Amidst the ongoing war in Lebanon, the Lebanese foreign ministry has declared Iran’s ambassador-designate Mohammad Reza Shibani persona non grata and ordered him to leave the country. Iran has told Lebanon that it wouldn’t comply and that Shibani would remain. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar captured the absurdity, noting that Shibani “is sipping his coffee in Beirut, mocking the host ‘country’”.

The question now is what Lebanon will do about this, because the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations gives Beirut the tools to act, and Beirut should use them.

Diplomatic immunity exists to facilitate legitimate state-to-state communication. It was never designed to provide indefinite shelter to a diplomat whose host country has formally rejected his presence. Under Article 9 of the Vienna Convention, when a receiving state declares someone persona non grata and the sending state refuses to comply within a reasonable period, the receiving state is entitled to refuse to recognize that person as a member of the mission. That is not a dramatic departure from established law. It is the next step the Convention itself contemplates.

The immunity Iran is relying on is not a freestanding entitlement. It is a reciprocal arrangement that functions only when both parties operate in good faith. Article 41 of the Convention is explicit: diplomats have a duty to respect the laws of the receiving state and a duty not to interfere in its internal affairs. Lebanon’s foreign ministry has accused Shibani of precisely that, citing meetings with unauthorized parties and statements that violated Article 41’s non-interference obligation. When the sending state responds to expulsion by publicly endorsing defiance, it is not invoking the Vienna Convention. It is weaponizing it.

Once Lebanon formally refuses to recognize Shibani as a member of the mission, two paths open. Lebanon can deport him as a foreign national present without valid diplomatic status, or it can open a criminal investigation into the conduct that prompted his expulsion: unauthorized contacts and interference in Lebanese domestic affairs.

Should Lebanon pursue the latter, its prosecutors would not be working from a blank slate. The foreign ministry has documented numerous, relevant violations. Iran fired a ballistic missile that struck Lebanese territory hours after the persona non grata declaration, as confirmed by the Lebanese Armed Forces. President Aoun himself described the Hezbollah rocket attacks that triggered Israel’s military campaign as an externally imposed war launched for the sake of Iranian calculations.

Shibani is not a newcomer to these dynamics. He previously served as Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon from 2005 to 2009, a period that included the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, and as ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2016, during the early and most devastating years of that country’s civil war. The nature of Iran’s diplomatic presence in both countries during those periods is well documented. Iranian state actors fought alongside the Assad regime throughout a conflict widely recognized as involving war crimes and crimes against humanity.

International criminal law, under both the Rome Statute and customary international law binding on Lebanon, is clear that officials who direct, enable, or knowingly facilitate the commission of atrocity crimes bear individual criminal responsibility. If Lebanese prosecutors can build a factual record linking Shibani to Iranian involvement in such crimes, the legal basis for charges is serious and deserves to be tested.

The broader stakes extend well beyond Beirut. Iran has used diplomatic cover to embed IRGC networks across the region for decades, and the Beirut mission has functioned less as an embassy than as a facilitation hub. The expulsion of Shibani was Lebanon’s formal acknowledgment of that reality. Iran’s refusal to comply is a declaration that diplomatic law applies to other countries but not to Tehran. If Lebanon absorbs this without consequence, that position hardens into precedent.

Lebanon’s government has shown genuine resolve in a moment of unusual domestic consensus. A mid-2025 Gallup survey found that 79% of Lebanese believe only the army should be allowed to maintain weapons. A January 2026 YouGov poll commissioned by the Council for a Secure America put support for President Aoun’s efforts to negotiate Hezbollah’s disarmament at 63%. The public will is there. The legal path forward is clear: formally strip Shibani’s diplomatic recognition under Article 9, and pursue deportation or prosecution. Whether Lebanese sovereignty means something is a question the Aoun government now has both the legal tools and the political mandate to answer.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)