Sohaib Jawhar

Southern Lebanon is entering a more complex phase in which developments on the ground are increasingly outpacing the political track. Three interconnected issues are now shaping the next stage: Israel’s attempt to establish new military facts ahead of the eighth round of negotiations, growing U.S. pressure over Hezbollah’s weapons, and the search for a new security arrangement in southern Lebanon…

The results of the seventh round of Lebanese-Israeli negotiations show that the track has entered a phase far more complex than a simple dispute over a ceasefire or withdrawal from specific points. The core of the problem is now bound up with the shape of the security arrangements Israel wants to impose in south Lebanon, and with the limits of…

The involvement of Hezbollah following the American–Israeli attack on Iran in February 2026 was not merely a circumstantial response to the assassination of the Iranian leadership.1 Rather, it represented a revealing moment of a deeper transformation in the party’s position within the regional order. This war, with the strategic shock it inflicted upon Iran, placed Hezbollah not only before the…

The announcement of the Lebanon–Israel Framework Agreement in June 2026 did not constitute merely another negotiating round in the long-standing conflict between the two countries. Rather, it reflected a significant shift in the strategic approach adopted by both the United States and Israel toward Lebanon. The document was not conceived simply as an instrument to consolidate a ceasefire or establish…

The U.S.–Iranian understanding announced under Pakistani sponsorship has reopened the door to a new political phase in the Middle East. However, the Lebanese arena quickly emerged as the first practical test of this understanding’s ability to endure and translate into realities on the ground. While the agreement was expected to reduce tensions across the various fronts linked to the U.S.–Iran…

The Lebanese-Israeli negotiations have entered, after the third round, an entirely different phase from anything Lebanon has experienced since the April 1996 Understanding and the arrangements that followed the July 2006 war. The issue is no longer confined to localized security arrangements or the management of limited confrontations along the southern border. Instead, it has become part of a broader…

Lebanon today does not appear to be standing at the threshold of a political settlement so much as it is embedded within an intensive phase of crisis management—one in which balances are being carefully regulated to prevent explosion, while the conditions for a genuine resolution remain absent. The intersecting political and field-level indicators suggest that the key regional and international…

The announcement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the launch of direct negotiations with Lebanon, in parallel with U.S. efforts to convene a preparatory meeting in Washington, marked a turning point in the course of the ongoing war. It shifted the Lebanese file from the framework of open military confrontation to the threshold of an unstable negotiating track. This…

In a development that reveals the scale of transformation underway in the Lebanese file, the discussion is no longer confined to how to contain the war or mitigate its repercussions. It has shifted to a deeper level concerning the redefinition of Lebanon’s regional position, the limits of its actual sovereignty, and the shape of the internal balance possible amid the…

The ongoing war in Lebanon can no longer be understood as a limited military round between Israel and Hezbollah, nor even as a subsidiary extension of the U.S.–Israeli confrontation with Iran. Recent developments indicate that the conflict has shifted to a new level, where immediate military objectives are intertwined with broader strategic stakes related to reshaping Lebanon’s strategic environment and…