Samer Zreik – Call of the Nation
Diplomacy is a broad field in which political and security means of action are mixed in attempts to improve the public situation before reaching the formulation of understandings and agreements that translate the results of wars and conflicts. However, the mullahs’ regime, like the totalitarian regimes, is a master of the diplomacy of dancing over blood and corpses, as it relies on the Revolutionary Guard as a basic pillar of diplomacy that has political aspects and not the other way around. It exploits international agreements and conventions as an identity framework to protect its efforts to violate the sovereignty of states and tamper with their security, in parallel with the influential religious factor. We have the most prominent example in Lebanon.
Within this strategy, the mullahs’ regime has recently adopted a policy of flooding United Nations departments with complaints and statements, because they still constitute a frame of reference regulating international relations, confirm documents and agreements, document attacks, and provide a global platform for marketing political discourse.
Last March, Iran submitted 3 complaints to the Security Council about Israel’s threats to its diplomatic mission in Lebanon, namely the warning directed at Revolutionary Guard officers working on our territory, and its targeting of 6 diplomats, 4 of whom were the officers it assassinated in a bombing of the Ramada Hotel in Raouche, and two others in two separate operations.
At the request of the Security Council, and the instructions of the government, Lebanon responded officially on April 21, with a letter from the Lebanese delegate to the United Nations, Ambassador Ahmed Arafa, addressed to the presidency of the Council and the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which can be considered as a turning point in foreign policy.
The letter begins by affirming Lebanon’s commitment to the “Vienna Convention” and “preventing crimes against persons enjoying international protection,” and by “denouncing the targeting of Iranian diplomats.” It goes on to refute the mullahs’ regime’s violations of the “Vienna Convention,” and the allegations contained in the complaint on March 4, following the killing of the four diplomats, that it notified the Lebanese Foreign Ministry and coordinated with it the process of their transfer to the “Ramada” Hotel, as it turned out that the Iranian Embassy in Beirut had sent a message to the Lebanese Foreign Ministry. On March 16, it says that “the four diplomats were transferred to the hotel due to sensitive security conditions, and they did not have the opportunity to contact and inform the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
The Lebanese response to the Iranian complaint, which listed the names and ranks of the six diplomats, also shows that two of them, Ahmed Rasouli and Amir Moradi, were placed under the status of “deputized,” while the Lebanese side did not note their presence or their capacity in accordance with approved procedures.
The response also reveals that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a message to the Iranian embassy in Beirut the day after its diplomats were targeted, requesting that it be provided with “an updated list of the names of working diplomats, and that the diplomatic cards belonging to those who left be returned.” The embassy responded by pledging to present the list under preparation, as the route of the “Bastros Palace” was not known until now.
The Lebanese response reached the most dangerous point, based on the Iranian media’s announcement that these diplomats belonged to the Revolutionary Guard and the publication of photos of them in military uniform, in addition to statements issued by the latter regarding the implementation of joint operations with “Hezbollah,” considering Iran’s use of its Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon under diplomatic cover as a challenge to the Lebanese government’s decision on March 5 to “prevent any activity of Revolutionary Guard members in Lebanon.” In addition, there is the challenge of keeping the appointed ambassador to Lebanon, Mohamed Reda Shibani, despite the decision to withdraw his accreditation as a result of positions he expressed that are considered a violation of the “Vienna Convention.”
In fact, the importance of the Lebanese response lies in demonstrating and confirming the profound shift in the state’s strategic decision. Dismantling the Iranian narrative and putting it in its correct context contains an intense burden on redefining the relationship between Iran and Lebanon and removing it from the logic of the “permissible arena” and the circle of “the follower and the followed” by creating a limited clash that paves the way for reformulating relations between the two countries according to more equal and respectful rules, or gradually towards reducing diplomatic representation, leading to the possibility of severing the poisoned relationship on the basis of “the last effective medicine.”
The Lebanese response, formulated in calm language and precise diplomatic terms, is an embodiment of a transitional phase in which the page is turned on Iranian hegemony over the state’s political decision-making. Imagine if this response had occurred during previous eras of rule, what would its content be?
