Is the United States Stoking the Flames of Civil War in Lebanon?

When the United States and Iran reached a ceasefire earlier this summer, both sides agreed to “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon” The deal should have been a straightforward moment of relief. Within hours, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that Israeli forces would not withdraw from Lebanon, and Israeli officials reportedly communicated that refusal directly to US President Donald Trump. Israel was not a party to the negotiations. 

The US-Iran ceasefire appears to have now fallen apart, and Israeli strikes have continued to kill Lebanese civilians across the country. Drones fly over much of southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed, bizarrely and without evidence, that some Lebanese Christian villages “asked to be annexed by Israel.” The Lebanese health ministry’s death toll since March 2 has climbed well past 4,000 — more than a third of those deaths occurring after the supposed ceasefire. Lebanon is not a sideshow to the broader US-Iranian confrontation. It is a front of the same war, and the stumbling block Israel has repeatedly used to destabilize any path toward regional de-escalation — an intervention the United States has consistently refused to constrain.

From the outset, Iranian officials have been overt about the inclusion of Lebanon in any version of a peace agreement. Israel significantly expanded its strikes in Lebanon on March 2, following Hezbollah’s missiles launched in response to the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and repeated Israeli aggressions. Despite a US-mediated ceasefire signed in April, Israeli airstrikes have continued to claim civilian lives and destroy homes throughout Lebanon, and Israeli soldiers remain indefinitely on the ground through much of the country’s south.

Each time the US has moved toward de-escalation with Iran, Israel’s escalation in Lebanon has provided friction to prevent progress from holding. As long as Washington is unwilling to use its leverage to restrain Israel’s conduct, Lebanon will remain the wrench Israel can throw into any diplomatic process, including ones the United States itself brokers.

The pattern is not new, of course, but it has become impossible to ignore. On April 8, the day after the US and Iran announced a two-week ceasefire, Israel launched Operation “Eternal Darkness,” which it described as its largest coordinated strike on Lebanon since the renewed war began, sending 50 fighter jets and roughly 160 munitions into Beirut and across the country during rush hour, killing 361 people in densely populated civilian areas. 

Then, on June 14, the day the US and Iran announced the memorandum of understanding, Israel again struck Dahiyeh, the Beirut suburb home to Hezbollah’s political heart. Trump condemned the strike directly: “This morning’s attack on Beirut should not have happened, particularly on a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran,” he wrote, adding that “there should be no more attacks by Israel anywhere in Lebanon.” Trump’s rhetoric, however, seems to lack the concrete force of the available US leverage to stop Israel’s transgressions. Iranian officials have assessed as much, as parliamentary speaker and leading negotiator Mohammad Qalibaf responded that Israel’s incursion into Dahiyeh “has once again shown that America either lacks the will to fulfill its commitments or the ability to do so.” In other words, Israeli strikes Lebanon effectively exercise a veto over US diplomacy, and Washington seemingly absorbs it, every time.

Meanwhile, some US lawmakers have been trying to force the White House to reckon with this dynamic. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib introduced the Lebanon War Powers Resolution in March, which would mandate the removal of US Armed Forces’ participation in unauthorized hostilities in Lebanon, including involvement in targeting assistance and intelligence sharing for Israeli airstrikes and ground operations. 

The vote attracted more widespread opposition within the Democratic Party than Iran war powers resolutions, with numerous lawmakers and aides describing the behind-the-scenes dynamic as Democrats fuming that Tlaib was forcing them to take an agonizing vote. House Democratic leadership issued a late statement that they would vote no on the resolution and cited a drafting issue, arguing the resolution’s operative text directed removal of forces “from Lebanon” rather than specifically “from hostilities”, and pledged instead to support a revised version, H.Con.Res. 108, which was drafted in consultation with the Democratic ranking member of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee with narrower language and carve-outs for cooperation with the Lebanese Armed Forces.

“Israel’s escalation in Lebanon has provided friction to prevent progress from holding.”

In spite of this dynamic, 92 Democrats voted yes, including several more moderate lawmakers, with the Congressional Progressive Caucus whipping in favor. US Representative Summer Lee argued on the floor that “if Trump is serious about ending this war, then we must prevent Israeli escalation in Lebanon” and that ending US participation “is a necessary place to start.”

The House Democratic leadership team pledged to work with Tlaib to “support and build consensus” for H.Con.Res. 108, the first time leadership had formally committed to opposing US participation in Israel’s war. All but 22 Democrats voted for the revised resolution, though it still failed amid near-universal Republican opposition. 

Still, House Democratic leadership’s support for the resolution came with significant rhetorical caveats. Leadership insisted throughout that “there are no US servicemembers involved in combat operations or hostilities in Lebanon,” including a speech on the House floor from Representative Gregory Meeks — a claim that rests both on an extremely limited interpretation of the War Powers Resolution and the limited information that the Pentagon has told Congress. As The Intercept reported, there are widespread suspicions that the US has provided support for Israel’s operations in Lebanon “in the form of intelligence sharing and other coordination,” and the administration has not responded to a May 4 letter from Senator Peter Welch and a dozen colleagues asking precisely this question. As Nathan Thompson notes in the American Prospect, Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is “not exactly known for its commitment to transparency.” The claim that there are no hostilities is, at best, leadership merely repeating what it has been told rather than something it has verified.

There remain outstanding questions about the depth of US involvement in Israel’s war in Lebanon. But the more pressing question is whether mainstream Democrats who claim to oppose Netanyahu’s and Hezbollah’s excesses are, knowingly or not, pushing Lebanon toward civil war.

On June 26, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the Trilateral Framework between Israel, Lebanon, and the US — conditioning IDF withdrawal from Lebanon on the verified disarmament of Hezbollah and the dismantlement of its infrastructure. Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem declared the agreement “null and void,” calling it “humiliating, shameful, and a surrender of sovereignty.” But the more fundamental problem is not Hezbollah’s reaction. It is what this framework demands of a country being actively destroyed.

As Brookings analysts have noted, today’s Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) is simply not capable of disarming Hezbollah by force. Israel’s own expanding occupation has failed to defeat the group militarily after months of bombardment, and the LAF ranks 118th out of 145 countries in the Global Firepower index. Hezbollah’s leadership has warned that there “will be no life” in Lebanon if the Armed Forces confronted the group directly. Forcing that confrontation on an underprepared military, in a country whose population is watching its villages be bombed and its people actively displaced, while simultaneously asking them to turn their guns on the group many still view as their only protection, is not a path to peace. It is a path to civil war.

Tlaib herself warned on the floor: “Learn the lessons of the countries before you and the lessons of Lebanon’s own history … A ceasefire with Israel means you cease, they fire.” She went on: “Do not abandon your land and your people and become another subcontractor for the Israeli occupation.” That warning applies as much to American lawmakers as it does to the Lebanese government.

You cannot bomb a country into submission and then hand its army a mandate to disarm a heavily armed militia on a timeline set by the occupying power. Democrats who have rightly condemned Israel’s conduct in Lebanon should be clear-eyed about what they are endorsing when they sign letters urging the White House to “empower” the Lebanese government to pursue Hezbollah’s “full demilitarization,”  as 75 members did this week in a J Street-backed letter. Lebanese sovereignty and forced disarmament under military occupation are not the same goal. Conflating them does as much of a disservice to the Lebanese people as it does to any prospect of durable peace.

Whether the fighting between Washington and Tehran continues, the United States has sufficient leverage over Israel to compel a real ceasefire in Lebanon. That leverage exists. The question is whether Washington will use it to actually end the war, or whether it will keep absorbing Israel’s vetoes while calling the result diplomacy, and asking Lebanon — and the American people — to pay the price.