{"id":221444,"date":"2026-07-24T17:52:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/221444\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T17:52:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:52:15","slug":"lebanon-agrees-to-align-with-us-against-iran-disarm-hezbollah-and-accept-israeli-occupation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/221444\/","title":{"rendered":"Lebanon agrees to align with US against Iran, disarm Hezbollah and accept Israeli occupation"},"content":{"rendered":"

US President Donald Trump\u2019s meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun at the White House forms part of a broader US\u2013Saudi strategy to isolate Iran by eliminating its influence in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. <\/p>\n

Aoun\u2019s visit\u2014brokered by Saudi Arabia\u2019s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman\u2014was aimed at securing assurances that Washington would pressure Israel to withdraw from Lebanon, increase funding for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), support reconstruction in the devastated south, and approve loans and aid to avert economic collapse.<\/p>\n

President Donald J. Trump hosts a bilateral meeting with President of Lebanon Joseph Aoun [Photo: Official White House photo by Daniel Torok]<\/p>\n

It came just one week after newly installed Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al\u2011Zaidi agreed with Trump on steps to disarm pro\u2011Iranian militias by the end of September, the deadline for the withdrawal of all US forces.<\/p>\n

Aoun\u2019s meeting followed his signing of the US\u2011brokered \u201cagreement\u201d with Israel on June 26, signalling Lebanon\u2019s intention to end the state of war that has defined Lebanese\u2013Israeli relations since 1948 and establish peaceful and diplomatic ties. Aoun aligned his government with Washington and Tel Aviv\u2019s campaign to disarm Hezbollah\u2014which, with its Shi\u2019ite allies, forms one of Lebanon\u2019s largest political blocs, the March 8 Alliance\u2014and dismantle it as a political force.<\/p>\n

Aoun has redefined Hezbollah\u2014an organisation with significant popular support and close ties to Iran\u2014as a hostile, non\u2011national actor, aligning Lebanon with Israel\u2019s ongoing assault on Lebanese communities. He has legitimised Israel\u2019s indefinite occupation of southern Lebanon until the LAF can disarm Hezbollah, all under the banner of restoring Lebanese \u201csovereignty\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lebanon signed the agreement\u2014giving Israel a green light to continue its attacks on Hezbollah\u2014just days after Washington signed, and then abandoned, a Memorandum of Understanding with Tehran that had made an end to Israeli strikes on Lebanon a central condition.<\/p>\n

Whether Hezbollah should relinquish its weapons before Israel withdraws remains the central political fault line between Lebanon\u2019s rival blocs. It presages explosive consequences for a country of six million\u2014many of them impoverished Palestinian and Syrian refugees deeply hostile to Israel\u2014now trapped in the crosshairs of US imperialism\u2019s drive to destroy Iran\u2019s remaining regional influence, and of Israel\u2019s expansionist ambitions.<\/p>\n

The agreement imposes no obligation on Israel to halt military attacks, release prisoners, or enable the return of the 450,000 Lebanese still displaced from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah\u2019s disarmament must be \u201cverifiable\u201d, confirmed \u201cby a mutually agreed\u2011upon third\u2011party entity\u201d\u2014in practice, the United States, Israel\u2019s principal backer. Only after Israel identifies and dismantles Hezbollah\u2019s infrastructure will territory be transferred to LAF control.<\/p>\n

Since the LAF is widely acknowledged to be no match for Hezbollah\u2014and any attempt to forcibly disarm it would risk civil war\u2014the agreement renders Lebanon a virtual US protectorate administered through Israeli military power. It hands strategic initiative to Israel while prohibiting Lebanon from pursuing legal action against Tel Aviv in international fora for mass displacement, bombardment of civilian areas, and other war crimes.<\/p>\n

Presented internationally as a step toward ending the fighting, the agreement is nothing of the sort. Two days after its signing, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir approved plans for further military operations \u201cin accordance\u201d with the ceasefire. Israel has continued its activities from outposts established on Lebanese territory. Hezbollah has largely refrained from responding, raising fears among Lebanese communities of a \u201cGaza scenario\u201d\u2014a permanent war conducted under the guise of a ceasefire.<\/p>\n

Former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said, \u201cWe are forced to deal with the Americans,\u201d and warned that Lebanon faces a \u201cbitter reality\u201d because rejecting the agreement would lead to \u201csomething even more bitter\u201d\u2014by which he meant the bankruptcy of Lebanon\u2019s financial elite<\/p>\n

As a token concession, the IDF will withdraw from two zones north of the Litani River, in the Ali al\u2011Taher mountain range near Beaufort Castle, leaving the LAF to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure there.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah\u2019s origins and its disarmament<\/p>\n

Hezbollah (Party of God) emerged in the 1980s during Israel\u2019s brutal occupation of southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000, an extension of Lebanon\u2019s 15\u2011year civil war\u2014a proxy conflict shaped by competing regional and imperialist powers and Israel\u2019s suppression of the Palestinians. Backed by Iran and the Assad regime in Syria, the bourgeois religio\u2011nationalist movement drew support from impoverished Shi\u2019ite and Palestinian communities devastated by decades of state corruption and the looting of Lebanon\u2019s wealth by a handful of billionaires who have dominated the country since 1990.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The party promotes corporatism, paternalism\u2014providing vital welfare services\u2014and religious obscurantism as a counterweight to class struggle. Together with its Shi\u2019ite and Palestinian allies, Hezbollah forms the largest bloc in Lebanon\u2019s sectarian and fragmented political system and remains the principal obstacle to domination by the US\u2011 and Gulf\u2011aligned financial elite. As part of Iran\u2019s \u201cAxis of Resistance\u201d\u2014which includes Hamas, Shia militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen\u2014it supports Palestinian factions in southern Lebanon and hosts a Hamas bureau in Dahiyeh, its stronghold in Beirut\u2019s southern suburbs.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, May 2023 [Photo by Tasnim News Agency \/ CC BY 4.0<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Hezbollah\u2019s reactionary ideology offers no way forward for Lebanon\u2019s working masses. Its rise was made possible by the collapse of secular Arab nationalism and the suppression\u2014by Stalinism and its ideological offshoots\u2014of any genuine socialist alternative capable of mobilising the working class.<\/p>\n

The June 26 agreement to disarm Hezbollah with Israel\u2019s help marks a decisive break with Lebanon\u2019s decades\u2011long policy of recognising Hezbollah as the semi\u2011official \u201cresistance\u201d to Israeli occupation and repression of the Palestinians, symbolised in the slogan \u201cthe people, the army and the resistance\u201d. It confirms the announcement made last August by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam\u2019s cabinet committing to Hezbollah\u2019s disarmament\u2014without which no financial aid or loans from the US, France, or the Gulf would be released to rescue Lebanon\u2019s bankrupt economy. The agreement repudiates any notion that the state retains political independence or sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s wars against the \u201cAxis of Resistance\u201d in Lebanon and Syria<\/p>\n

The trilateral agreement follows decades of US\u2011led political and military interference in Lebanon aimed at empowering right\u2011wing, pro\u2011US forces such as the Christian Phalange, Lebanese Forces, and the Sunni parties of the March 14 Alliance, at the expense of the pro\u2011Palestinian and anti\u2011Israel sentiments of Lebanon\u2019s workers and peasants, more than 80 percent of whom live in poverty.<\/p>\n

These efforts unfolded against the backdrop of Lebanon\u2019s catastrophic economic collapse. In October 2019, after years of distress, mass protests erupted demanding the downfall of the entire post\u20111990 political order. The crisis\u2014exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, the March 2020 sovereign default, and the Beirut port blast that killed 211 people and destroyed much of the northern city\u2014plunged more than half the population into poverty. The World Bank called it one of the worst economic collapses in 150 years.<\/p>\n

The political system soon followed. Lebanon was left without a functioning government for more than two years, caught in the escalating conflict pitting the US, Israel and the Gulf petro\u2011monarchs against Iran and its allies, including Syria. Washington intensified pressure on Iran, while Gulf states conditioned aid on excluding Hezbollah from government. Western institutions withheld the $11 billion pledged in 2018 until Beirut implemented IMF\u2011mandated free\u2011market reforms.<\/p>\n

Just days after launching its genocidal war on Gaza, Israel seized on Hezbollah\u2019s symbolic rocket fire in support of the Palestinians to trigger a pre\u2011planned, all\u2011out war on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, where Hezbollah had spent more than a decade helping Russia and Iran prop up Bashar al\u2011Assad\u2019s regime. Over the following year, Israel escalated dramatically. Airstrikes on Beirut killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other senior officials, followed by synchronised explosions in pre-compromised pagers and cell phones and a ground invasion that left thousands wounded and displaced tens of thousands. The World Bank estimated Lebanon\u2019s losses at $8.5 billion, including $3.5 billion in direct damage to buildings and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Yet despite its overwhelming military advantage, Israel could not eradicate Hezbollah as a fighting force. It was pushed into a ceasefire in November 2024 by the US, backed by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, who sought to stabilise Lebanon, prevent a premature regional war with Iran, and create political space to restructure Lebanon ahead of Washington\u2019s planned confrontation with Tehran. Israel rejected the ceasefire\u2019s political logic, violating it more than 10,000 times even though Hezbollah did not fire a single rocket at Israel.<\/p>\n

The war nonetheless achieved Washington\u2019s political aims. Weakened by military losses and with reduced leverage\u2014especially after the December 2024 collapse of the Assad regime, which Hezbollah supported against Islamist militias financed, trained and armed by the CIA, Gulf states, T\u00fcrkiye and Israel\u2014Hezbollah withdrew its veto over the presidency. It accepted a parliamentary consensus electing Washington and Riyadh\u2019s preferred candidate, army chief Joseph Aoun, in January 2025. This marked a major shift in Lebanese politics, long dominated by Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

Aoun appointed Nawaf Salam, from a prominent Beirut family, to form a government. Salam\u2019s international profile rested on his role at the International Court of Justice, where he presided over the interim ruling that Israel was plausibly committing genocide in Gaza\u2014a ruling ignored by the major powers. In office, he embraced the US line, dismissing armed resistance and advocating peace and eventual normalisation with Israel. He tightened border controls with Syria while doing nothing to stop Israel\u2019s repeated ceasefire violations.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam [Photo by ALG\u00c9RIE PRESSE SERVICE \/ CC BY 3.0<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Following the seizure of power by Ahmad al\u2011Shara\u2019a and his Islamist Hayat Tahrir al\u2011Sham (HTS) in Syria, Israel expanded its operations, striking Hezbollah and regime sites and moving troops into and beyond the UN\u2011monitored buffer zone in Syria. Israel established a chain of bases from Mount Hermon\u2019s peak to the Yarmouk River on the Syrian\u2011Jordanian border\u2014a 70km line of control\u2014cutting new roads linking these bases to the Golan Heights and Majdal Shams.<\/p>\n

With both Lebanon and Syria neutralised, the US and Israel launched a 12\u2011day war of aggression against Iran in June 2025, even as Washington and Tehran were engaged in negotiations.<\/p>\n

In October 2025, Trump signed the Sharm el\u2011Sheikh \u201cpeace agreement\u201d, attended by Middle Eastern regimes and major powers. Designed to secure the return of hostages and free Israeli resources for a future war against Iran, it left Israel free to continue its assaults on the Palestinians\u2014albeit at lower intensity\u2014since it contained no enforcement mechanism. The agreement, whose subsequent phases included Trump\u2019s plans for an imperialist protectorate trampling Palestinian rights, was bound up with efforts to forge an anti\u2011Iranian axis and prepare for regime\u2011change in Tehran while rolling back Chinese and Russian influence in the region.<\/p>\n

Within days of the US\u2011Israel assault on Iran on February 28, the IDF declared war on Hezbollah, activating a blueprint prepared long before Hezbollah fired a token volley of rockets in response to Israel\u2019s assassination of Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel\u2019s bombardment and ground invasion levelled infrastructure and neighbourhoods across southern Lebanon, Beirut\u2019s southern and central districts, and the Beka\u2019a Valley. It left 4,300 dead, more than 12,000 wounded, and displaced more than a million people\u2014a fifth of the population. Entire villages in the south were levelled.<\/p>\n

The April 16 ceasefire was a dead letter: Israeli strikes continued and five Israeli divisions remained inside southern Lebanon. The United Nations Development Programme estimated $1.38 billion in direct building damage in South Lebanon and $365 million in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, excluding roads, bridges, electricity networks, water systems, telecommunications and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Washington and Tel Aviv have different interests in Lebanon<\/p>\n

Once again, Washington had to push Israel into agreeing to a ceasefire. US and Israeli interests diverge sharply in Lebanon: while Washington seeks to contain Hezbollah and maintain a minimally functioning Lebanese state to preserve regional stability, Tel Aviv seeks unconstrained military freedom and a permanently weakened, penetrable northern frontier\u2014a de facto security zone under Israeli control in preparation for full incorporation into a Greater Israel. Washington views this as destabilising and counterproductive to its wider regional strategy and specifically included a sentence in the agreement that states, \u201cIsrael further declares that it has no territorial ambitions\u201d.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu has attempted to justify Israel\u2019s stance by claiming\u2014absurdly and without evidence\u2014in a Fox News interview that Christians in Lebanon had asked Israel to \u201cannex\u201d their villages to protect them from Hezbollah. This flies in the face of Israel\u2019s record in Lebanon, where the IDF has damaged or destroyed Christian villages, churches, and religious sites, even filming soldiers desecrating Christian symbols. He went further, asserting that \u201cthe Druze, the Sunni Muslims and quite a few of the Shiite Muslims\u201d also sought Israeli protection.<\/p>\n

Israeli and U.S. flags stand against a backdrop of destroyed buildings in southern Lebanon, as seen from northern Israel, Sunday, June 21, 2026. [AP Photo\/Ohad Zwigenberg]<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s far\u2011right cabinet has repeatedly called for an all\u2011out assault on Lebanon. National Security Minister Ben Gvir demanded that \u201call of Lebanon must burn\u201d after four Israeli soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich urged Israel to \u201copen the gates of hell\u201d on the country. They have openly advocated annexing southern Lebanon and establishing Israeli settlements, echoing the ambitions of early Zionist ideologues.<\/p>\n

In March, three weeks into the war, Smotrich declared that \u201cthe Litani must be our new border with the state of Lebanon\u201d, comparing it to Israel\u2019s \u201cYellow Line\u201d in Gaza and the buffer zone on Mount Hermon in Syria. In May, as Lebanese and Israeli officials prepared to meet in Washington to discuss a ceasefire, Ben Gvir revealed that Israel had a \u201csettlement plan for Lebanon\u201d.<\/p>\n

Response to the trilateral agreement<\/p>\n

Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz have insisted that Israeli troops will maintain an indefinite presence in southern Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. Netanyahu boasted, \u201cWe dominate southern Lebanon, from the summit of the Beaufort, and we will remain as long as required in the security zone. We do not intend to withdraw from it.\u201d He claimed the agreement was a \u201cmajor blow\u201d to Iran, saying that Israel, Lebanon, and the United States were telling Tehran, \u201cThis is none of your business\u201d.<\/p>\n

Katz echoed this, declaring that Israel opposed withdrawal \u201cdespite all the pressures that exist and those that are yet to come\u201d. He warned Iran that if it attacked Israel \u201cbecause of our activities in Lebanon, or for any other reason, we will strike it with full force\u201d, adding that the IDF was prepared for a potential resumption of operations in Iran \u201ceven for a third time\u201d.<\/p>\n

Israel Katz in Athens, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2019. [AP Photo\/Petros Giannakouris]<\/p>\n

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem denounced the agreement as \u201cnull and void\u201d, calling it humiliating and a surrender of sovereignty. He vowed to continue armed resistance against Israel\u2019s occupation of Lebanese soil and rejected provisions linking Israeli withdrawal to Hezbollah\u2019s disarmament, warning that the agreement could ultimately lead to annexation of Lebanese territory. Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah warned that the government could not enforce the agreement \u201cunless they go, with American support, to civil war\u201d.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Lebanese Armed Forces stated that it was not bound by an arrangement it had neither participated in nor approved.<\/p>\n

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