Lebanese geography is not the only factor we must focus on in order to see the causes of the strained security situation in Lebanon in view of the Tayyouneh (Ain ar-Rummāneh) Massacre in Beirut on the morning of Thursday, 14 October 2021. Rather, the context I aim to present here in order to understand these events is to apply a vertical methodology that consists of three circles: Local, Regional, and International.

Washington’s instruments in Lebanon did not act to concoct the Tayyouneh Massacre before plans were drawn up and orders were issued by the Zio-American decision-making circles, and in coordination with the political and military regional embargo on Tehran, the intervention in the Iraqi elections, the blitzing of Palmyra, the instigation of chaos in Beirut and the protection of international interests and hegemony from Sydney to Beijing via Tel Aviv and Beirut. 

The lines connecting the Tayyouneh Massacre to Washington appeared most clearly in the meeting held in Palestine between the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his counterpart, Yair Lapid, the Occupation’s Foreign Minister, on 13 October 2021, especially when the former uttered the words, “Time is running short” for Iran to return to the nuclear agreement, according to the Zio-American point of view. 

Blinken uttered these words after his counterpart had insisted for the sake of the media that, “It is not possible to allow Iran plenty of time to return to the agreement.” We would have called these two statements merely disparaging were they not built on manipulations in terms of political media: Lapid was deliberately trying to create the impression for international public opinion (and this is the essence of the current Zio-American media campaign) that Iran is the guilty party as if it had been the one to withdraw from the nuclear agreement and not the US Administration in May of 2018.

In order to pressure Iran, the Zio-American pact thinks it must control it in Iraq (through the political system i.e, the elections?), air-strike it in Syria, and try to weaken its allies, especially (the Resistance) in Lebanon, which is under an economic siege that aims to break the deterrence formula created by the Resistance against the Occupation in the last two decades.

One of the conditions stipulated by the Occupation (on the US) “so that the Occupation can agree to America’s return to the nuclear agreement” is to change the balance of power throughout Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon — especially in the latter two — by weakening (or, if possible, destroying) the Resistance in Lebanon and installing a new military-administrative viceroy in Iraq à la Bremer so that Iran cannot try to support Syria and Lebanon in liberating the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, which would be seen by the Occupation as a threat (from northern Palestine and with Iran’s participation) when the US returns to the nuclear agreement in the event that the current regional balance of power is not changed.

From the Zio-American pact’s point of view, pressuring Lebanon occurs through:

1. What we witnessed of the procrastination in forming a government

2. The politicization of the investigation/judicial process in the case of the Beirut Port Blast

3. The attempt to weaken the popularity of the Lebanese Resistance (ever since the Blast took place on 4 August 2020) has not borne fruit as had been expected in Plan A, so Plan B had to be resorted to by issuing orders to shake up the security in the street in order to try to bring about the following changes:  

A. A pre-planned process for Judge Bitar, the covering up of the facts related to the Port Blast and pitting the street against Hizbollah. 

B. Destabilizing societal order and security and inflaming religious (Christian vs. Muslim) and sectarian (Shiite vs. Sunni) strife. 

C. Take advantage of the insecurity so that the Occupation can begin or continue (in secret) to excavate for gas on the border with Lebanon/Palestine in order to steal Lebanon’s rights, to say nothing of the historical theft of the Palestinian people’s rights in excavating its own Palestinian beaches. 

In this way, the Zio-American pact would achieve several goals since the Occupation has signed prospecting contracts in the Mediterranean with a company that is preparing to excavate without the Occupation having arrived at an agreement on the demarcation of the borders with Lebanon, thereby placing Lebanon before a fait accompli. 

As far as the regional win-lose power formula, the US is beginning to feel that its losses in the conflict zones are increasing: 

1. The US thought it could monopolize prospecting in the whole of Afghanistan, The Mother of All Metals, based on the Trump-Taliban treaty (February 2020). However, the regional situation and the Sino-Russian neighborhood especially will not allow for stability to take root unless it (along with the European Union) can partake of the “Afghan pie”. 

2. Turkey, America’s ally and sibling in NATO, buys the S-400 missile system and collaborates with Russia in the gas pipelines (South Stream), in addition to Turkey’s activities against America’s agents, the separatist Kurds in Syria.

3. The Syrian Arab Republic signs two prospecting contracts with a couple of Russian companies in the summer of 2021.

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4. An intensification in the Sino-Israeli cooperation after a Chinese company secured a contract to re-develop the port of Haifa, which led the former head of the Mossad, Efraim Halevy, to warn (on 13 October 2021) that the Sino-Israeli convergence could be costly for the Israelis if the US under Biden decides to respond harshly toward Tel-Aviv in case its agent, "Israel", refuses to acquiesce to its demands to reduce its economic cooperation with China. This is precisely what Blinken said on the day the interview with Halevy was published (two different geographical locations) when he demanded of his counterpart, Lapid, to limit “Israel’s” relationship with China. The media pretext for the presence of the United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister at the meeting between Blinken and Lapid was that they were celebrating the first anniversary of the signing of the Abraham Accords in August 2020, which were signed under Trump’s leadership. However, the real reason is to increase US pressure on "Israel" through the UAE, as one of the agents of the US (that has normalized its relations with the Occupation) in the Gulf in that the Emirati company Mubadala, based in Abu Dhabi, acted to purchase the 22% share that had belonged to the Israeli company Delek Kedohim in the natural gas complex in the Tamar oil field on the Occupied Palestinian coast. 

The Biden Administration is under pressure from members of Congress — among whom are Democrats who are pro-"Israel", influenced by or working with the Zionist Lobby in Washington — not to return to the nuclear agreement with Iran. However, the Biden Administration refuses to acquiesce to their demands unless “Israel” were to make concessions in its relations with China, and these details are going to remain behind closed doors.

In order to deepen the trust with the Biden Administration — which has promised to return to the nuclear agreement with Iran that Obama signed when Biden was the Vice-President — Washington says to Tel Aviv: We pressure Iran on the one hand in the negotiations so that it does not acquire a nuclear bomb at all at your request, and we lay siege (and sanctions) indirectly to Iran on the other hand by blockading its allies in that we strike its presence in Syria. (The most recent airstrike was carried out on the morning of Thursday, 14 October, targeting an area in Palmyra from the Al-Tanf base in Syria concurrently with the events in Ain ar-Rummāneh in Lebanon). We moved our agents to concoct the Tayyouneh Massacre at the same time! We have done all of this to increase the pressure on Iran and to secure concessions on various dossiers in the nuclear agreement negotiations with Iran so that “Israel” would approve Biden’s return to the nuclear agreement on “Israel’s” terms. 

Consequently, I do not see the Tayyouneh Massacre as the start of a regional war because there is no Biden or Bennett agenda to conduct a large-scale, direct, and costly war on the Lebanese Resistance.

In order for the Occupation to attack Lebanon and the Lebanese Resistance, three conditions must be met:

1. Either the US demands it, or the Occupation does, in which case Biden would have to approve it, but this has not and will not occur since the US, after withdrawing from Afghanistan, will not agree to get involved in such a war and will most certainly refuse to approve one. 

2. To launch such an aggression would require financing from some of the Gulf Sheikhdoms, but these are not in a hurry at present to underwrite such a war (Saudi Arabia is still in Yemen and the United Arab Emirates still has an embassy in Damascus) especially if we consider the ongoing Iranian-Saudi dialogue, which may reduce the intensity of the Sunni-Shia strife. 

3. There would need to be a state of military readiness in the Occupation, which is not the case at present.

Therefore, the Occupation’s strategy is not only to refuse to make concessions but to attempt to perpetuate its utter hegemony over the Arab region (after instigating some fragmentations, divisions, and normalizations) and to apply a zero-sum game to try to win every dossier, and so it aims to:

1. Negotiate a prisoner-exchange deal with the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, led by Hamas, and a long-term ceasefire ‘Hudna’.

2. Appease the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah by approving an economic aid package and perhaps a few symbolic gestures, such as the re-opening of the PLO bureau in Washington while also rejecting any mention of a Palestinian state.

3. Attempt to weaken the Iranian presence in Syria with airstrikes that have been ongoing for several years.

4. Incite in Lebanon “a lengthy civil war of attrition, over a low flame”, just like the concocted events in Tayyouneh (Ain ar-Rummāneh), in which the Occupation aids and abets its agents in Lebanon with all its might. This will allow it to strengthen the Lebanese Army and other right-wing militias (e.g., Maronite Lebanese Forces) through financing and training, perhaps at the expense of the Lebanese Resistance in order to place Lebanon before a fait accompli and to prospect freely for natural gas in the disputed oil fields.  

As for the Occupation itself, it will maintain its agreements with China regarding seaports and technology (unless there is pressure akin to the case of Huawei in the US, the UK, Sweden, and elsewhere, which led to the cancellation of huge contracts). The Occupation will not publicly intensify or increase its cooperation with China even though China, which is operating in the port of Haifa, would have welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the rebuilding of the port of Beirut?.

Nevertheless, minimizing the cooperation between the Occupation and China in several areas is a constant American demand so as not to undermine the two pacts recently spearheaded by the US: AUKUS, which brings together Australia, the UK, and the US, and the Quad Pact, which includes the US, Australia, India, and Japan, both of which are meant to control the Pacific Ocean from Australia in the south all the way to China in the north, which is an ocean area of more than 165 million square kilometers, to repel China primarily and to also deter it from annexing Taiwan. This is the project that caused France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to scream “Stab in the back” at Australia upon the cancellation of the submarine deal (which France was slated to build).

Nevertheless, the decision to defuse and to lessen the (religious or sectarian) strife in Lebanon, as well as to refuse to be dragged into “a long-term civil war of attrition, over a low flame”, or a major all-out war, remains mainly in the hands of the wise leadership of the Resistance (despite, but also because of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s demand for his constituencies to repress their rage after the shock, and to show forbearance in the face of loss when the bloodshed continues to be spilled from Khaldah to Ain ar-Rummāneh).

The cold-headed leadership of the Resistance could (in coordination with its allies) adopt maneuvering strategies on all fronts (local, regional, and international) and possibly achieve more large-scale successes as well as hamper the remaining or renewed Zio-American plans.