The unprecedented progress in Israel-Lebanon peace talks could end a decades-long conflict, if America can follow through on its promises of support.

President Donald Trump has an opportunity to do something no American president has managed in nearly half a century: end the war between Israel and Lebanon for good.

Washington has already seized the diplomatic initiative, by bringing the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors together in the White House to extend the temporary ceasefire. The high-level attention Washington is directing to Lebanon—including active efforts by the President of the United States to bring both Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese president Joseph Aoun to the White House—delivers a clear signal that Washington sees a win in Lebanon.

If this initiative is to succeed where the Biden administration’s 2024 effort failed and make this the last war between Israel and Lebanon, it must confront two uncomfortable truths that both sides, and Washington, have so far avoided.

First, Israel’s steadily expanding “security zone” in southern Lebanon is tearing the country apart. More than one in five Lebanese citizens has been displaced. Entire villages have been reduced to rubble. Of the more than 2,100 people killed in this war, 172 were children.

These are not Hezbollah’s villages; they are Lebanon’s. They are not Hezbollah’s children; they are Lebanon’s future, and their loss is a source of anguish and fury against Jerusalem. Israel may bring temporary security for its northern communities through brute force, but it cannot bring about the political outcome it ultimately needs: a stable border with a neighbor that is willing and able to secure it.

Second, Lebanon’s government has undermined its credibility by failing to enforce its own decisions.  At its core, the decision to disarm Hezbollah is not an international imposition; it was demanded by Lebanon, and it is Lebanon’s responsibility to implement. Aoun promised his people that the state would hold a monopoly on force when he took office, and Lebanese prime minister Nawaf Salam made clear that decision was rooted in Lebanon’s sovereignty.

While the Lebanese government has taken strides to outlaw Hezbollah’s military activities and commit to disarming the militia, it has not delivered on its promises. Its civilian and military leadership told the Lebanese and the world that they had secured South Lebanon from Hezbollah’s arms, and that Lebanon would not enter the US-Israel-Iran conflict. But Hezbollah nevertheless made that decision for them, and continues to do so up to the present.

In short, the loss of trust across both sides of the border is real. However, Washington has the credibility and leverage to advance a step-by-step process that helps restore the confidence needed to achieve the joint goals of securing Hezbollah’s disarmament and Israel’s withdrawal.

The ceasefire has set events in motion, and the first step is already visible. Lebanon’s prime minister called for Beirut to become a demilitarized capital, a simple but profound starting point: the nation’s political and economic heart should belong to the state, not the militia.

Now it is up to the government and the Lebanese Armed Forces to deliver on that vow. If they can, the ceasefire could begin to change realities on the ground. A capital firmly under state authority would signal that Lebanon is serious about getting the job done after years of false starts. This, in turn, will give Washington more space to encourage both sides to continue taking the difficult but necessary steps to reach the one destination that matters: a Lebanese state with full sovereignty over its territory, its security, and its decisions of war and peace.

There is no doubt, Hezbollah and its Iranian backers will work hard to spoil this progress. Iran wants to negotiate a temporary ceasefire in Lebanon so it can salvage what is left of the crown jewel of its proxy network. But both the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah have been degraded by this war.  Most of all, they have lost the confidence of the Lebanese people. Dragging a country into a war it did not choose, for a conflict that is not its own, all with no clear path for success, has consequences.

Only Washington can give the Lebanese what this moment demands—an opportunity to negotiate an end to the conflict with Israel on their terms, not Tehran’s, and a future determined by their government and people, not a faltering Islamic Republic.

Washington has a window in Lebanon, but it will not stay open for long. With Hezbollah and Iran’s future in Lebanon uncertain, key stakeholders in the country are already hedging their bets.  To capitalize on that shift, the United States must do two things at once: back the Lebanese state, and raise the costs of undermining it. In practice, this means a carrot-and-stick approach: decisive US support for Lebanese institutions, the Lebanese economy, and the Lebanese Armed Forces with one hand, and uncompromising pressure on those who obstruct the state from within, including sanctions on spoilers that prevent the state from implementing its own decisions.

Two months into the conflict with Iran, Lebanon is not just another front in a regional war. It is the opening Washington has been looking for to lock in battlefield gains—and permanently check Iran’s ability to hold the Middle East hostage.

About the Author: Fadi Nicholas Nassar

Fadi Nicholas Nassar is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute specializing in US foreign policy and the geopolitics of the Levant. From 2019 to 2025, he lived and worked in Lebanon through its financial collapse, the Beirut port explosion, and the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, serving as director of the Institute for Social Justice and Conflict Resolution and as a professor at the Lebanese American University. His work is shaped by firsthand experience of states under strain, examining how power, policy, and politics determine whether countries fail or recover. He is the author of UN Mediators in Syria (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

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