Beirut

Founded by Phoenicians and shaped by Ottoman rule, the French mandate, and a 15-year civil war, Beirut has 2.4 million people in its metropolitan area. Dahiyeh anchored Hezbollah's political and military presence from the early 1980s, when Iran's IRGC helped establish the movement after Israel's 1982 invasion. The rest of the city functioned on an informal understanding that conflict was contained to that district. That understanding has now ended.

Lebanon's capital sits at the centre of a war it did not start and cannot stop. Since 2 March 2026, Israel has struck not only Dahiyeh but central Beirut itself: the Ramada hotel, the Aisha Bakkar neighbourhood, and the Ramlet al-Baida seafront. On 28 March, an IDF strike on southern Beirut killed two senior Hezbollah commanders as part of a response to Hezbollah's record 600-projectile barrage in 24 hours. Over 850 people have been killed and 831,000 displaced from the greater city as Israeli strikes reached areas once treated as off-limits.

The political rupture now matches the physical one. PM Nawaf Salam's government expelled Iran's Ambassador-Designate Sheibani — the sharpest assertion of Lebanese sovereignty in 36 years — even as Israel declared a security zone covering nearly 10% of Lebanese territory south of the Litani River, with demolitions ordered on the 'Beit Hanoun and Rafah models.' Hezbollah condemned both moves, struck an IDF base within hours, and shows no signs of standing down. Beirut is caught between a government asserting sovereignty it cannot yet enforce and an occupier expanding the territory it controls.