BEIRUT — Squeezed geographically between a closed border with Israel and a sanctioned Syria, dominated by a proxy of Iran, and watching the last of its foreign reserves being ferried out of a collapsed financial system, Lebanon risks becoming the next Gaza.
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France, the last major Western power to recognize Hezbollah as a diplomatic partner, is today under increasing pressure to blacklist the movement in its entirety as a terrorist group.
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That pressure comes not only from Washington, which since the start of the year has ushered about similar designations by the United Kingdom and Germany, but from what Macron called a “betrayal” of the Lebanese political class to stick to the script of his roadmap for reform following a cataclysmic explosion that rocked Beirut on August 4.
