Exclusive: What the Lebanese government wants from talks with Israel

The problem, however, is if any of those powers will take the Lebanese government seriously and allow it to assert real influence. Next week, a Lebanese delegation will meet Israeli officials in Washington for talks on ending Israel’s war on Lebanon and the future of Hezbollah. According to diplomats and Lebanese officials, Lebanon’s aim is to make sure that any talks and decisions are made only through the presidency and similar state institutions. The government is keen to discard military-focused mechanisms previously used to resolve issues with Israel, and disentangle Lebanon from whatever agreements Iran may be making with the United States. When Washington and Tehran announced a two-week ceasefire on Tuesday night, Iran and mediator Pakistan both said Lebanon was included. Israel has been pummelling Lebanon since US-Israeli strikes on Iran killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, which sparked a cross-border Hezbollah rocket attack in retaliation. Khamenei was an important spiritual leader for the Lebanese armed movement, which also believed Israel would use its war on Iran as cover to invade Lebanon - an assertion backed up by subsequent Israeli media reports. However, Israel refused to accept Lebanon as part of the Iran ceasefire. On Wednesday it launched more than 100 strikes on Beirut and other areas of Lebanon in 10 minutes, massacring over 300 people, many of them children. After the massacre, international pressure and Iranian threats, Israel said it would reduce its attacks and meet with the Lebanese government in Washington for direct talks. According to a senior Lebanese official, Beirut has no objection to Lebanon being formally covered by the fragile Iran ceasefire, if that can end the attacks as soon as possible. But once the guns fall silent, the Lebanese state wants any negotiations with Israel to be conducted by official institutions alone, led politically through President Joseph Aoun and the presidency, rather than through the patchwork of mechanisms that have previously been used to address issues along the countries’ border. That distinction matters, the source said, because Lebanon’s leadership believes the next phase is not simply about ending Israeli bombardment, but who gets to negotiate the terms of what comes next: the Lebanese state, or the regional powers whose war has once again engulfed the country. Notably, Hezbollah has rejected the framework of the talks, with the movement’s MP Ali Fayyad saying any move toward negotiations has to come only after a ceasefire, an Israeli withdrawal, and the return of displaced civilians. Not leaving Lebanon behind Several countries are working to make sure Lebanon isn’t left behind as Iranian and American delegations fly to Islamabad for talks on ending their six-week war. A senior Egyptian diplomatic source told Middle East Eye that Egypt was pushing to secure Lebanon’s inclusion in the ceasefire framework, with Cairo speaking to Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Israel and Washington. Iran, the source said, is unlikely to abandon the Lebanese to continued Israeli attacks. “The Iranians are dead serious not go forward without Lebanon,” the source said. Iran views the way the United States later suggested Lebanon was never part of the original deal “a betrayal to the whole framework”, they added. Another regional source said Pakistani, Turkish and Egyptian officials had all tried to reassure Beirut and urge patience while diplomacy played out. Publicly, Pakistan confirmed that Salam had asked Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for help in bringing attacks on Lebanon to an immediate end. France and the UK, too, have also said explicitly that any ceasefire between Washington and Tehran should cover Lebanon. 'The Iranians are dead serious not go forward without Lebanon' - Senior Egyptian diplomatic source Yet Lebanese officials and diplomats familiar with the developments say Salam and Aoun are also under outside pressure not to appear beneficiaries of Iran’s successes fighting off the US-Israeli assault. In their reading, several countries do not want Lebanon to be presented as part of an Iranian diplomatic achievement after Arab mediation efforts failed to stop the war. For Aoun, the issue is not only foreign pressure but also sovereignty: the state does not want to be seen as riding in Tehran’s convoy, even if it is weak and lacks the leverage to secure a ceasefire on its own. Lebanon’s leadership came to office in early 2025, following a devastating Israeli war on Lebanon sparked by the Gaza genocide, with a mandate to restore state authority, push reforms and unlock international support. But it has been operating under the shadow of economic collapse, reconstruction needs and continuing external dependence. The IMF said in February that Lebanon’s modest recovery would remain fragile without deep reforms, while the renewed war had already displaced more than one million people - a fifth of the population. This is why Lebanese officials increasingly speak of negotiating through the state as both a diplomatic principle and a survival strategy. It also helps explain the presidency’s apparent discomfort with older mechanisms used to reach agreements with the Israelis. Since the November 2024 ceasefire, Lebanon and Israel have dealt through a US-chaired truce committee tied to the border and UN-backed monitoring arrangements. In December 2025, civilian envoys joined that mechanism for the first time, broadening it beyond pure military deconfliction. But officials close to Aoun now appear to want a more explicitly political channel, one anchored in the presidency and the cabinet rather than in legacy ceasefire machinery. Double bind The problem is that Israel appears to want the opposite. Multiple Lebanese and regional sources say Israel is trying to decouple Lebanon and Iran as issues. They say the Israelis want to keep pressure on Hezbollah, retain Lebanon as a bargaining chip, and prevent Tehran from claiming that its ceasefire terms protected its allies. While Lebanese officials seek a temporary truce to open broader talks that resemble those in Islamabad but with Washington as guarantor, Israel speaks only of negotiating while continuing to attack Lebanon. Similarly, the Lebanese government’s aims collide with Tehran’s. According to a senior regional diplomat, Tehran is deeply resistant to entering talks if Lebanon is left exposed. Exclusive: How Hezbollah rebuilt while its enemies declared it dead Read More » Partly, this is because Iranian officials believe they were already misled once, but also because any visible abandonment of Hezbollah would carry a heavy political price with Iran’s own public and with its Shia allies in Lebanon. In that sense, the question is no longer only whether Lebanon can obtain a ceasefire; it is whether Iran can accept a negotiation that appears to separate fronts after insisting for weeks on linking them. For the Lebanese government, that creates a double bind. If it fails to secure a ceasefire before talks, it risks entering negotiations from a position of extreme weakness. But if Lebanon is absorbed too openly into Tehran’s terms, the state risks looking less like a sovereign actor than like an appendix to the Iranian file. Sources close to the presidency say Salam is expected in Washington and New York in the coming days in an effort to frame any diplomatic progress as a Lebanese state achievement. But even if he succeeds in presenting a ceasefire as the result of his administration’s own diplomacy, that will not remove Hezbollah’s weapons or the future of south Lebanon from the wider US-Iran conversation. The Lebanese government wants a ceasefire that shields the country, negotiations to run only through the state, and a political process that does not hand Tehran a symbolic win. But it is trying to achieve all three while holding almost none of the decisive cards. War on Iran Beirut News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0