New Lebanon deal revives Jerusalem’s hopes of curbing Iran’s influence

Israel’s Ambassador to Washington Yechiel Leiter opened the fifth round of Israel-Lebanon talks in Washington last Tuesday with an impassioned warning.

“We are in a train wreck,” he declared in a Hebrew statement as the talks began, laying into US President Donald Trump’s administration over its willingness to include a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of a memorandum of understanding Washington inked with Tehran the week before.

By the time the talks ended three days later, with a fresh Israel-Lebanon framework signed by both sides, Leiter was newly optimistic. He said the agreement had put “the train back on the tracks,” with a “final destination” of peace between the neighboring countries.

The shift captured the agreement’s central purpose: keeping the Lebanon file from being absorbed into the US-Iran track.

The direct Israel-Lebanon talks had been set up by Washington in April partly to detach Lebanon from the broader Iran conflict, as Tehran sought understandings with Washington that would also protect Hezbollah. Israel was not a party to the MOU, pursued by Trump to end the war with Iran and open nuclear talks, yet the deal appeared to constrain Israeli operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, where fighting had continued for months after the group opened fire on Israeli troops and civilians in support of its patron, Iran.

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Concern in Jerusalem sharpened last Sunday, when US Vice President JD Vance — who seems eager to lead the Israel-skeptic wing of the Republican party — said the US and Iran had agreed in a first round of talks in Switzerland to create a “deconfliction mechanism” involving Lebanon, with Qatari and Pakistani mediators helping to maintain the fragile ceasefire. Israeli officials feared the mechanism would only strengthen Hezbollah and cement Iranian influence over Lebanon.

The direct Israel-Lebanon channel produced several ceasefires in recent months, none of which held for long: Beirut has been unable to rein in Hezbollah, and Israel’s efforts to disarm the group militarily have also failed. As Washington pushed to end the Iran war, it accepted Tehran’s demand that the US-Iran ceasefire extend to Lebanon — terms Israel insisted it was not bound by, though it had refrained from escalating in several incidents at Trump’s behest.

Against this backdrop, the new framework — signed as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a veteran Israel backer, looked on proudly — appeared to Israel as a course correction.

“Final destination: peace between our two countries… In this performance-based trilateral framework agreement, Iran is out, Hezbollah is out, and the road to peace between Israel and Lebanon is in,” Leiter said.

Not so fast

Things are never so simple. This isn’t the first major Beirut-Jerusalem agreement. A failed 1983 accord still looms over any such effort. The framework doesn’t remove the danger Hezbollah poses, doesn’t prove the Lebanese state can establish its authority in the south, and could still collapse in a country where civil war is an ever-present risk.

But it does appear to offset some of the potential damage from the Iran MOU by creating a mechanism for indirect Israel-Lebanon military coordination, giving the Lebanese Armed Forces a formal implementation role and stating publicly both sides’ intent to keep Tehran from playing referee.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun made a similar point in Beirut on Friday, saying Lebanon had made a sovereign decision to separate its path from the Iran-US track.

“Our sovereign decision to separate our path from the Iranian-American path is a problem for some people who are used to being under a guardianship that controls us, decides for us and negotiates on our behalf,” Aoun was quoted as saying by LBC Group.

The new framework doesn’t outright contradict the MOU, but it tries to prevent a reality in which Iran calls the shots in Lebanon, a senior US official familiar with the thinking behind the agreement told The Times of Israel.

The MOU states that the US, Iran, “and their allies… declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon… and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.”

The new framework doesn’t outright contradict the MOU, but it tries to prevent a reality in which Iran calls the shots in Lebanon.

The US official added that “the Iran MOU says sovereignty. Sovereignty means disarmament of all the militias. Israel has to leave Lebanon, but this time Iran has to leave first,” the official continued, making a reference to Israel’s withdrawal from the southern Lebanon security zone being tied to Lebanon’s ability to restore sovereignty, meaning, ultimately, that Hezbollah cannot remain an armed force outside state control.

The framework also appears designed to prevent the US-Iran mechanism in Doha from sidelining Beirut or Jerusalem. According to a classified security annex verified by The Times of Israel, the new framework creates a Military Coordination Group for Lebanon, or MCG4L, a 24/7 body tasked with deconfliction, verification and implementation. Under the agreement, the cell will report to Israeli and Lebanese political authorities through indirect military-to-military channels.

The framework includes a minor IDF pullback in two pilot zones, though Israeli officials have stressed that future withdrawals are not automatic and that Israel’s freedom of action will be preserved. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly said Israel will judge the deal by the Lebanese government’s and army’s actions, rather than its rhetoric.

The Iran MOU appeared to help move Israel toward the framework. The agreement had been in the works for months, with Lebanese media already reporting in May on a possible “statement of intent.” But the MOU added urgency by threatening to place Lebanon inside a US-Iran track just as Jerusalem and Beirut were trying to build a separate one.

The next question is whether the framework can change Hezbollah’s incentives. Asked how it would force Hezbollah to cooperate, the US official said it primarily aims to raise the political cost of noncooperation.

“Iran cannot afford to rebuild South Lebanon, but South Lebanon has a choice: Iran again, which raises the likelihood of future war, or the Lebanese state with the support of the world, which raises the likelihood of future peace,” he said.

In other words, the framework’s backers are betting that postwar Hezbollah is far more vulnerable than it is letting on. Its Shiite base in southern Lebanon has suffered heavily, Iran’s ability to fund reconstruction following Israeli strikes is in question with its failing economy, and international support for Lebanon is now being framed around sovereignty and state control.

“Hezbollah’s social contract was, let us store missiles in your house and we will rebuild it. They cannot do that anymore,” the official said.

Shiites turn against Hezbollah

While Lebanese studies have suggested an overwhelming majority of the Shiite public continues to support Hezbollah, there are increasing signs that the group’s Shiite base in southern Lebanon is faltering, according to a report by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.

The report pointed to anti-Hezbollah sentiment on social media, the expansion of Shiite opposition movements, low turnout at Hezbollah rallies, and unprecedented calls by Shiite figures to declare Tyre and Nabatieh weapons-free cities.

“The general impression” created among the Shiite community in southern Lebanon of Hezbollah’s choice to go to war against Israel in support of Iran was, “there’s no money, there’s destruction, and you still went [to war]. This is not the Hezbollah we knew. This is Iran. And Iran does not care about us,” Hanin Ghaddar, a Shiite Lebanese scholar who grew up in southern Lebanon, told The Times of Israel.

If the Lebanese state can point to American, Gulf and European backing for the Israel framework as an alternative, Hezbollah’s weapons become easier to portray as an obstacle to recovery rather than protection.

The agreement has already sharpened internal Lebanese tensions. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem rejected the deal as “null and void” and stressed Hezbollah will continue its “resistance” to the Israeli occupation, but the group reportedly struggled to mobilize large demonstrations against the deal. At the same time, Lebanese security forces removed pro-Iran posters near Beirut airport and replaced them with “Lebanon first” signs.

The most immediate test will be the two “pilot zones,” from which Israel is expected to withdraw, and the Lebanese army is expected to deploy in its place. If those zones hold, the framework could provide a model for a phased process of Israeli withdrawal, LAF deployment, US verification, and increased pressure on Hezbollah to either accept state authority or be seen as obstructing it.

But Hezbollah could easily try to block implementation through pressure or violence, particularly if it sees the framework as a threat to its status.

An analysis by the Alma Research and Education Center warned that the published framework does not include sufficient mechanisms for reforming the Lebanese Armed Forces, addressing Hezbollah’s civilian infrastructure, preventing arms smuggling from Syria, or preserving Israel’s freedom of action against future rearmament efforts.

Those gaps, it said, may enable Hezbollah to preserve its status as a “state within a state.”