Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Tuesday largely steered clear of the potential minefield that comes with being in front of the press alongside US President Donald Trump, as the two leaders met for the very first time at the White House.
The sit-down is a highly coveted opportunity for Aoun, who assumed office just two weeks before Trump’s inauguration in January 2025.
The last Lebanese president to sit in the Oval Office was Michel Sleiman in 2009, with former President Barack Obama.
“Been looking forward to this visit for a very long time, meeting such a great president like yourself,” Aoun said in English, prompting the US president to swiftly acknowledge the praise: “See, he knows how to get to me. Now he can have anything he wants.”
What Aoun wants is a committed US engagement to Lebanon that comes with increased pressure on Israel, as well as ramped-up financing for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and reconstruction of the decimated south.
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What he received instead after he departed was an announcement from Trump that US airlines will now be permitted to fly directly to Lebanon – something that has not happened in 40 years.
“I am hereby directing my Administration to allow all US airline carriers to fly directly to Lebanon so that Americans can easily visit this beautiful land,” he wrote on his social media platform, TruthSocial.
Flights were barred by the Ronald Reagan administration in 1985 after Hezbollah members hijacked TWA Flight 847, in a bid to demand the release of Lebanese citizens in Israeli custody.
“It’s a win [for Aoun] if it’s easier for people to travel to Lebanon in a safe fashion,” Anthony Wanis-St John, a conflict resolution expert and professor at American University in Washington, DC, told Middle East Eye.
Safety, of course, depends on the stability of the country. And until Lebanon is no longer in open hostilities with Israel, it’s unlikely to draw American tourists.
‘This will be your legacy’
Much like every other Arab leader who has been in the Oval Office over the past 18 months, Aoun is keenly aware that only Trump has the capacity and leverage to rein in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war on Lebanon.
“The ultimate objective [is] ending the state of hostility between Lebanon and Israel forever,” Aoun told reporters.
“I think, Mr President, this will be your legacy,” he said, looking at Trump.
The de facto Israeli occupation of large parts of the south since March of this year has raised the Lebanese death toll to more than 4,300 since Hezbollah began its rocket attacks on Israel on 8 October 2023, in a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza.
Though Hezbollah has no part in any US-hosted Lebanese-Israeli negotiations, Trump acknowledged the group’s critical role in moving the trilateral framework forward.
“I would speak to Hezbollah. I speak to everybody,” Trump said. “If the president wanted me to speak to Hezbollah – you know he’s lived with Hezbollah for a long time – if the president wanted me to speak to Hezbollah, I would.”
But there is little indication Aoun would entertain the option, given his visit is meant to affirm that there is only one state authority in Lebanon.
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Hezbollah, which was born out of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s, has been a designated terrorist group in the US since 1997.
Asked by a reporter about Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri, cautioning that confrontations between LAF and Hezbollah fighters could lead to a Lebanese civil war, Aoun insisted that the declaration-style framework “doesn’t require the endorsement of the parliament… it’s part of our constitution [that] it’s a prerogative of the president, and we are committed to it.”
Berri, the founder of the Shia-majority Amal movement, which is aligned with Hezbollah’s lawmakers, “really wants to see the end of this war”, Aoun said.
“He’s from the south… unfortunately, the south is being destroyed in front of his eyes. So he’s actually supporting what we are doing, but we need to be careful. His position as a speaker and as a leader of the Shia community, we have to understand how critical is his position,” Aoun said.
‘Small step to nowhere’
US ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa told the Lebanese broadcaster LBC last week that Aoun “won’t be leaving Washington empty-handed”.
But after a meeting that lasted just under two hours on Tuesday, Trump’s senior advisor on Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs, the Lebanese businessman Massad Boulos indicated to reporters that the key deliverable is “all about implementing this agreement, which is historic”.
That agreement, signed on 26 June, began implementation on Monday, with the Trump administration announcing that “pilot zone operations began in the villages of Froun, Srifa, and Zawtar Al-Gharbiya… under the auspices of the Military Coordination Group for Lebanon”.
The idea of the “pilot zones” is that as Israeli forces move out, the LAF will move in to take over the task of disarming Hezbollah.
But this is no Israeli withdrawal, as Trump pointed out on Tuesday, when he confirmed the Israeli forces are “in the process of redeploying to other sections”.
“In other words, the implication is Israel is staying on Lebanese territory,” Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center Washington DC, told MEE.
“It doesn’t solve the issue of sovereignty for Lebanon. It doesn’t solve the issue of foreign occupation for Lebanon,” Jahshan added. “It does not offer the Lebanese government any potential to kind of go back to Hezbollah and say, ‘See, it’s working partially – a small area, but it’s working.’ So it’s basically a small step to nowhere.”
Wanis-St John said while Hezbollah is “losing popularity” on its own accord among the Lebanese because of the high cost of death and displacement, “the Israelis go and make them more popular by staying and being extremely violent”.
When asked by reporters what leverage Washington has over Hezbollah, Boulos responded: “There are always options.”
“You have seen already some of them by the Treasury Department,” he added, in reference to the spate of sanctions the US has levied on entities believed to be materially supporting the group.
“It’s going to take time,” Boulos said. “This is not easy. Nobody believes for a second that this is going to be an easy task in any way,” Boulos said. “But we are determined – President Trump is absolutely determined – to see this through. He is the president of peace, as we all know.”
Election on the horizon
Aaron David Miller, a former US negotiator on Middle East issues for both Republican and Democratic administrations, said on X on Sunday that unless Aoun can extract a Trump commitment for a “a massive increase in training, weapons and intelligence for LAF”, anything less would be “performative”.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Washington is considering vetting and training units of elite fighters from the LAF specifically to take on Hezbollah’s soldiers, who are thus far the more entrenched and better-equipped side.
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Jahshan suggested that the more likely strategy for the Americans is a waiting game.
“What the US is trying to do is keep the process alive somehow until the Israeli elections take place, and there is a government – this government or a new one – that can deliver,” he told MEE. “In the interim, Lebanon has no choice under its current leadership but to put up with [what are] essentially promises. Undeliverable promises.”
Wanis-St John agreed.
“This is definitely tied to Israeli political and electoral cycles,” he told MEE.
Legislative elections are set to take place in Israel at the end of October.
Boulos, however, rebuffed the notion that the two issues are related when pressed by reporters.
“There is no direct link. The agreement is an agreement that is going to be implemented step by step. It’s not a question of specific dates that are cast in stone,” he said. “There is a verification mechanism. We have to give it a chance. It has to work and it’s going to work.”
Moments before Boulos stepped outside to defend the administration’s plans, he had been standing in the Oval Office watching Trump and Aoun take questions. The US president frequently referred to having “friends in Lebanon” and even made reference to his Turkey, Syria, and Iraq envoy, Tom Barrack, as being of Lebanese descent.
Barrack, however, was not in the room. And even though Aoun quietly gestured to Boulos, Trump failed to acknowledge his presence or that Boulos is part of the Trump family.
His son Michael is married to Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany.
