Dear President Aoun

Dear President Aoun,

My name is Jose Lev. I am an American-Israeli scholar, veteran, and member of a people that has buried too many of its sons because leaders mistook delay for wisdom. I write not as an enemy of Lebanon, but as someone who believes your country is too historic, too strategically important, and too full of promise to remain hostage to a group of thugs that answers to Tehran rather than Beirut.

You were right to say recently that Lebanon does not belong to Iran. You were right that Lebanese lives should not be bargaining chips in negotiations between Tehran and Washington. You were right that Israelis and Lebanese should not be condemned to permanent war. But accurate statements without decisive action are theater. Lebanon does not need another diagnosis. It needs a president willing to perform the surgery.

In my humble opinion, Hezbollah is not Lebanon’s shield. It is Lebanon’s parasite. It has mortgaged your country’s future, spent its citizens’ blood, shattered the credibility of its national army, driven away investors, and turned southern Lebanon into an Iranian forward operating base. Every rocket fired from Lebanese soil guarantees Israeli retaliation against terrorist targets. Every tunnel, depot, and command post hidden among civilians ensures that Lebanese families pay the price for Iran’s regional strategy. That is not resistance. It is occupation by proxy.

You know the Lebanese Armed Forces better than almost anyone alive. You commanded them. You understand their officers, their fractures, their pride, and their remaining potential. Use that knowledge seriously. The republic you lead must declare, without ambiguity, that the decision of war and peace belongs exclusively to the Lebanese state. Then it must enforce that principle south of the Litani River, at your ports, at Beirut’s airport, at every border crossing, inside every ministry, and throughout the financial networks that keep Hezbollah alive.

Begin with sovereignty. No armed force outside the Lebanese Armed Forces. No unauthorized missile launches from Lebanese territory. No private telecommunications or command networks. No Iranian operatives behaving as sovereign actors on Lebanese soil. No political party should be allowed to maintain a terrorist apparatus stronger than the national army. No minister, judge, customs officer, or intelligence official should be allowed to serve two masters.

In your country, fear of civil war has become Hezbollah’s most effective weapon. These thugs exploit Lebanon’s painful memories to threaten national suicide, knowing that Lebanese leaders dread being blamed for confrontation more than they fear the state’s slow death. Yet Lebanon’s policy of avoidance has already emptied the banks, collapsed the electricity grid, driven away the youth, paralyzed politics, and made reconstruction conditional on Hezbollah’s mood. Avoidance has not brought peace. It has brought managed national decline.

Despite this, I have good news for you: Hezbollah is weaker today than it wants you to believe. Its leadership has been gutted. Its strategic depth has been exposed. Its Iranian patron is under pressure. Its claim to speak for Lebanon is eroding. Many Lebanese Shiites do not want endless war. Christians, Sunnis, and Druze have no interest in letting Tehran decide their future. The Gulf will not rebuild a country that a terrorist organization can burn again. Washington will not save a state that refuses to save itself. Israel will not accept another Iranian terrorist front on its northern border.

That is your opening.

Make a serious peace deal with Israel. Do not hide behind the claim that meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would betray Lebanon. If you fear for your life, or for the lives of those you love, say it plainly. Bashir Gemayel and Rafik Hariri are reminders that courage in Lebanon can carry a terrible price. Yet America, France, and Israel have the means and interest to protect those willing to secure a different future for your country. Do not retreat at the very moment history has given Lebanon an opportunity it may not have again.

President Aoun, what betrays Lebanon is allowing Naim Qassem and his thugs to decide whether Tyre, Nabatieh, Beirut, or Baalbek burns. A non-aggression pact that leaves Hezbollah’s military infrastructure intact is not a solution. It is an intermission. Border security arrangements and verifiable disarmament south of the Litani are not treason. They are the minimum requirements of statehood.

Demand a serious package: Israeli withdrawal tied to the verified dismantlement of Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure -at least- south of the Litani; full Lebanese Armed Forces control of the south, backed by international monitoring with real penalties, not diplomatic theater; Gulf reconstruction funds conditioned on the destruction of Hezbollah’s parallel state; American security assistance linked to proven Lebanese enforcement, not promises; energy development shielded from Hezbollah’s extortion racket; and direct, reliable channels with Israel to prevent escalation before Tehran’s Lebanese proxy drags the country into another ruinous war.

After that, Lebanon could once again become what it was always meant to be: the eastern Mediterranean’s commercial and financial bridge. Banking, ports, tourism, energy, education, and trade could replace bunkers, savages, and foreign patrons. The “Switzerland of the Middle East” can be rebuilt, or remain as Iran’s expendable sandbag. The choice is not between war and peace. The choice is between one difficult but decisive confrontation now and an endless series of smaller, more destructive wars later.

Honorable President, stop asking Israel to choose talks while Hezbollah chooses rockets. Stop warning Iran while tolerating its private army inside your territory. Stop waiting for history to become convenient. History never is.

Lebanon does not need another careful speech. It does not need another declaration, conference, committee, or promise. It needs a sovereign decision.

Please save your country. Disarm Hezbollah. Negotiate a real peace with Israel. Meet Prime Minister Netanyahu when the framework is serious. Prove that Lebanon belongs to the Lebanese — not to Tehran, not to Hezbollah, and not to the men who profit from keeping your people trapped between war and ruin.

The State of Israel and the Lebanese Republic can live next to each other in real peace once the terrorist organization that profits from conflict can no longer prevent it — because both our peoples ultimately want the same things: to raise our children without fear and to build lives instead of mourning them.

History will not remember whether you spoke well. It will remember whether you acted when Lebanon still had a chance to be saved.

From the bottom of my heart,

Jose Lev