Unthinkable, or at least not feasible, in the sense of supporting the current level of technological advancement and average quality of life in many countries.
lebanon has an economy that's currently in shambles, and its never been known for its productive capacity. even if they wanted to start making simple comms devices it might rely on infrastructure that they can't invest in, and take tech/capital they have not accumulated
it would be more realistic for them to receive it from the iran but there might be political hurdles to this and it would end up costing the iranians as hezbollah can't be expected to pay much for it
Domestic production of goods such as televisions, radios and even extremely high technology such as tractors has been declining since the 70's.
If you go far enough back (100y or so) then "imported" usually referred to raw materials, spices or very exotic equipment such as furniture - the supply chain and tooling was mostly domestic.
100 years ago Lebanon didn’t have running water and still had slavery. The Middle East hasn’t been a producer of goods, even domestically, since antiquity.
I wouldn’t count it as a good produced though. It’s just a commodity pulled out of the ground and processed elsewhere (largely in the US). It requires no ingenuity or hard work, just the luck of being on top of oil fields due to geographic peculiarity.
The initial objection was the lack of sufficient size or institutional robustness for indigenous manufacturing capacity. I addressed that.
The question of the integrity and trustworthiness of a collective bloc structure had occurred. It's another factor, and of course poses its own challenges. Then again, the Western bloc, most capable of the set, seems to have persistent issues along those lines already. Several of Israeli origin, as it happens. (Though of course not solely.)
