NARRATIVE: Lebanon Between Israel and Hezbollah — The Blind Spot of a Botched Deal

NARRATIVE: Lebanon Between Israel and Hezbollah — The Blind Spot of a Botched Deal

Introduction: The June 17 Agreement and Its Ghosts

An MOU signed into a Lebanese geopolitical vacuum

On June 17, 2026, the United States and Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) intended to open a diplomatic window of 60 days to end regional hostilities. The opening clause of the document is symbolic: it explicitly includes Lebanon in the ceasefire framework and commits both parties to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Land of Cedars. On paper, it reads like progress. In practice, it is pure fiction.

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah signed this memorandum. Neither considers itself bound by its terms. Clashes continue in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military presence in Lebanese territories occupied since the 2024 offensives remains in place. Hezbollah continues to describe its actions against Israeli forces on Lebanese soil as "legitimate resistance" — a characterization Israel flatly rejects. Lebanon, a theoretical sovereign state, is caught between two forces that each unilaterally define the rules of a conflict being fought on its territory.

Lucerne, Washington, and the diplomatic machinery

Diplomatic discussions are being held in Lucerne, Switzerland — a neutral, discreet country for sensitive negotiations. The parties are exploring the creation of a "deconfliction cell" involving the United States, Iran, and Lebanon to oversee the halting of military operations. The structural problem is obvious: Israel is not part of this cell. A deconfliction mechanism between the United States, Iran, and Lebanon that excludes one of the main combatant parties is less a ceasefire mechanism than a diplomatic communication exercise.

Simultaneously, direct talks between Lebanon and Israel resumed in Washington on June 23, 2026. These talks, backed by sustained American engagement, seek an agreement on Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory and the scale-up of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in the south. This is the most promising path — but it requires concessions that Israel is not yet ready to make and that Hezbollah is not yet prepared to accept.

Lebanon: A Ghost State on a Real Battlefield

A state that never achieved a monopoly on force

To understand why Lebanon is the blind spot of every regional agreement, you need to understand its singular political structure. Since the Taef Accords of 1989, Lebanon has lived with political confessionalism — a system where power is distributed among religious communities — and with the reality of a "state within a state": Hezbollah, which commands an army more powerful than the official Lebanese Armed Forces, a sprawling social and economic network, and an Iranian loyalty that supersedes loyalty to the Lebanese state.

Since the ceasefire agreement of November 2024 between Israel and Hezbollah — an agreement neither side fully honored — Lebanon has lived in a permanent gray zone. The LAF have partially deployed in the south, as required under UN Resolution 1701. But Hezbollah maintains a presence in areas the LAF are supposed to control. And Israel maintains a military presence in parts of South Lebanon it considers essential to its security.

Three Lebanese objectives in an unfavorable diplomatic landscape

According to the CSIS analysis published on June 24, 2026, Lebanon is pursuing three strategic objectives in this context: first, securing Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory; second, strengthening the authority and capacity of the Lebanese state — particularly its LAF; and third, bringing Hezbollah's military activities under the state's monopoly on force. These three objectives are coherent and legitimate. They are also in direct tension with the interests of every other actor in the equation.

Israel will not withdraw its forces as long as it perceives the Hezbollah threat as persistent. Hezbollah will not disarm under pressure — and will not hand its arsenal to a Lebanese state it considers too weak to protect it from Israel. Iran will not allow its main regional power projection to demilitarize without guarantees in return. And the United States supports Israel's right to strike targets it considers an imminent threat — which fundamentally contradicts any mechanism for a stable ceasefire.

The US-Iran MOU: What Does It Actually Say?

An agreement about an agreement — the diplomacy of intentions

The June 17 MOU is not a peace treaty. It is not even a binding formal agreement. It is a memorandum of understanding — a document that expresses an intention not to engage in direct confrontation for a defined period, giving the parties time to negotiate more permanent arrangements. Its inclusion of Lebanon in its clauses reflects the reality that the Lebanese front is one of the main axes of tension between the United States (via their support of Israel) and Iran (via its support of Hezbollah).

The 60-day diplomatic window is a race against the clock. If no substantive agreement is reached by mid-August 2026, the parties will choose between extending the MOU — if trust is sufficient — or allowing hostilities to resume with renewed intensity. This timeline creates paradoxical pressures: Israel knows it must move quickly to consolidate its positions before stronger diplomatic constraints take hold. Hezbollah knows it must preserve its forces for the post-MOU period. Neither has an incentive for a genuine ceasefire unless accompanied by the security guarantees the other refuses to provide.

American ambiguity: supporting Israel and promoting peace simultaneously

The American position in this conflict is fundamentally ambiguous. The United States is simultaneously the guarantor of the US-Iran memorandum and the main military and diplomatic backer of Israel. This dual role strips them of part of their credibility as an impartial mediator. When Washington reaffirms Israel's "right to defend itself" — including through strikes on targets in Lebanon it deems imminent — it partially empties of substance the MOU's clause on respect for Lebanese sovereignty.

CSIS notes that the United States has "repeatedly supported ceasefire arrangements in Lebanon while simultaneously accepting Israel's right to strike targets it considers an imminent threat." This ambiguity has undermined previous ceasefires and could undermine future ones. For an agreement to hold, Washington would need to be willing to exert real pressure on Tel Aviv — pressure that the Trump administration is structurally disinclined to apply.

Israel and the Withdrawal Dilemma

The Israeli military presence in Lebanon: why and how long

Israel has occupied parts of South Lebanon since its 2024 operations. This presence follows a clear security logic: creating a buffer zone that prevents Hezbollah from reinstalling positions from which it could launch attacks on northern Israel, as it did in 2024. This logic is understandable from the Israeli perspective — and unacceptable from the Lebanese and international law standpoint.

Israel has declared itself prepared to honor a ceasefire if Hezbollah does the same. But it has also made clear it will not withdraw its forces from occupied areas until the Hezbollah threat is deemed neutralized. This is a vicious circle: Hezbollah cannot accept Israeli military presence in Lebanon without turning it into an existential humiliation. Israel cannot withdraw without guarantees that Hezbollah will not use the opportunity to reconstitute its positions. Neither side has the guarantees the other demands.

The 1701 precedent and its limits

UN Resolution 1701 of 2006, adopted after that summer's Lebanon War, had established a similar framework: Israeli withdrawal, deployment of the LAF with support from UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon), and disarmament of Hezbollah south of the Litani River. Twenty years later, Hezbollah was more heavily armed than ever. UNIFIL was present but powerless. And Israel had been forced to launch a massive military operation in 2024 to try to solve what 2006 had left unresolved.

This precedent weighs heavily on Israeli calculations. Why accept a similar agreement that would produce the same results in twenty years? The answer, according to CSIS analysts, is that the agreement must be different: the LAF must be seriously reinforced and supported, US CENTCOM must be directly involved in their training and assistance, and the safeguards against Hezbollah's return must be structural and verifiable. That is an ambitious program requiring resources and political will that neither Washington nor Beirut has yet mobilized.

Hezbollah After the Devastation of 2024

Weakened but not defeated: the state of Hezbollah in 2026

Israel's 2024 campaigns inflicted considerable damage on Hezbollah. The death of its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and much of its senior command, the destruction of significant parts of its military infrastructure in South Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, the degradation of its communications networks — all temporarily reduced its operational capacity. But the organization has not been dissolved. It has not disarmed. It retreated and is reconstituting.

Hezbollah is a multidimensional entity: an army, a political party, a social network, a service provider — all financed and supported by Iran. To "destroy" it would require simultaneously dismantling all of these dimensions. No military operation alone can achieve that. Only a political solution combining negotiated disarmament, reconstruction of the Lebanese state, and economic reintegration of the Lebanese Shia community could structurally reduce Hezbollah's power in the long term. That is a decade-long project, not a matter of months.

New leadership and the question of strategy

With new leadership in place — whose names and strategic orientations are less well documented publicly — Hezbollah in 2026 is a reconstituting entity still searching for its direction. Honor the MOU diplomatic window to rebuild its forces? Or maintain military pressure to avoid appearing to have capitulated? The organization's internal logic favors visible resistance over visible compromise — even if tactical calculations may diverge.

Iran, upon which Hezbollah depends financially and militarily, plays a signaling role in this context. If Tehran genuinely wishes to capitalize on the MOU's diplomatic window with the United States, it can encourage Hezbollah toward restraint. If Tehran seeks to maintain distraction pressure on Israel during negotiations, it can allow — even encourage — limited actions in Lebanon. These signals are hard to read from the outside, but they largely determine the evolution of the situation on the Lebanese ground.

The Role of Iran in the Regional Architecture

Iran as a proxy power: strengths and limits

Iran is the grand manager of the proxy architecture across the Middle East: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen, militias in Iraq. This architecture allows it to project pressure on Israel and the United States without engaging directly in open conflicts. The June 17 MOU represents an American attempt to buy a pause in this pressure in exchange for a diplomatic window on the Iranian nuclear file.

But Iran's interests and those of its proxies are not perfectly aligned. Hezbollah, though dependent on Tehran, has its own political and military dynamics in Lebanon. Compelling Hezbollah to honor an agreement it did not sign and that works against its immediate interests — notably by allowing a reinforcement of the LAF in the south — is a task Iran can accomplish in theory, but one that its relationship with its main regional investment makes politically complex in practice. The MOU asks Iran to partially sacrifice Hezbollah's short-term interests for its own long-term interests — an arbitrage Tehran has not yet clearly made.

The withdrawal of the IRGC from Lebanon: the impossible clause

Among the elements that CSIS analysts identify as essential to a durable agreement is the withdrawal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from Lebanon, along with the dismantling of its local infrastructure. This is a condition roughly as realistic as asking Russia to withdraw its military forces from Crimea as a precondition for peace. The IRGC has been the backbone of Iranian power projection in Lebanon since the 1980s. It is the trainer, financier, and strategist of Hezbollah. Demanding its withdrawal is asking Iran to relinquish its most prized strategic presence in the Arab world.

No credible agreement can demand the impossible. But no stable agreement can ignore this reality either. Resolving this contradiction — how to reduce Iranian influence in Lebanon without demanding it explicitly — is the central diplomatic challenge that neither the MOU nor the ongoing discussions have yet solved. It may be the darkest blind spot in the current arrangement.

The Reconstruction of Lebanon: Who Will Pay, and on What Terms?

A country to be rebuilt under partial occupation

The physical destruction of South Lebanon following Israeli military operations in 2024 is massive. The United Nations estimates that more than 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in the districts of Nabatieh and Tyre. Essential infrastructure — roads, water networks, health systems — was severely damaged. Reconstruction will require billions of dollars and years of work. But who will finance that reconstruction as long as the security situation remains unstable and Hezbollah, weakened but undefeated, maintains a presence in border areas?

The Gulf states — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE — have made any significant financing conditional on substantive political reform in Lebanon, including the election of a functioning president, the formation of a technocratic competency government, and the implementation of IMF recommendations. These conditions, posed since 2020, remain largely unmet. Without political reform, no Gulf financing. Without Gulf financing, no reconstruction. Without reconstruction, no stabilization. Lebanon's vicious circle perpetuates itself.

The role of UNIFIL and the stakes of redeployment

UNIFIL — the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, deployed since 1978 and reinforced after 2006 — finds itself in a particularly difficult position in the context of the June 17, 2026 MOU. Its mandate is to supervise the cessation of hostilities and support the redeployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) south of the Litani River. But UNIFIL lacks the resources, executive mandate, and political will from its contributing countries to effectively enforce the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Israel has repeatedly stated that UNIFIL had become ineffective and that its soldiers had been obstructed, even threatened, during inspection attempts in Hezbollah-controlled areas. These accusations, partially corroborated by internal UN reports, fuel Israeli mistrust of any agreement based on international guarantees. Without a robust verification mechanism — which the current agreement does not clearly provide — the MOU will remain a text on paper rather than a reality on the ground.

Lebanese Public Opinion: Between Hope and Wariness

A population exhausted by decades of crisis

Any geopolitical analysis of Lebanon risks losing sight of the essential: the 5 million Lebanese living in a country ravaged by decades of civil war, political instability, economic collapse, and now renewed bombardment. The economic crisis triggered in 2019 — characterized by the World Bank as one of the three worst global economic crises since 1850 — wiped out a generation's savings. The poverty rate has exceeded 80%. Power cuts last up to 20 hours a day in some regions. Doctors, engineers, and teachers are leaving the country by the tens of thousands each year.

In this context, the agreement of June 17, 2026 is received with an ambivalence characteristic of Lebanese politics. Communities in South Lebanon displaced by the 2024 fighting want to return home — and for that, they need some stability. But they are also wary of agreements negotiated without their participation, which have historically been reached at the expense of local populations in favor of regional great powers. Hezbollah retains a real support base in these Shia communities — not necessarily for its military adventures, but for the social services it provides in the absence of the state.

The Lebanese diaspora as a potential stabilizing factor

Lebanon has one of the world's largest diasporas proportionally to its population: between 8 and 14 million people of Lebanese origin live abroad, compared to approximately 5 million inside the country. This diaspora, present in North America, South America, West Africa, and Australia, is a major source of remittances — estimated at $7 billion per year, one of the country's main revenue streams. It is also an influential political lobby in host countries, particularly in the United States, where the Lebanese-American community weighs into foreign policy decisions.

Several diaspora organizations have launched direct reconstruction initiatives, bypassing the failing Lebanese state to fund specific community projects. This approach, while unable to replace a coherent national policy, offers a decentralized reconstruction model that has demonstrated its effectiveness in other contexts of state fragility. Post-agreement Lebanon will need all its resources — including this mobilized diaspora — to hope to break the cycle of destruction and reconstruction in which it has been trapped since 1975.

Conclusion: An Incomplete Agreement in a Broken Country

Lebanon deserves better than a botched deal

Lebanon is a country of exceptional beauty and cultural wealth, whose inhabitants — across all communities — have paid an exorbitant price for wars that, all too often, were not theirs. Israelis and Palestinians have been fighting on Lebanese soil for decades. Iranians and Americans project their rivalries there. Syrians stationed their forces there for fifteen years. Lebanon is the country that everyone passes through, that nobody protects, and whose civilians systematically pay the bill for decisions made elsewhere.

The June 17 MOU, by including Lebanon in its clauses without involving the key actors like Israel or Hezbollah, is symptomatic of this logic. Lebanon is "included" in agreements on paper and excluded from the real decisions. For any agreement to hold, it will require not only a US-Iran commitment, but direct engagement from Israel and an internal transformation of the relationship between the Lebanese state and Hezbollah. Two conditions that are difficult to fulfill simultaneously.

The 60-day window: between hope and resignation

The diplomatic window opened by the MOU closes around mid-August 2026. What these sixty days produce — real progress or a return to square one — depends less on the texts being negotiated than on the political will of the actors on the ground. Zelensky and his Ukrainian supporters showed that determined political will can change the course of things. Lebanon needs similar political will from its own institutions, its own community leaders, and international support to stand firm. It is possible. It is still far from certain.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My position on the Israeli-Lebanese conflict

Maxime Marquette believes in Israel's right to exist and to defend itself against organizations that have declared its elimination as their goal. I also believe in the rights of Lebanese civilians to live safely on their territory, without being held hostage to conflicts between regional powers. These two convictions are not contradictory — even if Middle Eastern politics constantly puts them in tension. I am not an expert in Lebanese international law, and my sources on the details of ongoing negotiations remain those publicly available.

Sources and limits

This analysis draws primarily on the CSIS study by Paul Salem (June 2026) and the Foundation for Advanced and Futuristic Thinking (FAF) website. The negotiations currently underway in Lucerne and Washington are surrounded by confidentiality that limits my access to substantive details.

Sources

Primary sources

FAF — "The Iran Memorandum of Understanding and the Architecture of Deferred Conflict" — June 23, 2026

CSIS — "Lebanon in the Shadow of the U.S.-Iran MOU: Risks and Opportunities," Paul Salem — June 24, 2026

Secondary sources

Al Jazeera — coverage of Middle East regional dynamics and analogies with other conflicts — June 2026

Foreign Policy — analyses of the US-Iran MOU and its regional implications — June 2026

Euromaidan Press — comparison of Russian and Iranian proxy dynamics in regional conflicts — June 2026

Kyiv Independent — parallels between the war in Ukraine and Lebanese dynamics facing authoritarian sponsors — June 2026

The Guardian — coverage of diplomatic negotiations in the Middle East — June 2026