Lebanon Assumes Center Stage

Why Lebanon has become central to the fate of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding

There are compelling reasons to explain why Lebanon has emerged as the arena in which the fate of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will be decided.

Iran believes it has emerged strengthened from the recent war against it by the United States and Israel. Its trump card (pun intended) is the control it has established over the Strait of Hormuz as a result of the war, which can be deployed essentially at will and gives Tehran a powerful snapback function whenever the US reneges on its obligations.

Iran’s priority is to consolidate its strategic gains in order to address its massive domestic challenges and rebuild its regional influence. This means, first and foremost, a formal if gradual repeal of the punishing US-led sanctions regime that is as old as the Islamic Republic itself, and a comprehensive end to Israeli aggression against the country.

While Tehran will seek to achieve these objectives through political engagement with Washington in order to avoid further armed conflict with a much more powerful adversary, the above also means that Iran will not accept to continue negotiations at any price, and is fully prepared for a resumption of hostilities if this becomes the lesser evil.

As with the recent war, Iran remains able and willing to escalate any confrontation with the US and Israel into a regional war and global economic crisis.

The US by contrast does not have clearly-formulated objectives, or well-defined methods for achieving them. Determining US policy is therefore increasingly an exercise in informed speculation.

The available evidence suggests that for Washington the main goals are a restoration of economic stability and of US stature in the region and globally, as well as placing limits on Iranian achievements. Iranian commitments to refrain from interference with shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and concrete, verifiable Iranian commitments regarding its nuclear program, appear to be Washington’s key demands, to be obtained by withholding sanctions relief until Iran fulfils its obligations. In a word, damage limitation and saving orange face.

Expressed differently, the US priority is to recoup those strategic losses that can still be salvaged in the wake of Washington’s 2018 renunciation of the Iran nuclear agreement and its recent war.

Short of a resumption of full-scale war and an invasion of Iran, for which Washington lacks both the will and the resources, the US no longer has a serious military option against Iran. Particularly so with the mid-term elections looming on the approaching horizon. Washington has therefore also chosen diplomacy, but may once again resort to periodic hostilities in the belief that doing so will improve its bargaining position.

Israel’s agenda is by contrast crystal-clear. The war against Iran must continue and must continue until its original objectives – toppling the Islamic Republic, demilitarizing Iran, and state collapse – are met. All diplomatic engagement, and any political agreement, is fundamentally incompatible with these goals and therefore represents strategic failure.

Israel’s position reflects the changes in its strategic doctrine since October 2023. Previously, this required that wars fought by Israel be short, decisive, and prosecuted on enemy territory. The Hamas attacks in southern Israel and the subsequent Gaza Genocide, which will in a few months enter its fourth year, put the final nail in that coffin.

Israel’s revised doctrine maintains that no state or movement in the region can possess the capacity to threaten Israel, or the capacity to develop the means to threaten Israel.

A formula for permanent war, this posture helps explain not only the Gaza Genocide and Israel’s ongoing reign of terror in the West Bank but also, for example, its massive bombing campaign against Syria since the ouster of the Assad regime and the installation of a new leadership in Damascus that from the very outset made clear it had no interest in conflict or confrontation with Israel.

From Israel’s perspective, it had been very successfully implementing its new strategy throughout 2024 and 2025. Not only in Palestine and Syria but also in Lebanon and Iran, and to a lesser extent in Yemen and Iraq as well.

The 2026 war against Iran was intended as the final act in this campaign, which would crush the “head of the octopus” and thereby deal a final, fatal blow to the coalition known as the Axis of Resistance.

So confident was Israel of success against Iran that before the first shot was even fired its leaders were not only already celebrating victory, but also proclaiming their intention to teach Turkey an unforgettable lesson while making belligerent statements towards Pakistan and even Egypt.

Yet Israel’s delusions of grandeur collapsed in Iran. More to the point, they are entirely dependent on US might, and Washington pulled the plug. It did so first with the 8 April ceasefire and then more significantly with the mid-June US-Iran MoU. Israel’s regional ambitions consequently and rapidly crashed to earth.

Closer to home Israel’s mediocre ground forces were facing growing difficulties in Lebanon against a resurgent Hizballah. An Israeli failure to achieve victory even immediately across its northern border had the added complication of becoming an election issue, with parliamentary polls due no later than this October.

If US public opinion opposed the Iran war from the outset and became increasingly skeptical with the passage of time, its Israeli counterpart has become addicted to war and consistently demands more and more of it. In other words, what is good politics for Trump is political suicide for Netanyahu.

Iran had insisted that the MoU explicitly reference a “permanent termination of military operations” in Lebanon, as well as “ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon” in its very first article, and the US consented to this.

Iran had multiple motivations for doing so. As the US-Israeli change of plans during the Iran war demonstrated most recently, states routinely abandon allies, partners, and proxies without a second thought. In other words, the close relationship, ideological affinity, and sectarian affiliation binding Tehran and Hizballah together is only part of the explanation.

First and foremost, Lebanon is intended as a test of US intentions and capabilities. Is the US leadership prepared to rein in its Israel proxy, and to continue doing so in the face of furious assaults on it by Israel’s proxies and Iran war hawks in Washington?

If not, these negotiations too will be a sham and there is little point in Iran pursuing them further. If, by contrast, Washington is this time actually willing to fulfil its obligations, constructive discussions can be conducted. Bear in mind that bitter experience has led Iran to view the US as a fundamentally dishonest, duplicitous, and unreliable negotiating partner that considers adhering to negotiated agreements optional.

Second, there is no utility for Iran in concluding any agreement with the US if it does not establish control over Israel, because the latter would thereby remain free to continue with aggression against Iran itself. More to the point, it would allow the US to continue deploying its Israeli proxy against Iran while claiming it is adhering to its own commitments to cease attacking the country.

Third, Lebanon demonstrates that Iran remains a significant regional player. If Iran can essentially dictate US-Israeli policy towards Lebanon, that not only demonstrates that reports of the death of the Axis of Resistance are greatly exaggerated, but also enhances Iran’s clout with Arab states closer to home at a time when these relationships too are being reformulated and renegotiated.

Fourth, Iran’s ability to impose a ceasefire in Lebanon will also have significant ramifications on the balance of power in Beirut. If Iran can achieve in negotiations with the US what the Lebanese government has consistently failed to extract in its talks with Israel, the latter channel becomes a marginalized formality to the point of irrelevancy, and Hizballah’s position vis-à-vis the Aoun-Salam leadership duo is measurably strengthened. In the context of Iran’s loss of its Syrian ally, this would be a significant achievement for Tehran.

As with any other state, Iran is primarily serving its own interests in demanding that Israel cease its campaign of terror against Lebanon. There is no reason to be sentimental about its motivations, just as there is no reason to be cynical about its achievements.

For the United States, the linkage of the Iranian and Lebanese arenas is something it would have dearly liked to avoid, and largely for precisely those reasons Iran insisted upon it.

The linkage enhances Iran’s regional prestige where Washington is seeking to limit and contain it, and it forces the Trump administration into a confrontation with Israel and Israel’s proxies in Washington it would much prefer to avoid.

A Lebanon ceasefire also compels the US to make an early, non-reciprocal move. As we have already seen Iran is using its control over the Strait of Hormuz, which it had begun to relinquish in response to the lifting of the US blockade of Iranian ports, to ensure that Washington fulfils its obligations regarding Lebanon. In 2026 Iran too has a snapback option that does not require authorization from the United Nations Security Council.

Additionally, Iran’s extraction of a Lebanon ceasefire throws a very large monkey wrench into the US-Israeli plan to use the Lebanese government to weaken Hizballah and on this basis make a second attempt at a lopsided Israeli-Lebanese peace treaty.

But perhaps most concerning to the US, Lebanon gives Israel, which Washington had pointedly excluded from its negotiations with Iran, the ability to exercise undue influence over these talks.

In view of this last reason, the conventional wisdom has been that Israel is deliberately escalating its aggression against Lebanon in order to scuttle the US-Iran MoU. It is why Israel is seen as the most determined spoiler of US-Iranian engagement.

On this occasion the conventional wisdom may well be correct. But it appears equally plausible that Israel is acting in close coordination with the US precisely to delink the Iran and Lebanon arenas and thus relieve the US of the burdens described above as it pursues further talks with Iran.

Given Israel’s opposition to any US-Iranian diplomacy as a matter of principle, Lebanon offers it the best and perhaps only venue to derail it. Provoke Iran in Lebanon with enough bloodshed and maniacal destruction, then use the Iranian response to play the victim and resume the war.

Yet Israel is not an independent actor in this equation. It must and it will ultimately do as it is told by Washington. This is for the simple reason that Israel so utterly and completely dependent on the US that it has no other choice. But this is only the case if Israel is actually told to obey US commands and consequences are imposed for insubordination.

In this context, the only relevant question is whether or not the US has the political will to exercise its influence over Israel, and if so whether it will continue to exercise this influence as Israel’s proxies and flunkies in Washington pull out every last one of the stops to urge and shame an otherwise shameless Trump administration to reconsider its present course of action.

This is another way of saying that angry words are meaningless and the real test is whether Washington is prepared to put its money where its mouth is in its relations with Israel. The jury is out, and based on past performance the odds are not particularly favorable. Yet the future of the Middle East, and that of very many lives hangs in the balance precisely on account of this question.

In their current talks in Switzerland, the US and Iran have agreed to establish a “deconfliction cell” specifically devoted to the situation in Lebanon. This multi-celled organism essentially replaces Israel as the sole arbiter of violations of the Lebanon ceasefire.

It is a hopeful development and signal, for both Lebanon and the broader US-Iran talks. Provided, of course, that it doesn’t go the way of the utterly useless “mechanism” designed to maintain the Lebanon ceasefire that never was, formally proclaimed in November 2024.