Fall of Hezbollah heights ignites blame game in Tehran

 The fall of the Ali al-Taher heights to Israel has turned Iran's hardliners on the negotiators of the June deal with Washington, whose clause on Lebanon was sold at home as a victory and whose defenders now say it has been dead for two months.

The heights, overlooking the city of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon and long regarded as a strategic Hezbollah position, came under heavy Israeli attack this week. On Thursday night, explosions destroyed underground facilities that the Israeli military said included command centers and weapons tunnels running more than two kilometers.

Within hours the loss had become an Iranian domestic argument. Hardliners contend that Israel could not have taken the heights had Tehran not tied its own hands by signing the agreement with the United States on June 28.

The clause that was a victory

That agreement, reached in Islamabad, opened with a commitment by both sides to halt military operations immediately and permanently on all fronts, Lebanon included, and referred explicitly to Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Iran said afterwards that any continued Israeli operations in Lebanon would violate the understanding and would be answered.

Israel resumed bombing Lebanon less than a day after the signing. Iran briefly suspended the follow-on talks in Switzerland and briefly closed the Strait of Hormuz. It did not respond militarily in Lebanon.

Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliament speaker and Iran's chief negotiator in Islamabad, has since repeatedly described the inclusion of Lebanon in the agreement as a victory for Tehran. It is that claim, set against the smoke over Ali al-Taher, that his critics are now holding up.

'Political score-settling'

The reformist daily Shargh, in a report on Wednesday headlined "Polarization under the code name Ali al-Taher," warned that the Israeli attacks were being used for "political score-settling at home."

"The latest Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon and the dispute over the Ali al-Taher heights, instead of being judged solely by the realities on the ground, have once again created the conditions for polarization and attacks on the negotiators and the June 28 Iran-US understanding," the paper wrote.

Shargh said some critics were charging that the negotiators had, through the agreement's first clause, effectively "sold" Hezbollah, or at least abandoned effective support for it. The charge bites because Iranian officials had presented that very clause as the mechanism for protecting the Lebanese front.

Ghalibaf the target

On social media the confrontation has been rawer, and Ghalibaf is its main object.

"What greater betrayal could Ghalibaf have committed to deserve prosecution?" one account wrote, adding that Yemen's Houthis were fortunate not to have placed themselves under his control, "otherwise Yemen's fate would have been no better than southern Lebanon."

Another laid out the hardline case in full: "The day after the ceasefire, 300 points in Lebanon were bombed in 10 minutes. You prevented a response under the pretext of negotiations. You repeatedly prevented a deterrent attack and failed to maintain the continuity and coordination of the various resistance fronts. The responsibility is yours."

Another user accused Iranian officials of allowing the agreement to prevent a military response: “Is there any reason for Iran’s failure to launch a major response against Israel at the last moment other than the insistence of officials on adhering to that worthless, ridiculous piece of paper and keeping it from falling apart? If there is another reason, tell us so we can know too.”

The defense, and what it concedes

Ghalibaf's camp has answered that a dead agreement cannot be blamed for a live war.

"For nearly 60 days, the agreement that imposed restrictions has not been implemented," Mohammad-Saeed Ahadian, a journalist and political aide to the Ghalibaf, wrote on X.

"During this period, some people have offered nothing but vague and imaginary solutions, yet they say the agreement, which they claim is dead, is responsible for the fall of Ali al-Taher. Enough of this destructive game of domestic politics."

Another defender, Vahid Hajipour, argued the fall was a consequence of the agreement's collapse, not its terms: "Now go ahead and insult Ghalibaf again. With this, you are making Netanyahu even happier."

The defense carries its own admission. The clause Ghalibaf called a victory has, by his own aide's account, not been in force for two months. The argument in Tehran is therefore not whether the Lebanon provision protected Hezbollah, since neither side now claims it did, but who should answer for the fact that it did not.

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202609113373