(Reuters) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
BEIRUT, June 11 – Iran is waging a calculated campaign to preserve Lebanon as its last bastion of influence on the Mediterranean, tying the country’s fate to a grand bargain with Washington as it seeks \u200bto end Hezbollah’s war with Israel on its own terms, not Beirut’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That effort is colliding with a historic U.S.-sponsored negotiating track between Lebanon and Israel aimed at ending decades of conflict along their frontier \u200cand redefining the balance of power in a country long caught<\/a> between regional foes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet Beirut is not backing down. President Joseph Aoun told Reuters on Wednesday that “Lebanon’s future is in the hands of the Lebanese, not Iran — nor Israel,” casting the negotiations as a struggle for Lebanon’s sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Cooperation with Iran is one thing, but we do not accept that the Iranians dictate to us,” Aoun said. “We are a sovereign state. Iran cannot speak in our name. We do not accept that Lebanon becomes a field for other people’s wars.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I am determined to proceed with the diplomatic \u200btrack,” he added. “There is no military solution. We have no choice but to negotiate to end this conflict, and neither do the Israelis.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Lebanon finds itself at an impasse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hezbollah has publicly rejected direct talks with Israel, calling them \u200bshameless<\/a>, but Aoun said the group had not presented the government with its own roadmap to end the crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He warned that if Hezbollah chose to remain on a war footing, \u2060the Shi’ite group would harm the very community it claims to defend, prolonging a conflict that erupted on March 2 in parallel to the Iran war<\/a> and has strained<\/a> Lebanon’s sectarian and political faultlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tehran, meanwhile, has made a ceasefire in Lebanon a \u200bcondition for any broader deal with Washington, giving it leverage over a process from which it is formally excluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Reuters) BEIRUT, June 11 – Iran is waging a calculated campaign to preserve Lebanon as its last bastion of influence on the Mediterranean, tying the country’s fate to a grand bargain with Washington as it seeks \u200bto end Hezbollah’s war with Israel on its own terms, not Beirut’s. That effort is colliding with a historic U.S.-sponsored negotiating track between Lebanon and Israel aimed at ending decades of conflict along their frontier \u200cand redefining the balance of power in a country long caught between regional foes. Yet Beirut is not backing down. President Joseph Aoun told Reuters on Wednesday that “Lebanon’s future is… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58522,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58523,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58520\/revisions\/58523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}