According to the Lebanese journalist Hanin Ghaddar, Iran has succeeded in its decades-long attempt to turn Lebanon into a colony, and its main tool for doing so has been Hizballah:

Hizballah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, declared victory in Lebanon in his last speech. And he’s right. Hizballah won Lebanon and no one seems to care. . . . Political opponents of the Party of God and its hegemony over Lebanon lost the battle a long time ago, when they compromised [their] values for political gains. The state is increasingly weakened by the void in its institutions . . . and petty individual interests.

Regional powers are busy in Syria and Yemen while the international community seems to have given up on Lebanon. As long as Hizballah’s involvement in Syria is not challenged by the international community, it means only one thing for Lebanon: that Iran has been given a free hand to take over. . . .

To protect Hizballah’s arms, Iran will do anything, whatever it takes and no matter how many people and lives are sacrificed. . . . Today, there is no one to challenge Hizballah’s arms in Lebanon. To guarantee that [this will continue to be so] for the longest time possible, Hizballah will need [to foster the further] disintegration of state institutions, which will intensify and become worse. . . .

[T]he Party of God is steadily moving to take whatever is left of Lebanon. If no one stops it, Lebanon will be a state-within-Hizballah’s-state, not the other way around.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.