fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

‘Maximum Pressure’ Is Killing Lebanon, Too

Hawkish policies routinely aid the forces that they are supposedly trying to fight.
Hezbollah حزب الله

Ali Hashem describes how U.S. “maximum pressure” on Iran is wrecking Lebanon and simultaneously making Lebanon more dependent on Iran:

The more the United States ratchets up its pressure on Lebanon, the more opportunities will open up for Iran to exert power and influence in the disintegrating state. This will not necessarily come via the Iranian government; influence could flow directly through Hezbollah, which has vowed not to allow Shiites in Lebanon to die of hunger. The United States’ maximum pressure strategy could therefore easily play into the hands of its avowed enemy.

The administration’s cruel and destructive Iran policy has wreaked havoc on the civilian population in Iran for the last two years, but its harmful effects on other countries in the region tend to get overlooked. When the U.S. wages relentless economic war against an entire country, every other country that is connected to the targeted state economically suffers. Lebanon has been hit particularly hard because Hezbollah has also been targeted as part of the coercive campaign. The effect on the Lebanese economy has been devastating:

As part of the U.S. government’s campaign of maximum pressure on Iran, and because of Hezbollah’s footprint, maximum economic pressure is being brought to bear on Lebanon. To say this has sent Lebanon into free fall is an understatement: Banks are empty of dollars, power cuts in the capital are widespread, businesses are closing their doors for lack of customers, and the dollar value of the national minimum wage has fallen from around $450 per month to $80 as of this writing. A government minister whose monthly salary a few months ago was around $8,500 today earns roughly $1,500. Much the same can be said of the country’s president, speaker, and prime minister—and they are the fortunate ones.

The people suffering most from this are not the Iranian government or its proxies, but rather the ordinary people in Iran and Lebanon who have seen their savings annihilated, their economies driven into recession, and their cost of living explode. The administration’s Iran policy isn’t achieving any of its stated goals, and the only thing it is succeeding at doing is impoverishing millions of people that haven’t done and couldn’t do anything to us. Strangling the people of Iran and Lebanon doesn’t make the region more secure, it doesn’t advance any genuine American interests, and it is a monstrous policy of punishing the innocent for the actions of those in power. On the contrary, it will likely make Hezbollah more powerful and Lebanon will become less stable, and people in every community will remember that it was the U.S. that sought to ruin their country.

It is not surprising that the “maximum pressure” policy is backfiring in Lebanon, since it has also backfired everywhere else. Whenever Iran hawks think that they are combating Iranian influence, they pursue policies that redound to Iran’s benefit. The Saudi coalition’s war on Yemen has helped to strengthen ties between the Houthis and Iran. The invasion of Iraq was a huge strategic windfall for Iran that is still paying dividends for them. The 2006 war in Lebanon was supposed to weaken Hezbollah and reduce Iranian influence, and it ended up achieving the opposite on both counts. “Maximum pressure” has served only to strengthen hard-liners inside Iran, and it is likely helping them to expand their influence in other parts of the region. Hawkish policies routinely aid the forces that they are supposedly trying to fight, and innocent people are made to suffer for nothing.

The human cost of this appalling policy continues to grow each day, and instead of weakening Iran’s influence in the region it is working to cement it.

Advertisement

Comments

Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here