April 16, 2026

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With Talks, the U.S., Lebanon, and Israel Try to Isolate Hezbollah and Iran

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

As battles continued to rage between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah, Israel and Lebanon met on Tuesday, under Washington’s auspices, for their first official talks since 1993. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio convened the meeting, in which Israel was represented by its Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, and his Lebanese counterpart, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, represented the Beirut government.  The U.S. representative to the United Nations, Michael Waltz, and the U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, also attended. Waltz’s participation reflected the significant role UN Security Council resolutions, particularly Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, have played in trying to regulate and end conflict in Lebanon. The substantive portions of the meeting were moderated on the U.S. side by senior State Department officials. Lebanon remains technically in a state of war against Israel, although in October 2022, the two signed a U.S.-brokered agreement to demarcate their maritime border. The pact set the stage for both countries to begin exploiting offshore natural gas deposits, including the Qana field for Lebanon and the Karish field for Israel. Ahead of the Tuesday meeting in Washington, two dozen European and West-aligned countries called on Israel and Lebanon to “seize the opportunity presented by the U.S.-Iran cease-fire” to end the fighting in Lebanon.

Reflecting the competing priorities of the participants, the Washington meeting did not yield any clear breakthroughs or produce a framework accord to guide future talks. However, the two governments committed to direct talks and agreed on the need to demarcate their land border. Two of the core actors in the Lebanon conflict — Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran — were not represented in the meetings, suggesting that one goal of the session was to isolate them, both within Lebanon and regionally. Israeli leaders felt they succeeded in the talks by aligning Beirut with their effort to end Hezbollah’s threat to Israel’s northern communities, and to weaken the regional influence of Tehran more broadly. According to Leiter, the Lebanese ?government “made it ?clear” during the talks that Lebanon no ?longer wants ?to be “occupied” ?by Hezbollah.

In the Tuesday meeting, Washington restated its support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that Hezbollah disarm. But Secretary Rubio made clear at the meeting that the Trump team views the demobilization of Hezbollah as a precondition of a much broader plan to assemble a sweeping regional coalition consisting of the U.S., Israel, and the Arab states. The Trump team believes this coalition, by marginalizing and discrediting Iran and its Axis of Resistance, can promote unprecedented economic integration and regional prosperity. From the Trump team's perspective, disarming Hezbollah goes hand in hand with the rationale for launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran. Secretary Rubio articulated the Trump team’s thinking at the outset of the Tuesday session, stating, “I know some of you were shouting questions about a ceasefire. This is a lot more than just about that. This is about bringing a permanent end to 20 or 30 years of Hezbollah’s influence in this part of the world … not just the damage that it’s inflicted on Israel, the damage that it’s inflicted on the Lebanese people. We have to remember the Lebanese people are victims of Hezbollah. The Lebanese people are victims of Iranian aggression. And this needs to stop.”

While defending its steps to rein in Hezbollah, including outlawing the party’s military wing, Beirut’s primary goal for the meeting was to establish a ceasefire in Lebanon in order to spare its citizens and infrastructure further harm. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said he hoped the talks would “mark the beginning of the end of the suffering of the Lebanese people in general, and those in the south in particular.” Since Hezbollah entered the U.S./Israel-Iran war on Iran’s side on March 2, more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced, and more than 2,000 have been killed, including more than 500 women, children, and medical workers. However, Israel refused to address a truce, and that goal was not attained.

Hezbollah’s goal — which aligns with that of Tehran — was to undermine the very basis of the meeting. Failing that, Hezbollah sought to create divisions between Lebanon, Israel, and the U.S. over Hezbollah disarmament. In the days leading up to the meeting, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Naim Qassem demanded the Lebanese government cancel its participation in the meeting, accusing it of selling out Lebanese interests to Israel and the U.S. Yet the Lebanese government drew the needed backing to attend the talks from the fact that many Lebanese citizens, including some members of Hezbollah’s core constituency in the Shia Muslim community, blame Hezbollah for yet again pulling Lebanon into an unwanted war with Israel — as it did in 2006 and following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

The party insists it must remain an armed resistance group that can pressure Israel not only to withdraw from southern Lebanon but also to end its occupation of Palestinian territories. To derail discussions of disarmament, Qassem set out unattainable conditions to demobilize, including: “Israeli attacks need to stop, [Israeli] occupation [of Palestinian territory] ends, release [of] detainees, return of displaced to their villages, reconstruction ... these must be implemented and then we will discuss [disarmament] among ourselves.” Reflecting the degree to which regional realignments have added to Israel and Beirut’s pressure on the group, Hezbollah leaders also warned the post-Assad government in Damascus, which is now aligned with the U.S. and opposes Iran’s regional influence, not to intervene in Lebanon against Hezbollah.

Hezbollah also considers itself a protector of Lebanon’s Shia Muslims, who constitute a plurality but not a majority of the population. In recent days, the group mobilized its supporters in the southern suburbs of Beirut (Dahiya) to protest against the government’s participation in the talks, fueling fears of civil strife and instability. The same fears of civil unrest explain the government’s decision to proceed slowly in disarming Hezbollah over the past year — seeking to persuade, rather than force, the party to demobilize. The day after the talks, Hezbollah called Beirut’s participation a “great sin” that would widen divisions within Lebanon.

Viewing Hezbollah’s survival as essential to facing the challenges Israel and the U.S. pose, Iranian leaders echoed Hezbollah’s opposition to the Washington meeting. Tehran wants to preserve Hezbollah, armed and intact, as an instrument of deterrence and an emblem of Tehran’s “resistance” ideology. Demonstrating the weight Tehran attaches to Hezbollah, Iranian Majles (parliament) Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the chief negotiator in talks with Vice President JD Vance in Islamabad, had threatened to cancel the U.S.-Iran talks unless the Iran war ceasefire also applied to the fighting in Lebanon. Trump did not press Netanyahu for a complete Lebanon ceasefire, but he did prevail on the Israeli leader to curtail further air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut. Netanyahu’s suggestion last week of direct talks with Beirut was sufficient for Ghalibaf to drop his ultimatum and proceed with the Islamabad negotiations with Vance.

Among the stakeholders in Lebanon, but also within the broader region, leaders were disappointed that the Washington talks did not achieve even a modest lull in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had encircled the southern town of Bint Jbeil, a key Hezbollah stronghold, and put further pressure on the town on Wednesday in an effort to capture it. Israel also struck sites in the town of Aadshit on Monday. The IDF attacks across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley region, another Hezbollah redoubt, killed more than 20 people on Tuesday, according to the Lebanese state-run news agency. Hezbollah also continued its attacks, firing at least 10 rockets and missiles in the hour after the talks began, according to the Israeli military. The official U.S. statement after Tuesday’s talks did not call for a halt to Israeli strikes or a withdrawal from Lebanese territory, instead affirming Israel’s “right to defend itself” from Hezbollah’s continued attacks. Beyond continued fighting, Israel has also stated an intent to expand a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, including a permanent zone from the Israeli border to eight kilometers into Lebanon, which would not allow for the return of displaced civilians. It is not known whether the Tuesday meeting discussed the Israeli strategy in depth, but the plan, if implemented, is likely to reinforce Hezbollah’s arguments that the Beirut government is too weak to defend Lebanese territory and that it is the only party that can restore Lebanon’s sovereignty and dignity.