NNA - Lebanese Forces Leader, Samir Geagea, said, in an interview with Politico newspaper that "there is no Hezbollah and Iran — there’s just Iran.".

“For Tehran, there are no borders between Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, no frontiers.”

"Geagea argues Lebanon is now being presented with a prime opportunity to free itself from Tehran’s stultifying grip," wrote the newspaper.

"If Lebanon gets it right this time, he hopes “Hezbollah won’t have any choice but to disarm” and disband its forces, if parliament orders it to do so. He also believes Lebanon’s Shia “bit by bit will realize that whatever Hezbollah told them in the past was not true and that Hezbollah led them to the catastrophe they’re in.'"

"So does that mean Israel was doing Lebanon a favor by attacking Hezbollah?" asked the newspaper.

“Being Lebanese, I cannot approve of any attack on Lebanon,” he responded to that question. But the war’s “side-effects are something else,” he conceded. “The Israelis have their priorities. This is their business. We have our business.”

“We have been living for the past 20, 30, 40 years without a real state in Lebanon. All the strategic decisions for Lebanon have been made outside the country,” he said. Change has to come “for our own sake, not for America’s, nor for Israel’s,” he added.

Politicians and parties should stop trying to square the circle of the old sectarian politics. “We need a clear path because it is really unacceptable for a country like Lebanon to endure more than 35 years living in a bubble of lies,” he said.

The first step is to agree a president — the presidency has been vacant for more than two years because of political wrangling and Hezbollah vetoes. Whoever is chosen must be someone who is serious about driving reform, he said. General Joseph Aoun, commander-in-chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces, was one candidate who fitted the profile, Geagea said — but he left open the possibility of other names, too.

=========R.A.H.