The Long Struggle for the Levant

At its heart, Hassan’s assassination was another salvo in the long struggle for the Levant. For more than a decade, rival factions—each aligning Lebanese and Syrian actors alongside foreign sponsors—have sought to control Beirut. Lebanon’s capital has long been an open arena; with the onset the Syrian conflict, these rivals are competing for Damascus too. The scenes have included Beirut, foreign capitals, the media war, licit and illicit business, and Lebanon’s far-flung diaspora. The Assad regime and allies like Hezbollah have routinely used violence to silence opponents, eliminate liabilities, deplete pools of knowledge, and create political space. They probably killed Hassan because, in the complicated tapestry of the Levant, he tied many threads together