The transparency required in dealing with the most dangerous and decisive phase Lebanon is going through demands that the directly responsible officials involved in the fierce confrontation over the state’s negotiating option do not become trapped in contradictory statements regarding the position and choice they have adopted. Such contradictions could reveal to those rejecting this option that its supporters are not standing on solid and firm ground, even if the successive steps taken under this option contain flaws and shortcomings.

Something of this sort happened in recent days, prompting the opponents, or the “self-proclaimed guardians of national virtue,” most of whom are figures tied to chronic and well known foreign dependencies, particularly along the Tehran axis, to display arrogant defiance by lecturing on sovereignty, under the pretext of the concessions that marked the framework agreement between Lebanon and Israel, with the American mediator playing the role of sponsor.

A substantive and very necessary discussion could, and should, have taken place regarding the existing gaps and shortcomings in this initial framework, because they do in fact exist. It is not acceptable, out of respect for Lebanese people’s intelligence, to deny their existence in the same manner as the typical denial that characterizes the positions and policies of the main spearhead opposing the legitimate Lebanese state and the choice of independence and sovereignty adopted by most Lebanese people, namely Hezbollah.

However, the aggressive political shamelessness that characterized the escalating and intensifying attack against the state by a faction that has brought Lebanon disasters through successive “support wars” made it obvious that no voluntary and free services should be provided to this faction. Independent figures fully understand the existence of shortcomings and justify Lebanon’s weakened position in the negotiations due to its being crushed between a regional hammer and anvil, divided between Israel and Iran. They must not allow their observations and reservations, or even those of allies of the negotiating option, to ultimately be turned into implicit support for the reckless rejecting faction, thereby encouraging it to become even more stubborn, arrogant, emboldened, and inflated once again with dreams of domestic domination.

Therefore, it has become inevitable and necessary to carefully sort out domestic positions on the operating table of official politics, with the utmost precision, and to deal with the problem emerging forcefully and alarmingly in the country as surgeons would deal with a serious condition. This problem is fueled by propaganda campaigns focused on targeting the state, legitimacy, and those who support them, as a prelude to concealing the enormous catastrophe caused by this faction through internally manufactured provocations, hinted at by carefully calculated slips of the tongue. It would be entirely unwise to underestimate the seriousness of these threats as the negotiations move closer to implementation steps, with the countdown now underway for the first trial phase.

The bitter irony in this context is that the “resistance” faction, bearing in mind that the label “resistance” is itself a blatant distortion used by an axis, parties, and groups that openly promote blind dependence on Iran, funded and driven by ideological allegiance to it, does not appear at all ready or willing to acknowledge that this Tehran has been exposed in a way more dangerous than the fundamental military and structural strikes inflicted upon it by the Americans and Israelis during the latest rounds of war.

For the entire world to wait for the “appearance” of Mojtaba Khamenei, only for him not to appear except through an anonymous statement, whose author remains unknown, issued a full week after the massive funeral ceremonies for his father, the Supreme Leader, in which he vowed to kill those who killed his father, means that the regime has effectively become headless, regardless of the fate of Mojtaba, who remains hidden along with the enriched nuclear fuel.

And for some elements within Tehran to leak secrets to the Trump administration against other elements within Tehran regarding the “mistake” of targeting ships in the Strait of Hormuz, while simultaneously presenting this act as an attempt to lure the parties into new negotiations, means that Iran’s support for its regional proxies will increasingly become vulnerable to openly exposed deals that are inevitably coming, if arrangements are not already underway behind the scenes, under the tables of double dealings and secrets through which major powers manipulate smaller actors. Whatever the case may be, Lebanon as a state must defeat political indecency and reckless behavior.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar.