Political stalemate leaves Lebanon in crisis

With a political deadlock causing a 16-month vacancy of the presidential seat, a garbage crisis that has triggered an anti-government movement, and an unprecedented flow of Syrian refugees making up 25% of the country’s population, Lebanon does not look very attractive to investors.

Lebanon’s electoral system was designed to reflect the country’s multi-confessional character.

Natural Gas discoveries in Lebanon

Justifiably, the major gas discoveries in east Mediterranean have spurred enthusiasm across the poor energy countries of the region. According to the US Geological Survey’s (USGS) the 122 Tcf estimated total gas reserves of the Levant Basin Province and the total gas reserves of 345 Tcf in East Mediterranean suffice to satisfy the region’s energy demand almost indefinitely. In the meantime, Lebanon understands that if it wants to achieve energy security or prevent others from drilling from disputed areas it needs to catch up with findings and drilling.

Beirut bombing sees Iran drawn deeper into Lebanon quagmire

The double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut on Tuesday morning was anything but a surprise. In fact, it was almost expected given the battles in Syria between radical Sunni forces, on the one hand and Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces on the other, along with the threats by al-Qaeda groups in Syria to hit Iranian targets in the area. 

Nonetheless, the bombings raise the confrontation between Sunnis and Shiites in Lebanon and Syria to new heights. Two suicide bombers acting in coordination, bent on harming as many Shiites as possible, may be an almost routine phenomenon in Iraq, but in Lebanon it represents an unprecedented escalation in hostilities.

Lebanese policemen extinguish burned cars, at the scene where two explosions have struck near the Iranian Embassy, in Beirut, Lebanon, on Tuesday, November 19, 2013. photo credit: AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

In similar fashion to the methods used by Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards against Western targets in Lebanon in the early 1980s, Tuesday’s assailants — who apparently belong to an al-Qaeda offshoot — sent two bombers in a coordinated attack: The first rode his motorbike to the embassy gate and blew himself up, opening the path for the second, who drove an explosives-laden car. The result was devastating: 23 fatalities and almost 150 injured.

The meaning of Assad's fall to Israel

The strategic importance to the West of what will be Assad’s defeat and a Syrian Sunni victory is most probably not completely understood by the mainstream. Contrary to what many believe for the Syrian opposition that it is a homogenous body which fights for its democratic rights, the truth lies in the fact that the Syrian long suppressed Sunni population is craving to overthrow the Shiite Alawite to rule Syria. 

2 rockets hit Lebanese Hezbollah stronghold

Rockets slammed Sunday into two Beirut neighborhoods that are strongholds of Lebanon's Hezbollah group, wounding at least 4 people, Lebanese security officials and media said.

Lebanese officials said they found the pads from which rockets were fired. According to the officials, the projectiles were launched from the villages of Aitat and Besaba, southeast of the area in which the rockets landed.

In addition, the Lebanese security forces found a third launching pad from which no rockets were fired. Lebanese Interior Minister Marwan Charbel, who described the shooting as an act of sabotage, said the third launching pad was found in an uninhabited area in the woods.

Unofficial Lebanese security sources said the projectiles fired on the Hezbollah strongholds were Katyusha rockets. 

Tensions have been running high in Lebanon, and Syrian rebels have threatened to retaliate against the terrorist Shiite Hezbollah group for sending fighters to assist President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria.

One rocket landed in the Mar Mikhael district on the southern edge of the capital, striking a car exhibit on the street. Another struck an apartment in a building in Chiyah district south of Beirut, about two kilometers (one mile) away from Mar Mikhael

Scene of rocket attack (Video: Reuters)

Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV said the Chiyah rocket did not explode.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations and said it was not clear from where the rockets were fired.

Hezbollah’s role in Syrian civil war drives sectarian tension in Lebanon

Lebanese groups on opposite ends of the nation’s polarized political spectrum are starting to play a more public role in the Syrian civil war, rendering Lebanon’s stated policy of neutrality toward the two-year conflict increasingly obsolete and threatening the tenuous stability of this Arab country.

Bilal Hussein/AP - Masked men in camouflage toting Kalashnikov rifles fan out through a dusty olive orchard, part of a group of Hezbollah-backed fighters from Lebanon who are patrolling both sides of a porous border stretch with Syria on April 12, 2013.

Although the Lebanese militant and political group Hezbollah has acknowledged little about its role in the fighting next door, Syrian rebels and an analyst close to the Shiite organization, a longtime ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, say it has amplified its operations inside Syria in recent weeks, adding muscle and firepower to an ongoing Syrian military offensive to retake a strategically important border zone from the rebels.

Israel downs drone flying from Lebanon

An unmanned aircraft that was approaching Israel on Thursday from the coast of Lebanon was shot down by an Israeli fighter jet over the Mediterranean Sea, about six miles from the northern Israel port of Haifa.

Ariel Schalit/AP - An Israeli navy ship and an Israeli air force helicopter search for wreckage from a downed drone in the Mediterranean Sea.

It was the second time in the past seven months that Israeli airspace was penetrated by a drone. A senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident is under investigation, described it as a serious breach, saying such unmanned aircraft are intended to search for possible targets, probe defenses or create a provocation.

Syria Conflict Spilling into Lebanon

A lot is happening in Syria right now: the humanitarian crisis is spiraling out of control, sectarian tensions are heightening, and the civil war is spilling over the country’s borders.

Lebanese army accuses Israel of 17-hour overflights

An IDF soldier greets a drone on its return from a mission (photo credit: Tsahi Ben-Ami/Flash90)

Israeli “spy” drones conducted overflights in southern Lebanon twice and returned to Israel, violating Lebanese airspace for over 17 hours, a Lebanese Army Guidance Department spokesman said Saturday in comments quoted by the Lebanese government’s news agency.

Lebanon: Lessons from Two Assassinations

On Oct. 19, Lebanese Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan was assassinated on a narrow side street near Sassine Square in downtown Beirut. The attack involved the detonation of a moderately sized vehicle-borne improvised explosive device as al-Hassan's car passed by the vehicle in which the device was hidden. The explosion killed not only al-Hassan and his driver but also six other people and wounded about 90 more.

Al-Hassan, the intelligence chief for Lebanon's Internal Security Forces, had been a marked man for some time prior to his death. He was the security chief for former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, who was assassinated in February 2005 in an attack that most believe was conducted by the Syrian regime and its allies in Lebanon.

U.S. supports new Lebanese government coalition, spokeswoman says

(CNN) -- Four days after Lebanon's intelligence chief was killed in a car bombing, the United States said it will back the Lebanese opposition's call for a new cabinet free of Syrian influence.

The United States is helping Lebanon investigate Friday's deadly car bombing in Beirut that killed intelligence chief Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan.