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Jupiter descended from the clouds yesterday to bring aid and comfort to the stricken city of Beirut, after Tuesday’s blast left at least 137 dead, 5,000 injured and 300,000 homeless.

Emmanuel Macron never misses a chance to remind its former colonies that, as the Élysée put it, “France is there — that is its role”. With Lebanon practically a failed state , might its

people welcome such a quasi-divine intervention from the French President? Striding through the ruins in shirtsleeves, Macron told survivors: “I guarantee you this: aid will not go to

corrupt hands.” Noble sentiments, indeed. As he uttered them, however, he was standing next to his host, President Michel Aoun. Whose hands, other than those of the Lebanese head of state,

did he have in mind? Those hands are, of course, chiefly corrupted by the fact that nothing moves in Lebanon without the say-so of Hezbollah. The present Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, is in

their pocket and so are most of his Cabinet. France knows that Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation, but has sought to tiptoe round this elephant in the room in order to broker a deal with

Diab. The Lebanese economy was tottering even before this week’s still unexplained disaster wrecked its capital. With the country’s banks under US sanctions due to their links with Hezbollah

and Iran, only aid and investment from Europe can finance reconstruction. The price for that, of course, is structural reform. This is where Macron comes in. “I will talk to all political

forces to ask them for a new pact. I am here today to propose a new political pact to them,” he told people on his walkabout in the wrecked port. But every part of this _démarche_ is

problematic. Will he talk to Hezbollah, as well as the Government — thereby legitimising terrorists? What precisely is the new pact that he proposes? And who is he to propose it? There is

good reason to doubt the judgement of Paris. While the French language and cultural heritage are still important in Lebanon, there is no nostalgia for the prewar era, when France exercised

power under the League of Nations mandate. The last time that Western powers stationed peacekeepers in Lebanon, it ended badly. In 1983, 241 US and 58 French troops were killed in their

Beirut barracks by Shia suicide bombers belonging to groups that later combined to form Hezbollah. After the Lebanese civil war ended some 20 years ago, Syria was left in charge until it,

too, succumbed to civil war. Now Iran exercises influence through Hezbollah, closely monitored by Israel. By intervening in Lebanon, then, Macron is not so much filling a vacuum as entering

a lion’s den. The French President is confident that he can position himself as the champion of all who long to be rid of the men of violence. To demonstrate his _bona fides_, France has

already sent two planeloads of medical supplies, plus search and rescue teams. More aid will follow. Macron no doubt hopes to inaugurate a new era of co-operation with the land of cedars, in

which France takes the lead and the EU foots the bill. From a secure Lebanese base, the French could extend their sphere of influence to include another former colony that lies in ruins —

Syria. How serious Macron is about seeing through his grand Levantine design depends, in part, on the next presidential election in France. Macron recently appointed a new government there,

but he has less than 18 months left before he must seek a new mandate. His unpopularity has grown almost from the moment he took office, yet no alternative candidate for the presidency has

emerged. Marine Le Pen looks no more likely to break through in 2022 than in her many previous election bids.   Playing a humanitarian role on the world stage, especially in a francophone

country, suits Macron. Jupiter, his early nickname, has stuck partly because he so clearly enjoys the nimbus that, ever since De Gaulle, has surrounded the _President de la République _in

the eyes of his domestic audience. By landing in Beirut so promptly, he has stolen a march on other Western heads of state. He has made this crisis his own. He has aroused great expectations

among the desperate people of Lebanon, many of whom have lost everything. Now Macron must deliver.