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If Trump Doesn't Stand Up to Israel on Lebanon, Iran War Will Continue to Drag On
The government of Lebanon wants the United States to exert enough pressure on Israel to end the current Israeli offensive.
May 11, 2026
The Trump administration will host a new round of talks this week aimed at ending the latest warfare involving Israel and Lebanon.
No new developments on the Lebanese front give reason for optimism that this round will yield an agreement that two prior rounds did not. The Trump administration, however, has an incentive to push for an agreement because of President Trump’s need to extract himself and the United States from the impasse involving the Strait of Hormuz.
The last time Iran lifted its closure of the strait—a move Tehran reversed when Trump continued his own blockade—was in response to the announcement of a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Iran has insisted from the outset of the war that any ceasefire must be comprehensive, covering what Israel is doing in Lebanon as well as combat in the Persian Gulf. Israel and the United States have resisted linking these two Middle Eastern theaters. But if either side in a conflict says that two things are linked, then there is linkage, whether the other side likes it or not.
The Iranian perspective on this question reflects the fact that the military operations in Lebanon grew directly out of the war against Iran. Shortly after Israel and the United States launched that war in late February, Lebanese Hezbollah responded by firing rockets into northern Israel.
Hezbollah has always been an ally of Iran. No one, least of all the Israelis, should have been surprised by this response.
The fighting on the Lebanese front since then has been as one-sided in the resulting death and destruction as Israeli combat with Palestinians. The Israeli assault has killed 2,700 people in Lebanon, while Israeli fatalities have been 18 military personnel and two civilians. At the height of the offensive, more than a million people—about a fifth of Lebanon’s population—were displaced, and most remain so. Israeli forces have destroyed entire villages in southern Lebanon.
The ceasefire that the United States brokered in March, like most ceasefires involving Israel, has seen at most a slowing of the tempo of offensive operations rather than a cessation of them. In addition to continued lethal operations in the south of Lebanon, Israel conducted one of its bolder airstrikes in the Beirut area, which destroyed an apartment building in the city’s southern suburbs.
The talks this week in Washington will be unusual as peace negotiations go, in that they are not really between two belligerents. The weak government of Lebanon has not sought a war with Israel, and the war that is taking place is as asymmetrical in nature as the casualty figures suggest. Israel says its enemy is Hezbollah, but Hezbollah will not be in the conference room.
Israel’s central demand involving Lebanon has been that Hezbollah must be disarmed. No one is talking about disarming Israel, or even limiting its arms, even though Israel has inflicted far more of the suffering on this front than Hezbollah has. In any event, even though many figures in the Lebanese government would welcome Hezbollah’s disarmament, that is far easier said than done.
The hurdles to any disarmament of Hezbollah are partly a matter of physical capability. They also are a matter of political realities within Lebanon. Hezbollah speaks for a substantial proportion of the Lebanese population, especially the nearly one-third of Lebanese who are Shiites. It holds 13 seats in the Lebanese parliament and did well in municipal elections last year.
One indication of those realities comes from Nabih Berri, speaker of the Lebanese parliament and one of the most powerful politicians in Lebanon. Berri heads Amal, the other major Shiite party in Lebanon and an ally of Hezbollah. Berri said last week that there should be no negotiations with Israel until Israel ceases its offensive military operations in Lebanon and withdraws from the south of the country.
That similar sentiments extend beyond the Shiite portion of Lebanon’s population is reflected in the position of President Joseph Aoun, who, like all Lebanese presidents, is a Maronite Christian. Aoun has resisted US pressure for him to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that any such meeting must await a cessation of Israel’s offensive operations and a withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon. Aoun’s stance is why this week’s talks are being held at the ambassadorial level.
Hezbollah is not a prime mover of mayhem that somehow arose through spontaneous generation, now was it imposed on Lebanon by Iran. Hezbollah owes its existence and rapid rise in the 1980s to previous Israeli aggression and occupation of portions of Lebanon. Hezbollah presented itself as a defender especially of Lebanese Shiites but also of all Lebanese against Israeli predation.
That history is especially relevant to what Israel is doing to Lebanon today. In addition to the lethal aerial assaults, it is occupying much of southern Lebanon, in a replay of what it did four decades ago. It has singled out Shiites with a demand—not equally directed toward other sectarian groups—to abandon their homes in that portion of Lebanon.
Such discriminatory demands will stoke additional resentment and desire for revenge within the confessional group that has always been Hezbollah’s main base of support.
The results are already being seen in the attitudes even of some Lebanese who wish Hezbollah had never fired rockets in support of its Iranian ally and who blame the group for drawing Lebanon into the US-Israel-Iran war. In the face of the suffering from the new Israeli offensive and the inability of the Lebanese government to do much about it, many of these Lebanese are again looking to Hezbollah as their main hope for defending themselves.
An implication is that even if some agreement is reached that silences the guns for now, the ingredients will remain in place for future rounds of fighting on the Israel-Lebanon front. A lasting peace would depend on a complete and permanent Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and some assurance by the United States that it would use its influence to keep the withdrawal permanent.
Violence on the Israeli-Lebanese front is a reminder of how much instability in the Middle East stems from Israeli subjugation of the Palestinians and the violent resistance that it inevitably provokes. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 involved going after the exiled Palestinian Liberation Organization—an organization that would not exist if there were no perceived need to liberate Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. The last previous Israeli invasion of Lebanon in October 2024 grew out of the devastating Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip that had been ongoing for a year, in response to which Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The government of Lebanon wants the United States to exert enough pressure on Israel to end the current Israeli offensive. Lebanon is one of multiple fronts in the Middle East in which the biggest variable in determining whether instability will lessen is whether the United States will pressure Israel. In this case, Trump’s desire to extract himself from the Iran quagmire may be sufficient to yield at least a ceasefire that holds up better than the one that currently is being repeatedly violated.
Whether even that limited form of agreement is achieved will depend mostly on the US-Israeli dimension of this week’s talks, more than the government of Lebanon’s role in the negotiations. Given the linkage with events in the Persian Gulf, it may also depend partly on any wider bargains struck in Pakistani-mediated negotiations between Iran and the United States.
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Israeli Drone Kills Man and 12-Year-Old Daughter in 'Barbaric' Double-Tap Strike
The pair were among the at least 24 people killed by Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Saturday despite a nominal ceasefire.
May 10, 2026
An Israeli drone killed a Syrian laborer and his 12-year-old daughter in a double-tap attack in southern Lebanon on Saturday, in what the Lebanon Health Ministry described as part of a continuing pattern “of grave violations of International Humanitarian Law.”
The man was riding with his daughter on a motorcycle in Nabatiyeh when the pair were targeted by three drone strikes, according to the ministry.
The Associated Press reported:
The ministry said that after the initial strike, the man and his daughter managed to move away from the site only to be attacked again by the drone instantly killing the man. The girl then moved about 100 meters (yards) away and was hit again by the drone after she had been already wounded.
The girl was taken to the hospital, but did not survive her injuries, according to Lebanon's National News Agency.
"What does terrorism mean to you? If it’s [not] double-tap killings of paramedics, journalists, and today a 12 year old girl, then what is it?"
“The Ministry of Public Health denounces this barbaric targeting and the deliberate violence against civilians and children in Lebanon,” the ministry said, as AP reported.
The father and daughter were among a total of at least 24 people in Lebanon who were killed by Israeli strikes on Saturday, according to Al Jazeera.
One strike on the town of al-Saksakieh killed seven, among them a child. The strike also wounded 15 people including three children.
The bombings continue despite a nominal ceasefire between Lebanon and Hezbollah that went into effect April 17. However, Israel has killed almost 500 people in Lebanon since April 16, raising the death toll since its March 2 invasion to over 2,750.
War correspondent Courtney Schellekens shared the story of the 12-year-old girl and her father in a video on social media on Saturday.
What does terrorism mean to you? If it’s no double-tap killings of paramedics, journalists, and today a 12 year old girl, then what is it?
Westerners, where is your humanity?
Cameraman: @aliezzedine7 pic.twitter.com/ntXIwz4s6H
— courtneybonneauimages (@cbonneauimages) May 9, 2026
"What does terrorism mean to you? If it’s [not] double-tap killings of paramedics, journalists, and today a 12 year old girl, then what is it?" she wrote above the video.
At the conclusion of the video itself, she continued the same line of questioning.
"To my Western followers, I really want you to think critically about the definition of terrorism, to whom it gets applied and who does it benefit," she said. "Because where I've been sitting for the last 18 months, this mass murder and mass, you know, look at this," she gestured to the ruble behind her, "this mass destruction, this ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon, this looks a lot like terrorism to me."
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'Ceasefire in Name Only': Israel Bombs Beirut With Approval From Trump Administration
"The Israeli government continues to drop US-made bombs in Lebanon," said one Democratic lawmaker. "Congress can and must put an end to the violence in the region."
May 07, 2026
The Israeli military on Wednesday bombed the suburbs of the Lebanese capital for the first time since a ceasefire agreement was announced in mid-April by US President Donald Trump, whose administration reportedly coordinated with Israel on the latest strike.
"This is a ceasefire in name only," US Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) wrote in response to the bombing, which Israel said killed a top Hezbollah commander. "Israel needs to adhere to the ceasefire and work in good faith toward a permanent end to the larger war with Iran and Lebanon."
According to the United Nations, at least 380 people have been killed by Israeli strikes on Lebanon since the ceasefire agreement took effect. Trump announced a three-week extension of the ceasefire deal on April 23.
The target of Wednesday's strike on Beirut's southern suburbs "appeared to be a 10-story building in the Haret Hreik neighborhood next to a school," The Washington Post reported, citing satellite imagery and open-source material. "Photos of the aftermath showed half the building leveled and excavator machines digging beneath the rubble."
The Israeli military also bombed the southern Lebanese town of Zelaya on Wednesday, killing at least four people, including two women and an elderly man, Lebanon's Ministry of Health said.
Early Thursday, the Israeli military issued new displacement orders for southern Lebanon, instructing the residents of Deir al-Zahrani, Bafroa, and Habush to leave their homes.
The Wednesday attack on Beirut's suburbs, according to an unnamed Israeli official cited by the country's broadcasting authority, was "carried out in coordination with the US."
"This would be a clear violation of the War Powers Act 8(c)—further strengthening the case for Congress to urgently pass Rep. Rashida Tlaib's (D-Mich.) Lebanon War Powers Resolution," said Erik Sperling, executive director of the US-based advocacy group Just Foreign Policy.
Tlaib unveiled her legislation in late March, demanding the "removal of all US Armed Forces’ participation in unauthorized hostilities in Lebanon, including involvement in targeting assistance and intelligence sharing for the Israeli airstrikes and ground invasion."
"We must act now to stop this campaign of ethnic cleansing," Tlaib said at the time.
US Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who co-led the Lebanon resolution with Tlaib, said Wednesday that "the unaccountable, unlawful, inhumane campaign of death and displacement continues."
"The Israeli government continues to drop US-made bombs in Lebanon. More than 2,600 people have died, and over 8,350 people are injured," said Ramirez. "Congress can and must put an end to the violence in the region. We must Block the Bombs and pass the Lebanon War Power Resolution."
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