Defeating Iran is the primary goal of the current war in the Middle East, but Lebanon may offer the best opportunity for a move toward peace, if only President Trump would pay attention.
The opportunity for progress between Beirut and Jerusalem is real. Both countries, technically at war since 1949, have no territorial claims against each other. Both are led by staunchly pro-American governments, with militaries that are close partners of the US military. And both have large and influential communities of supporters within the United States who can play a useful role in promoting peace.
The key obstacle to peace is Hezbollah, the terrorist group guided, financed and armed by Iran that took a beating in the 2024 war against Israel. For the first time, both Lebanon and Israel say they are committed to the principle of completely disarming this radical militia. Until the outbreak of the current war, the two governments may not have agreed on the pace of disarmament, but they were working together under the auspices of the United States to share information about the location of Hezbollah weapons that will be confiscated.
Progress in disarming Hezbollah was slow, but even that was enough to give the Lebanese people the freedom to talk about the long-taboo topic of peace with Israel. Lebanese Free Media Talk Shows They periodically discussed the costs and benefits of peace. Although strict laws By banning even innocent communication between Lebanese and Israelis, some candidates in the upcoming parliamentary elections began to boldly run. “Pro-peace” platforms.
In the face of these hopeful signs, the Trump administration has been strangely aloof. Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun, a former army commander who seems straight out of a central cast, came to power a year ago promising to weaken Hezbollah and impose a monopoly on the use of force within the country. But so far, Trump's response has been to have absolutely no direct contact with Aoun: not a meeting, not a phone call, not a letter. Contrast this with the administration's courtship of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former jihadist terrorist whom Trump met twice, including last November in the Oval Office.
Trump's subordinates apparently got the message that Lebanon is also not worth his time. Secretary of State Marco Rubio just a meeting with Aoun, in September on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. And there is no evidence that either special envoy Steve Witkoff or presidential troubleshooter Jared Kushner have met with Aoun since he became president.
Instead, the “Lebanon dossier,” as it is called, has been passed from one lower-ranking official to another. Currently, it is in the hands of Michel Issa, the prestigious US ambassador in Beirut whose status as “friend of the president“It cannot overcome the geographic reality that it is almost 6,000 miles from Washington. The result of this apparent indifference has been not only a missed opportunity for American interests but also a political bonanza for Hezbollah, which has undermined enthusiasm for the disarmament campaign and left Lebanese peacekeepers out in the cold.
Now Washington has a second chance to do the right thing. Out of loyalty to Iran's slain supreme leader, Hezbollah launched rockets into northern Israel, dragging a war-weary Lebanon into the fighting. This reckless act was quickly condemned by the Lebanese government, which ordered its army to take immediate measures to prevent any new military activity by Hezbollah. At the same time, the rocket attacks triggered massive Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah strongholds in the Bekaa Valley, Beirut suburbs and southern Lebanon ahead of a ground operation to clear border areas of potential infiltrators and weapons depots.
The political imagination is clear: the governments of Lebanon and Israel today see Hezbollah as their common adversary. In fact, the Lebanese government declared its readiness, even during the current war, to resume diplomatic talks with Israel on ways to cooperate for the total disarmament of Hezbollah. Now is the time for the United States to take advantage of this confluence of views to make diplomatic progress.
Operationally, the next step is Trump's. With a phone call to Aoun, the US president could affirm high-level interest in Lebanon, promise additional aid to support the Lebanese military in disarming Hezbollah, and threaten to suspend assistance if the process moves too slowly. At the same time, Trump should incentivize Aoun by promising him an Oval Office meeting once U.S. generals certify that Lebanon has finally cleared weapons warehouses and factories from Hezbollah strongholds in the Bekaa Valley and Beirut's southern suburbs.
As disarmament moves forward, U.S. officials should accept Beirut's offer to host direct talks with Israel. The negotiating agenda must begin with security in southern Lebanon and border demarcation and extend to reciprocal measures that fuel a peacemaking dynamic. These could include plans to open each country's airspace to the other's civil air traffic; sending Israeli gas to Lebanon, thus alleviating its energy crisis; and allow tourists from third countries to cross the border in both directions. The key to this process is to get Lebanon to commit to suspending the application of its odious anti-normalization laws, pending legislative action, so that ordinary Lebanese do not fear being imprisoned just for talking to an Israeli.
To manage this process, Trump should appoint someone in Washington as his personal envoy. In this administration, power is measured by closeness to Trump, and foreign leaders will, rightly or wrongly, use that metric to determine how serious the president really is about his affairs.
To be sure, Lebanon is a small country, and as dangerous as Hezbollah's rockets may be, the threat that the once-powerful Iranian proxy poses to Israel has diminished dramatically. But that is a reason to fight for peace, not to lose focus. If Trump gave the Lebanon-Israel front just a fraction of the attention now directed at Iran or a small percentage of the effort devoted to Gaza, he may have the newest Arab member of the Abraham Accords, and a Nobel Peace Prize to show for it.
Robert Satloff is the executive director of the Washington Institute.
