Ibrahim Mrad: By continuing to direct its guns at the Lebanese state, Hezbollah is destroying it

BEIRUT — Hezbollah’s insistence on holding on to its weapons and rejecting any trajectory that would restore legitimacy to the Lebanese state are a direct threat and present danger to the political system and the fate of Lebanon as a whole, says Ibrahim Mrad, President of the Universal Syriac Universal Party (USUP).

Mrad’s comments come after US Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack received an answer on Monday from the Tripartite Presidential Committee, made up of President Joseph Aoun (Syriac Maronite), Prime Minister Nawaf Salam (Sunni), and Hezbollah-ally and longtime Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri (Shiite). With regards to the hot topic of Hezbollah’s weapons: no answer, no breakthrough, no timeline.

In this context, Ibrahim Mrad emphasized in his statement that Iran-backed Hezbollah has never been part of the project to build up the Lebanese state. On the contrary, it has been the tool employed to destroy it and prefers “confrontation” over “reconstruction.” For Hezbollah, Lebanon is merely a bargaining chip in the service of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” not a sovereign homeland worthy of its people.

“The current intransigence and insistence on keeping weapons out of the hands of the state is an open coup against the constitution and state institutions, Mrad stated. “It calls for an urgent, united national response. The Lebanese state’s silence in the face of such a militia threat is tantamount to abandoning sovereignty and surrendering the existence of the state.”

Read Also: Lebanon’s Christian parties make unified call for immediate disarmament of Hezbollah

He urged the international community, first of all the UN Security Council (UNSC), to finally implement UNSC Resolutions 1559 and 1701 to protect Lebanon from the armed “state-within-a-state” that Hezbollah has become and put an immediate and definitive end to Hezbollah’s military and political hegemony. Mrad also issued an explicit call to the sovereigntists and independent members of Lebanese Parliament to shoulder their national responsibilities and to demand, publicly and clearly within Parliament, the implementation of the two UNSC resolutions, without equivocation or compromise.

Mrad concluded:

“Lebanon will have no future as long as there are those who point their guns at the state, and as long as some Lebanese accept living under the shadow of illegal weapons. Only complete sovereignty can save this country, and only legal weapons can protect the Lebanese people.”