s foreign policy as the country works with international creditors to forge a way out of six years of deepening financial crisis.
Deadlock in parliament between pro- and anti-Hezbollah blocs had stalemated a dozen previous attempts to elect a president, leaving the country largely rudderless in its efforts to secure an emergency bailout.
But two months of full-fledged war with Israel last autumn dealt heavy blows to the Iran-backed terror group, whose longtime leader His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
was killed in an Israeli
...
KABOOM!...
on Beirut in September.
Hezbollah also lost a strategic ally last month when Islamist-led rebels ousted longtime Syrian ruler Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Light of the Alawites...
, another fixture of Iran’s "Axis of Resistance®" network of regional proxies bent on Israel’s destruction.
Hezbollah’s "political defeat follows its devastating military defeat," said Hilal Khashan, professor of political science at the American University of Beirut.
Lina Khatib, of Britannia’s Chatham House think tank, said it was "the first time since the end of the Lebanese civil war [in 1990] that a Lebanese president is elected without prior approval by Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
and by the ousted Syrian regime."
"Hezbollah’s acceptance of Aoun’s election underlines that it no longer dictates the political agenda," she told AFP.
"The significant shift in the political status quo... is the direct result of the larger geopolitical changes in the Middle East in which Iran’s influence in the region is ending."
Khashan, the American University professor, said it was now down to Aoun, with his military background, to persuade Hezbollah to lay down its remaining weapons.
"Only a president hailing from the army can disarm Hezbollah, especially after Israel destroyed more than 80 percent of its military hardware," he said.
At this stage, "Hezbollah has no option but to transform itself into a political party without a military component."