Beirut seems on the verge of exploding. The escalating political and security developments have reached a critical stage. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said on Wednesday [Feb. 27] that “a few days may separate us from sedition.” Everything indicates that the May 7, 2008 events may be repeated.

The tension in Lebanon has been steadily rising for the past several weeks. But in the last few days, tension has reached a critical stage. The two sides of the confrontation are the Shiite camp led by Hezbollah on the one hand and the Sunni Salafist fundamentalist camp on the other. Yet the confrontation between them is the result of what’s going on outside the Lebanese context. There is the Syrian civil war, the regional and international arm-twisting with Iran, and the Sunni-Shiite war throughout the Islamic world.

A new factor, however, has appeared on the Lebanese scene: the Sunni Salafist leader, Sheik Ahmad al-Assir. In a news conference he held on Tuesday, Feb. 26, at his headquarters in Sidon, southern Lebanon, the Salafist leader said that he gives the Lebanese government until Friday, March 1, to abide by his demands: He claims that Hezbollah is holding him under siege in Sidon by using the city’s Shiite residents. It was clear from Assir’s threats that he was asking the Lebanese government to get these people out of Sidon, or to at least remove them from around his headquarters. He made other demands that fall within the context of the conflict that he started against Hezbollah. He said that if his demands were not met, he would take a series of steps on the ground, most notably to cut the road linking Beirut to the south, in the direction of Sidon.

Of course, the government cannot meet these demands. The Salafist sheik had cut that same road in July 2012 for about a month. It was reopened in August under political and popular pressure against him.