Alwaght- Lebanon has a special and crucial place in the structure of regional power. It is a country with high geopolitical capacity, educated society, and access to the Mediterranean and having the potential to become East-West bridge. But these potential capacities can materialize only when Lebanon enjoys a minimum level stability, security, and cohesion of governance.
Over the past two decades, the Israeli regime and the US have shown that they find a stable Lebanon with a strong army and a deterrent resistance forces as posing a strategic threat to their interests. So, their major policy has focused on managing the crisis, maintaining controlled instability, and preventing a powerful Lebanon.
Israel's recent attack on Beirut's south and the assassination of senior Hezbollah commander Haitham Ali Tabatabaei was not merely a security operation. It forms part of a broader political, economic, and military strategy designed to prevent Lebanon from embarking on a path of economic recovery and strengthening its governing institutions.
Attack on Dahieh; breaking the rules of engagement
The Sunday attack that assassinated senior military commander in Hezbollah was not a sudden incident but a product of organized violation of the November 2024 ceasefire. Since signing the truce deal, Tel Aviv has been carrying out aircraft and drone strikes and artillery shelling in the south, signaling that it respects no red lines in Lebanon.
The assassination of Tabatabaei deep in Beirut sent the message that Israel dies not even consider the capital a safe zone. This act not only rendered the ceasefire ineffective, but also showed that it is seeking to turn the security tide inside Lebanon in its favor, something feasible only through weakening the Lebanese security and defense structures.
Meaningful coincidence of attack with first grand Beirut investment conference
The timing of Israel's latest attack was highly significant and targeted. It struck just as the Lebanese government was preparing to host its first major economic conference in years, a critical effort to emerge from financial collapse and political paralysis.
The "Beirut Investment Conference 1" was far from a routine or merely symbolic meeting as it was to be attended by big European and Arab country. For Lebanon, it represented the first coordinated attempt to revive the nation's economy since the devastating 2019 financial crisis. This crisis had triggered a collapse in the value of the Lebanese lira, was compounded by the catastrophic port explosion, and was prolonged by years of political gridlock. The summit aimed to secure new investment, with initial projections suggesting it could unlock over $7.5 billion.
The Lebanese government looked at this investment event as a starting point, hoping that with presenting a coherent plan of financial, banking, and executive reforms, restore the trust of the international actors. The economic stakes for the summit were immense. Its goal was to secure billions in foreign investment for critical sectors: the crippled electricity grid, port reconstruction, road infrastructure, and telecommunications. For a nation where daily power blackouts are the norm, transportation networks are in disrepair, and ports and airports are starved for capital, this conference represented a potential turning point, a chance to begin a gradual exit from the state of collapse.
The true desperation of Lebanon's economy, however, is laid bare in the official data. The finance ministry reported that accumulated losses in the banking sector have reached approximately $72 billion, while public debt is nearing $94 billion. For a small economy like Lebanon's, these figures signal a near-total incapacity of the financial system to cover even basic costs.
Compounding the crisis, unemployment has soared past 35 percent, and national power generation has collapsed, leaving many areas with just two to four hours of electricity from the state grid each day. In this debilitating economic and social climate, the Beirut Investment 1 conference offered the only glimmer of hope to halt the nation's financial death spiral. A successful outcome, potentially unlocking $3-5 billion in new capital, was the key to triggering a $3 billion IMF aid package and fostering a tentative return of private investors. It was Lebanon's minimal, yet critical, chance to begin restoring shattered international confidence.
That is why the attack coming shortly after the investment conference is not an accident.
By launching this precise strike, Israel did not merely assassinate a commander. It strangled Lebanon's first real chance for economic recovery in its cradle. In the ensuing propaganda war, it is now seeking to pin the inevitable failure of Lebanon's reconstruction efforts on the government's inability to disarm Hezbollah. The objective is clear: to compound the economic collapse by also dismantling the country's security and military framework.
This calculated timing reveals that Tel Aviv's concerns extend beyond a strengthened Hezbollah. It sees a stable, investable Lebanon with a viable economic future as fundamentally incompatible with its own strategic interests.
The Israeli regime knows well the fact that security is a prerequisite for investment. No foreign capital will flow into a country whose capital is a target for military strikes.
Therefore, the recent attack was precisely calibrated to discredit the summit, shatter the Lebanese government's hopes of reviving foreign economic relations, and prevent any emergence of financial stability. In other words, Tel Aviv aims to send a message that Lebanon is a nation "un-investable," where any development project can be erased in a matter of hours.
The US policy: strategic overlap of Washington and Tel Aviv
Though the US's Lebanon policy on the surface revolves around strengthening the Lebanese army and the "need for disarming non-state armed groups", its practical behavior says differently. The clear example is the cancelation of the visit to the US of the Lebanese army chief to the US after the Lebanese army described the Israeli airstrike an aggression.
Senior Lebanese sources announced that General Rodolphe Haykal canceled his trip to Washington after being informed that several of his meetings there had been called off. Reports indicate the US government canceled all scheduled meetings for the Lebanese military chief that day, prompting the Lebanese embassy in Washington to also cancel a reception that had been arranged in his honor.
Senator Lindsey Graham in an X post said: "It is clear that the Lebanese Chief Head of Defense — because of a reference to Israel as the enemy and his weak almost non-existent effort to disarm Hezbollah — is a giant setback for efforts to move Lebanon forward. This combination makes the Lebanese Armed Forces not a very good investment for America."
This move is a clear American message that Washington wants the Lebanese army to turn a blind eye even to overt foreign aggression if it wants aid from the US. This aligns with the same policy Washington has long followed, namely weakening Lebanon's true deterrence, maintaining the army as a symbolic, constrained and dependent force to eliminate the justification for Hezbollah's arms, and pressuring the government to disarm the resistance movement.
