Lebanon has ordered the removal of billboards showing Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and his late father from the road to Beirut’s airport, turning a dispute over public posters into a test of who gets to define the country’s fragile post-ceasefire moment.
The billboards, installed this week along the route to Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport, carried the slogan “Thank you to loyal Iran.” They appeared days after a ceasefire was announced between Israel and Hezbollah as part of wider US-Iran negotiations, and as Lebanese and Israeli officials continued direct US-mediated talks over southern Lebanon.
Interior Minister Ahmad Hajjar said Thursday he had ordered the banners and posters removed within two days. Speaking on the sidelines of a Cabinet meeting, he said the decision was part of efforts to regulate public spaces and enforce existing laws.
But the timing gave the order wider political weight. Hezbollah and its allies have portrayed the ceasefire as proof of Iran-backed “resistance” leverage, while Lebanon’s government is trying to show that decisions over the country’s territory, security and public space still belong to the Lebanese state.
The airport road is one of Lebanon’s most visible political corridors. For years, posters and banners linked to Hezbollah, Amal and Iran-aligned figures have lined parts of the route into Beirut.
In 2022, Lebanon’s Tourism Ministry asked Hezbollah and Amal to remove billboards showing religious and political figures from the same road and replace them with signs promoting tourism.
The latest posters carried a sharper message. By thanking Iran days after the ceasefire, they presented Tehran not as an outside power in Lebanon’s war but as the loyal patron whose support helped shape the outcome.
That message comes as the ceasefire itself remains unsettled. Lebanese and Israeli officials have been engaged in US-mediated talks over southern Lebanon, including proposals for Israeli forces to hand some areas to the Lebanese army and for Hezbollah to be kept out of those zones.
Israel, however, has signaled it does not intend to leave southern Lebanon quickly. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will remain in a southern security zone as long as required, while Defense Minister Israel Katz has said Israeli troops will not withdraw even under US pressure.
The ceasefire has also been strained by continued violence. Local and international reports have described Israeli strikes and gunfire in southern Lebanon since the truce was announced, while Hezbollah has accused Israel of violating the agreement.
Hezbollah, for its part, has rejected any settlement that resembles normalization with Israel. In a televised Ashura address on Friday, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said Israel must leave Lebanon “unconditionally” and said the group would accept no normalization, no end to hostility with Israel, no gains for Israel and no partial Israeli presence on Lebanese soil.
His remarks placed Hezbollah on a collision course with the logic of the US-mediated talks, which depend on a negotiated security arrangement in the south. They also reinforced the message carried by the airport road billboards: that Iran and Hezbollah see the ceasefire as part of a wider regional struggle, not merely a Lebanese border arrangement.
For Lebanon’s government, the posters created an immediate sovereignty problem. Leaving them in place would allow an Iran-Hezbollah victory message to dominate the country’s main international gateway at the very moment Beirut is trying to negotiate under its own authority.
Removing them, however, exposes the limits of that authority. The Lebanese state can clear a road, but it cannot easily resolve the deeper conflict behind the posters: Hezbollah’s weapons, Israel’s presence in the south, Iran’s role in the ceasefire and Washington’s attempt to keep Lebanon’s track separate from its broader deal with Tehran.
