Worse, Siniora backed down "on the suggestion of the army commander." Lebanon's army cannot and will not fight Hezbollah. When your army tells you bluntly to give the other side what they want, it is no longer your army.

The 2005 "cedar revolution," which ended decades of Syrian military occupation, now stands revealed as merely a change of masters. Iran's Syrian client/partner was replaced by Iran's Hezbollah stooges, who also have the support of Lebanon's Shiites.

The 2006 fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, mostly in southern Lebanon, demonstrated that the government had little sway over Hezbollah's strongholds. And now all of Lebanon, it seems, can be a Hezbollah stronghold, whenever that faction's masters flex their muscles.

Hezbollah does not actually govern, because it chooses not to. Instead the fiction of electoral politics, with all factions meeting to compromise, continues. Memoes about a face-saving deal for Siniora are flying among foreign offices this week. But his army won't fight for him, and Hezbollah can clench its military fist in the capital itself whenever it wants to.

Lebanon is legendarily fractious, and some observers claim Hezbollah, too, will have trouble running the country. That is perhaps why they decline to try: They'll leave to Siniora and others the chores of seeking foreign aid, caring for the non-Shiite population, and so on. But we saw this week what happens when the caretaker government interferes with Hezbollah's preparations against Israel.

Iran and its proxies are in the ascendant all across the Middle East. Foolishly, President U.S. George W. Bush still refuses to negotiate with Iran, or with Syria, and that can't help. But even when U.S. policy changes, it will be hard to see better days ahead for Lebanon - or the region.

Nobody can now persist in self-delusion: Hezbollah runs Lebanon. That armed faction relinquished its para-military control of much of Beirut this week only after the "government" of "Prime Minister" Fouad Siniora backed right down on measures Hezbollah opposes. Beirut airport's Hezbollah-sympathizing director will be reinstated, and the ban on Hezbollah's mysterious private telecom network will be reversed.

The Gazette