🌳 State under siege

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Pro-Hezbollah Hackers Attack Lebanese Government Websites—And Officials Call It an Act of Hostility

• A coordinated cyberattack campaign beginning around March 15 and escalating sharply on March 18 knocked out Lebanese government websites—including domains linked to the presidency and several ministries—along with media outlets MTV and Lebanese Forces.
• The attacks were claimed by the Fatemiyoun Electronic Team, a pro-Hezbollah, pro-Iranian cyber group assessed to operate within networks aligned with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its regional proxies.
• Senior IT Advisor Cyrille Najjar said the targets were deliberately chosen—media outlets opposing Hezbollah and government entities that have taken positions against it—calling it "selective pressure, applied with intent."
• Officials warn that DDoS attacks are typically a first layer, often followed by data exfiltration, leaks, and psychological operations; attackers have already circulated propaganda and reportedly exposed personal information of media personnel.

The backstory: Hezbollah operates both as a Lebanese political party with seats in parliament and as an armed militia with ties to Iran. Lebanon's new government has been pushing to reassert state authority, creating direct friction with Hezbollah's parallel power structure—a tension that now appears to be spilling into cyberspace.

Why it matters: When a domestic political actor's proxies attack the presidency and ministries, it's no longer just a cybersecurity incident—it's a direct challenge to the state's ability to govern, and it raises urgent questions about who actually controls Lebanon's security decisions.

PM Salam's Eid Address: Stop the War, Reclaim the State

• Prime Minister Nawaf Salam delivered a landmark Eid al-Fitr address from the Grand Serail, telling Lebanese citizens that the ongoing war "was not Lebanon's war, nor their choice"—and placing responsibility squarely on the decisions that led to Hezbollah's military entanglements.
• Salam condemned what he called a rising wave of hate speech, intimidation, and threats of violence against Lebanese citizens and media, calling it "completely unacceptable" and warning it threatens civil peace at a pivotal moment.
• He listed Lebanon's immediate priorities as stopping the war, halting destruction and displacement, protecting civilians, securing the return of the displaced, and launching reconstruction.
• Salam declared that "no one is above the state, no one is outside it"—framing the restoration of state authority not as targeting any one group, but as the only path to protecting all Lebanese equally.

The bigger picture: A sitting Lebanese prime minister publicly attributing the country's devastation to Hezbollah's military decisions—on a national holiday, from the seat of government—marks a significant shift in how Lebanon's leadership is choosing to speak to its own people.

Lebanon's Foreign Minister in Riyadh: We're Breaking Free from Iran's Grip

• Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi attended an emergency Arab and Islamic foreign ministers' meeting in Riyadh, convened by Saudi Arabia to coordinate on regional security, where he declared Lebanon's commitment to pulling the country "out of the grip of Iranian control."
• Raggi stated directly that Hezbollah's rocket attacks on Israel triggered further Israeli strikes, resulting in hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, and the displacement of more than one million Lebanese—worsening an already severe humanitarian crisis.
• He renewed Lebanon's call on the UN Security Council and influential states to compel Israel to implement Resolution 1701, declare a full cessation of hostilities, and withdraw behind internationally recognized borders.

What to watch: Lebanon's pitch for direct negotiations with Israel—backed by a reported French proposal that includes mutual recognition—now has a Riyadh platform behind it, but whether Israel engages remains the critical unknown.

QUICK HITS

• $75M a day, every day: Lebanon's economy is bleeding an estimated $75 million daily from the war—direct destruction plus frozen investment, collapsed tourism, and a lira that economists warn could crack again if the conflict stretches past three months.
• Khiam: the battle that won't end: Israeli forces from the Galilee Division have been fighting to control the strategic border town of Khiam for over 15 days, deploying Merkava tanks into northern and eastern neighborhoods while Hezbollah holds out from surrounding hills.
• 111 children. Counting: More than 111 children have been killed and over 330 injured in Lebanon between March 2–17—with some arriving at hospitals alone, their entire families gone, classified under the devastating medical code WCNSF: Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.
• No, the shelves are fine: Lebanon's food importers and supermarket owners denied rationing rumors, confirming food stocks cover three months of local consumption and that imports through Beirut Port are continuing—at a faster pace, actually, in coordination with the government's crisis unit.
• Hawala bust in Jbeil: State Security arrested a Syrian national running an unlicensed money transfer network linked to an Istanbul-based company, distributing funds to recipients across Lebanon via WhatsApp Business—which the company promptly deleted remotely after the arrest, wiping the evidence.

INTERNATIONAL

Dubai's Safety Myth Cracks as Iran Fires Nearly 2,000 Missiles at the UAE

• Iran has launched more than 1,900 missiles and drones at the UAE since the war began, with a drone striking a fuel tank at Dubai International Airport on March 16 and earlier debris igniting fires at the Burj Al Arab and Fairmont The Palm hotels.
• Goldman Sachs economist Farouk Soussa warned in a Bloomberg interview that the UAE economy could contract by 5 percent if the conflict continues, while drones have also detonated near the Dubai International Financial Centre, prompting some firms to shift employees to remote work.
• Dubai's population of roughly 3 million—only 10-15 percent Emirati nationals—includes large communities of Lebanese, Egyptians, Iranians, and South Asians whose residency is tied to employer sponsorship, complicating the calculus of whether to flee or stay.

The bigger picture: Dubai's decades-long brand as a stable refuge for the region's displaced and ambitious is being tested in real time, and the psychological damage to its reputation as a financial hub may outlast the physical destruction.

Qatar's Ras Laffan Attack Could Eclipse the Russia-Ukraine Energy Shock

• Iranian missile strikes caused "significant damage" at Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar's 295-square-kilometre LNG hub responsible for roughly a fifth of global LNG supply, with two of Qatar's 14 LNG trains and one gas-to-liquid facility destroyed, wiping out 17 percent of export capacity.
• QatarEnergy CEO Saad al-Kaabi told Reuters the disruption will sideline 12.8 million tonnes of LNG annually for three to five years, cost $26 billion to repair, and may force force majeure declarations on long-term contracts with Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China.
• Asian countries, which account for 90 percent of Qatari LNG exports, face the sharpest pain—Pakistan and Bangladesh in particular rely on spot-price LNG and lack the financial cushion to absorb the price spike, with some industrial processes already switching to oil alternatives.

Zooming out: With all operational LNG plants already running at full capacity globally and no redundancy in the system, analysts say prices must rise to levels that trigger widespread demand destruction—hitting the world's poorest consumers hardest.

Iran's AI-Faked War Photos Fooled European News Agencies—Here's How to Spot Them

• Dutch news agency ANP removed roughly 1,000 Iran-related photos from its database after discovering manipulation, with the images traced back to Iranian agency SalamPix, which supplied them to French agency Abaca Press, which then distributed them to newsrooms across Europe including RTL, Der Spiegel, and Deutsche Welle.
• DW receives an average of 140,000 images per day from agencies, making real-time verification extremely difficult; AI-generated images in the batch were identified by telltale glitches including nonsensical pseudo-text, anatomically impossible hands, and buildings with unnaturally bulging walls and windows.
• Multiple major photo agencies have since issued "kill notices" blocking SalamPix content entirely, while media organizations including DW removed all SalamPix images and published correction statements explaining which content had been taken down and why.

What to watch: As AI image generation becomes more sophisticated, the legal concept of "agency privilege"—which allows newsrooms to trust verified agency content without independent checks—faces serious strain that the industry has yet to resolve.

GHER HEK

• Diaspora dispatch, Massachusetts: Music journalist Danny Hajjar writes about the Lebanese community in Westwood and Norwood—home to groceries, restaurants, and churches that keep the culture alive—capturing exactly that bittersweet diaspora feeling of having Lebanon close enough to taste but far enough to ache.
• She ran through two war zones: Former LSU basketball star LaDazhia Williams, who scored 20 points in the 2023 national championship game, spent this season playing in Lebanon's Women's Basketball League—where her team won 11 of its first 12 games—before safely evacuating and returning home to New York.
• Dunesday is coming: The first trailer for Dune: Part Three—with Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, and new cast member Anya Taylor-Joy—just dropped, setting up a December box office collision with Avengers: Doomsday that film fans are already calling one of the most anticipated showdowns in cinema history.
• Back from the abyss: South African long jumper Luvo Manyonga, once ranked world No. 1 with a best of 8.65m, returned to competition after six years away—getting clean, rebuilding from scratch, and soaring to 8.11m to qualify for the World Athletics Indoor Championships. Sport, habibi, has no better comeback stories.

Thanks for reading—see you tomorrow.