The Middle East is on fire, and on more fronts at once than most of us can remember. Two wars are being fought at the same time. The American and Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28, is now in its eighth month, and the Strait of Hormuz has become a hunting ground for tankers.
In Yemen, Saudi Arabia is bombing the Houthis, who struck Riyadh’s airport three times in a single week this month; the third attack killed at least twelve people. President Trump says America “may” join that fight, and Washington has raised no objection to talk of sending Syrian troops to Yemen.
Israel goes to the polls on October 27 divided over the very identity of the state, while settlers in the occupied West Bank carry out about six attacks a day on Palestinians and their property, by United Nations count. Even the Gulf has not been spared. The rift between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi over Yemen has only begun to thaw.
In this storm, Lebanon is a small ship without a rudder. It did not look this way 21 months ago. When Joseph Aoun took the oath as president in January 2025, and Nawaf Salam formed his government weeks later, the Lebanese felt something they had almost forgotten: hope. The president promised that the state alone would hold weapons, that the judiciary would be independent, and that the law would rule. The government’s ministerial statement promised reform and won the confidence of parliament. For the first time in more than half a century, a sovereign state seemed within reach.
Today that hope is sinking into the same sectarian mud the Lebanese have tried so hard to leave behind. Consider what happened this month. At the Dahr al-Baidar checkpoint, on the road from the Bekaa to Beirut, security forces stopped two men, suspected members of Hezbollah, carrying about half a ton of TNT and C4. It was one of three seizures of explosives announced in less than two weeks. Prime Minister Salam has promised to act “with the required firmness”. But the Lebanese know what C4 has meant in their history: assassinations, and the long shadow of civil war. Their fear is not imagined. It is remembered.
These are a people who have earned the right to be heard. They have survived two wars in three years: the first from October 2023 to the ceasefire of November 2024, the second since March 2 this year. The health ministry counts some 9,000 people killed since October 2023. The World Bank put the reconstruction bill for the first war alone at $11bn. The second war has added much more, and no one has finished counting. The bank now expects the economy to shrink by 6.4% this year, after it grew by 4.2% in 2025, and prices to rise by 17.5%. The cost of fuel and food is climbing beyond what ordinary families can pay.
Meanwhile, the old ways persist. Civil society has been numbed by decades of empty promises. Parliament, elected in 2022 and shaped by the long years of Syrian and then Iranian domination, voted in March to extend its own life by two more years. Corruption, extortion and complacency at the top have not disappeared. They have simply learned to wait.
Let us be plain. The team at the helm is the best-qualified that Lebanon has had in a generation. Many ministers have restored the power of their ministries after years of decay. That deserves credit, and it should be said.
But they work in silos. Each ministry rows its own boat, in its own direction, at its own speed. Their achievements do not add up to a plan, and a plan is what the moment demands. A government is not the sum of its ministries. It is the direction they share. Without that direction, good work is wasted, and a public that sees no destination concludes there is none.
This is the heart of the matter. The Lebanese do not doubt the words of their leaders. They do not doubt their ability. What they cannot see is the vision. And a vision that is not shown to the people does not exist for them. To understand why this matters so much, remember where Lebanon has been. For decades, its vision of itself was held prisoner. The armed Palestinian presence, Syrian rule, Israeli occupation and Iranian command through its Lebanese ally each took a piece of the state’s right to decide. The enthusiasm that greeted Aoun and Salam in 2025 was not about two men. It was about the chance, at last, to pursue that vision free from foreign masters.
The Lebanese are not naive. They know the limits imposed by a region at war, by an Israeli occupation that still bleeds the south, and by an empty treasury. Long experience has taught them not to expect miracles. Through war, occupation and bankruptcy, they protected one thing: their idea of what Lebanon could become.
That is why the disappointment today runs so deep. It is not that their leaders have failed to deliver the impossible. It is that they have not yet stood up for the possible. Disappointment of this kind is dangerous. It spreads like an epidemic, quietly, from household to household, until it becomes despair. A nation in despair turns back to the sect, the militia and the patron, because they at least promise something. That is the road back to the past, and the Lebanese have walked it before.
There is still time to choose another road. Lebanon needs to find its centre of gravity, and only President Aoun and Prime Minister Salam can give it one. That task is not mysterious.
They must speak to the nation directly and honestly: where we stand, what we face, and where we are going. They must bind the separate successes of their ministries into one national plan, with dates and targets that every citizen can measure.
They must call on the Lebanese, at home and abroad, to carry that plan, above sect and above party. And they must show, by firm action, that the state alone holds the weapons, as the president promised on the day he took office. None of this needs a new constitution or a foreign conference. It needs will, and it needs voice.
Leadership in such an hour is not measured by how much is done in silence. It is measured by whether the people know where they are being led. The Lebanese have endured foreign guns, foreign rule and foreign occupation. They can endure hardship again. What they cannot afford is one more lost hope.
• Jamil Mroue is a Lebanese writer and analyst. He was publisher and editor-in-chief of The Daily Star, Beirut, and editor-in-chief of Al Hayat, London.