The latest agreement between the United States and Iran has produced the predictable wave of Lebanese illusions. Some have rushed to declare that the war is over. Others have convinced themselves that the next sixty days will somehow produce a miracle: Hezbollah will accept the logic of the state, Iran will abandon its Lebanese military investment, Israel will withdraw, and Lebanon will wake up to a new dawn of reconstruction, stability, and sovereignty.

This is not analysis. It is escapism.

The sixty days leading up to the memorandum of understanding will not change the fundamentals of the Lebanese crisis. They may silence some guns temporarily. They may reduce the tempo of Israeli strikes. They may give diplomats enough language to claim progress. But they will not answer the only question that matters: will Hezbollah disarm and allow the Lebanese state to become sovereign again?

The answer, unless proven otherwise by facts on the ground, is no.

Iran did not build Hezbollah over four decades to dismantle it because a piece of paper was negotiated elsewhere. Hezbollah did not drag Lebanon into this war to then discover the virtues of state authority. Its weapons are not a detail. They are the core of the Iranian occupation of Lebanon. They are the instrument through which Tehran negotiates with Washington, threatens Israel, blackmails the Lebanese state, and prevents any serious recovery of the country.

As long as these weapons remain, Israel will not fully withdraw from Lebanon. And even if Israel withdraws for some magical reason, this will not mean that Lebanon has been liberated. It will simply mean that the external symptom has changed while the disease remains. No serious state, donor, investor, or institution will rebuild a country whose strategic decision is held hostage by an Iranian militia. No one will pour billions into a territory that can be destroyed again the moment Tehran needs a bargaining chip.

This is the painful truth many Lebanese refuse to confront. Reconstruction is not a technical question. It is a political question. Sovereignty is the first condition of recovery.

Many Lebanese today are frustrated because they secretly hoped Israel would do the job that the Lebanese state has failed to do. They believed that Israel would clean the Lebanese house, destroy Hezbollah’s military machine, and spare them the cost of an internal confrontation. This is both morally bankrupt and politically childish. Israel is not in Lebanon to save Lebanon. Israel is in Lebanon to protect Israel. Its war aims, its targets, and its red lines are determined by Israeli security, not Lebanese statehood.

The Lebanese must finally understand that no one will do their job for them. Not the Americans. Not the Saudis. Not the French. Not the Israelis. A state that refuses to defend its own sovereignty cannot expect others to respect it.

There is another dangerous illusion circulating in Beirut: that the problem is Benjamin Netanyahu. Some Lebanese are almost celebrating the possibility that Netanyahu might lose power, as if a change in Israeli leadership would magically spare Lebanon. This is a fatal misunderstanding of Israel. The Israeli state, regardless of who leads it, will not accept an Iranian military force on its northern border. This is not a Netanyahu position. It is an Israeli consensus.

If Netanyahu loses and someone like Gadi Eisenkot rises, Lebanon should not expect mercy. Eisenkot is not a dove in the Lebanese imagination. He is associated with the very doctrine that turned Dahiya into a military concept: overwhelming force, massive destruction, and the treatment of Hezbollah’s civilian environment as part of its war machine. Those who think Netanyahu’s departure means the end of Israeli pressure on Lebanon have understood nothing. In some scenarios, it could mean more war, more destruction, and a more disciplined Israeli campaign.

The same applies to Donald Trump. Many in Lebanon reduce Trump to his theatrics, his rashness, and his contradictions. All of that exists. But Trump’s unpredictability does not only work in favor of deals with Iran. It can also work against Iran. This is the same Trump who ordered the killing of Qassem Soleimani. This is the same Trump under whom the United States participated in the war that killed Ali Khamenei. To assume that Trump will always restrain Israel, or always spare Iran’s assets in Lebanon, is reckless.

The Lebanese cannot base their future on reading Trump’s moods, Netanyahu’s polls, or Iran’s negotiating tactics. They have sixty days, not to wait, but to act.

The real question is not whether the US-Iran deal will hold. The real question is whether Lebanon will use this window to present a clear national roadmap: disarmament, full deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces, restoration of state authority south of the Litani and beyond it, direct political engagement in Washington, and a serious commitment to peace as a sovereign Lebanese decision.

Lebanon cannot afford to remain a spectator while others decide its fate. If Beirut enters these sixty days as a bystander, it will exit them as debris. If the Lebanese state hides behind vague language, behind Nabih Berri’s maneuvers, behind Hezbollah’s threats, and behind the illusion that time alone will solve the crisis, then everything will go down in shambles.

The ceasefire may last for days, weeks, or even sixty days. But no ceasefire will save Lebanon unless Lebanon saves itself.

The choice is brutally simple: either Lebanon becomes a state, or it remains a battlefield rented out to Iran and bombed by Israel.

There is no third option.