‘All we are concerned with is saving the country’

Abstract The present study investigates the underexplored topic of public political resignation speeches in contemporary Arabic discourse. The study takes as a case the resignation speech of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab, which he delivered in the aftermath of the catastrophic Beirut port explosion in August 2020. Adopting positioning theory, the analysis showed that this resignation speech was predicated on four storylines: saving the country, attacking and ‘othering’ political opponents, appealing to the people, and victimhood positioning. The political landscape played a crucial role in these positioning acts as the resignation speech was delivered in a context of intergroup conflict fueled by inherently deep-seated sectarian tensions and frictions. The speech strategically deployed distancing third-person forms to signal absence of any possibility of dialogue between Lebanese political actors. The resignation speech was both a performative act and a political platform for fostering antagonism toward political opponents.