Skip to main content

← The Countries, One by One

Lebanon: Third on the List, Struck by Israel Again and Again

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED that Lebanon was third on the list General Wesley Clark described, and that Israel went to war in Lebanon in 2006 and 2024 and began occupying its south in March 2026, with U.S. weapons and diplomatic cover. STRONG that Lebanon's place on the list comes straight from Israeli strategy: the 1982 Yinon essay called its breakup the "precedent for the entire Arab world," and the 1996 Clean Break paper named Hizballah in Lebanon as a principal target.

In one paragraph​

Lebanon is the country on the list where Israel does the fighting and the United States supplies the arms, the money, and the diplomatic protection. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, months after the Yinon essay held up "Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces" as the model for the region. The 1996 Clean Break paper told Netanyahu to engage "Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon." Clark's memo put it third: "starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon." Israel went to war in Lebanon in July 2006, while the U.S. Secretary of State called the destruction "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." In 2024 Israel killed Hezbollah's leader and invaded again. In March 2026, as the war on Iran began, Israel began occupying southern Lebanon. As one critic summed it up: "The target was Hezbollah, not the state ... US armed Israel the whole way" (@FearNoGoats on X, September 23, 2026).

Written into Israeli strategy​

  • David Ben-Gurion, 1948 diary: "The Achilles' heel of the Arab coalition is the Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can easily be overthrown. A Christian State ought to be set up there, with its southern frontier on the river Litani."
  • Moshe Dayan, 1954: "The Israeli army will enter Lebanon, will occupy the necessary territory, and will create a Christian regime which will ally itself with Israel."
  • Oded Yinon, 1982: "Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precendent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track."

(All three as quoted by @Jehanzebz on X, April 10, 2026; Yinon also in the Shahak translation.)

  • 1996, A Clean Break: "An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by: ... striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon." The Hashemite plan for Iraq was meant to "wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hezbollah, Iran and Syria." See A Clean Break: key passages.
  • September 20, 2001, PNAC to President Bush: "any war against terrorism must target Hezbollah."
  • September 30, 2001, Rumsfeld to Bush: "Syria out of Lebanon," and "Lebanese" among the allies to recruit. See Rumsfeld's memo.
  • 2002, Michael Ledeen, former Pentagon official: "We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change."

2006: "the birth pangs of a new Middle East"​

In July 2006 Israel went to war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asked why she was not rushing to stop it, said on July 21: "What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East not going back to the old one" (State Department briefing, July 21, 2006, archived).

On NBC's Meet the Press on July 16, 2006, a guest said the Israeli campaign was not a reaction to a kidnapping: "it's the implementation of a plan Israel's been working on for five years" (NBC transcript). Five years before 2006 is 2001, the year of Clark's memo. In August, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that the Bush administration had worked with Israel to plan the attack on Hezbollah as part of a long-term plan to target Iran. The White House called it "patently untrue" and "just flat wrong" (Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2006). Twenty years later, Iran is being bombed.

Commentator Phyllis Bennis pointed out the similarities between the Clean Break proposals and the 2006 Lebanon war (per Wikipedia's article on the paper).

2023 to 2024: the pagers, Nasrallah, and the invasion​

  • October 9, 2023, two days after October 7, the U.S. sent Lebanon a message through diplomatic channels, as reported by Israeli correspondent Amichai Stein of i24NEWS: "Hezbollah needs to stay out of the picture. Because if there is a war - Lebanon as a country will be damaged and hurt by Israel" (Amichai Stein on X, October 9, 2023, about 235,000 views). The warning was that Israel would hurt "Lebanon as a country."
  • September 2024. Exploding pagers struck Hezbollah members across Lebanon. The State Department said "Washington had no involvement in explosions of communication devices" (@Megatron_ron on X, September 17, 2024). Former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta called the attacks "a form of terrorism," according to CBS.
  • 2024. Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah and much of Hezbollah's leadership, and invaded southern Lebanon again (Wikipedia summary, 2024 Israeli invasion of Lebanon). The U.S. ordered "All US citizens are to evacuate Lebanon immediately" (HotAir, July 28, 2024).

Journalist Jonathan Cook wrote in December 2024 that the "terms of surrender foisted on Beirut" after Israel's bombing "do not look designed to hold," with Hezbollah cut off from Iran (Jonathan Cook on X, December 11, 2024).

2026: occupation, and Americans on the ground​

After the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran began on February 28, 2026, Israel began occupying southern Lebanon in March 2026 (Wikipedia summary, 2026 Iran war). The American role has grown step by step, each step described as something other than combat:

  • May 29, 2026. The Pentagon hosted Lebanese and Israeli military delegations, which a State Department source said "reflects Washington's desire to launch a security track between Lebanon and Israel" (The Cradle on X, May 29, 2026).
  • June 7, 2026. House Democratic leaders stated "there are no U.S. servicemembers involved in combat operations or hostilities in Lebanon," while President Trump said "We can help [Israel]" with a "more surgical attack against Hezbollah" (Erik Sperling on X, June 7, 2026).
  • June 29, 2026. "The Lebanese Army will deploy in the coming hours to the villages of Zoutar al-Gharbiyeh and Frun, overseen directly by CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper, expected to arrive in Lebanon from Israel" (as reported by @Osint613, quoted by @defensesignal on X).
  • July 11, 2026. "The U.S. will send a team to Lebanon to back the Lebanese army in pilot zones in the south and verify the areas are clear of Hezbollah, Al-Arabiya reports. The mission is described as logistical, not combat" (as reported by @Osint613, quoted by @McPaiges on X).

"Not combat," "logistical," "no servicemembers involved": the same words were used about Syria before the Pentagon admitted it had twice as many troops there as it said. See Syria.

Why Lebanon matters to the Iran war​

Lebanon's Hezbollah was Iran's forward line against Israel, supplied through Syria. The plan in the 1996 paper was to break that line: "severing the Shia-Syrian-Iranian axis." With Syria's government gone and Hezbollah's leaders dead, Iran stood alone. One American writer asked the question an Iranian leader would ask: "if I'm Iran, watching this and hearing a high-ranking Pentagon official say my country is on that list, and then I see each country on that list get taken down one by one, who here wouldn't at least think about building a nuclear weapon for defensive purposes?" (Elizabeth Lane on X, March 2026). See Iran.

Status: Condoleezza Rice is alive. Amichai Stein is alive. Leon Panetta is alive. Seymour Hersh is alive. Brad Cooper is alive. Hassan Nasrallah: Deceased (2024). Ariel Sharon is deceased (2014). Nothing on this page states that any living person committed a crime.

Sources​

Research captures: twitter/t37__v433.md through t37__v444.md

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

Last updated on