Hezbollah Still Has a Knife at Lebanon’s Throat After Hariri Verdict

Coffins of three of the seven bodyguards of Lebanon's murdered prime minister Rafiq Hariri are carried through the crowd during a mass funeral in central Beirut on 16 February 2005. Hariri and his bodyguards were buried after his coffin was caught in a crush of frenzied mourners outside a Beirut mosque. AFP PHOTO/JOSEPH BARRAK. Joseph Barrak/AFP via Getty Images

Lebanon’s postwar hopes of becoming a free and prosperous nation died smoldering in a mangled crater of seared flesh and jagged metal on the Beirut waterfront. The devastating bomb blast that tore through the Beirut coast didn’t just rip the fragile fabric of Lebanese society apart—it permanently mutilated it beyond all recognition.

But this did not happen in 2020; it happened in 2005. That time, however, it was no act of criminal negligence or corruption but a premeditated murder.