🇱🇧 U.S. Envoy Tom Barrack: “Lebanon Is a Failed State — the State Is Hezbollah” At Bahrain’s Manama Dialogue, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack delivered an openly interventionist pitch urging Lebanon to abandon its resistance and normalize with Israel. “The Lebanese talk and talk — they charm you into submission,”... he said, before calling Lebanon “a failed state.” Barrack claimed the “French-mandated confessional system” had collapsed, that the country’s banks were looted and its institutions broken, and that “the state is Hezbollah.” He recited figures — “40 thousand soldiers making $2,200 a month, versus 60 thousand in the army making $275.” Hezbollah, he said, provides water, power, and education while the state offers nothing. He called disarming Hezbollah unrealistic — “you can’t tell Lebanon to forcibly disarm one of its political parties” — but pressed for its “neutralization” through integration and border deals with Israel. Washington’s line, he said, is that “Israel is ready to make border and boundary agreements with all its neighbors, and it owes America a favor.” He invoked Trump’s June 21 B-2 bomber deployment to support Israel as proof Israel will act in a way that’s supportive of American diplomacy in the region. Barrack mocked Lebanon’s ban on contact with Israel: “You can’t even say the word ‘Israel.’ They still call it ‘the south of the Litani.’ What era are we living in?” He urged Beirut to “go from Beirut to Tel Aviv, have that conversation on the Blue Line… in four months you could end all of this.” Turning to Lebanon’s leadership, he praised a few by name — President Aoun, Prime Minister Nouf, Speaker Berri — but dismissed them as “dinosaurs.” “They’re trying,” he said, “but you’ve got to go from the pay phone to Starlink — not pay phone to home phone, not to cell phone. Straight to Starlink.” He ended by warning that time is running out: “Israel every day is bombing the south because you still have thousands of rockets and missiles threatening it. After October 7, Israel has said it will defend its borders and enforce them in its own right. Put your weapons down, Hezbollah, and we will not have a problem.”show more

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