{"id":760218,"date":"2026-07-13T11:18:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T11:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/760218\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T11:18:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T11:18:14","slug":"is-the-united-states-stoking-the-flames-of-civil-war-in-lebanon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/760218\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the United States Stoking the Flames of Civil War in Lebanon?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the United States and Iran reached a ceasefire earlier this summer, both sides agreed<\/a> to \u201cthe immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon\u201d The deal should have been a straightforward moment of relief. Within hours, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced<\/a> that Israeli forces would not withdraw from Lebanon, and Israeli officials reportedly communicated that refusal directly to US President Donald Trump. Israel was not a party to the negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The US-Iran ceasefire appears to have now fallen apart, and Israeli strikes have continued to kill Lebanese civilians across the country. Drones fly over much of southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed, bizarrely<\/a> and without evidence, that some Lebanese Christian villages \u201casked to be annexed by Israel.\u201d The Lebanese health ministry\u2019s death toll since March 2 has climbed<\/a> well past 4,000 \u2014 more than a third of those deaths occurring<\/a> after the supposed ceasefire. Lebanon is not a sideshow to the broader US-Iranian confrontation. It is a front of the same war, and the stumbling block Israel has repeatedly used to destabilize any path toward regional de-escalation \u2014 an intervention the United States has consistently refused to constrain.<\/p>\n

From the outset, Iranian officials have been overt about the inclusion of Lebanon in any version of a peace agreement. Israel significantly expanded its strikes in Lebanon on March 2, following Hezbollah\u2019s missiles launched in response<\/a> to the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and repeated Israeli aggressions. Despite a US-mediated ceasefire signed in April, Israeli airstrikes have continued to claim civilian lives and destroy<\/a> homes throughout Lebanon, and Israeli soldiers remain<\/a> indefinitely on the ground through much of the country\u2019s south.<\/p>\n

Each time the US has moved toward de-escalation with Iran, Israel\u2019s escalation in Lebanon has provided friction to prevent progress from holding. As long as Washington is unwilling to use its leverage to restrain Israel\u2019s conduct, Lebanon will remain the wrench Israel can throw into any diplomatic process, including ones the United States itself brokers.<\/p>\n

The pattern is not new, of course, but it has become impossible to ignore. On April 8, the day after the US and Iran announced a two-week ceasefire, Israel launched Operation \u201cEternal Darkness,\u201d which it described as its largest coordinated strike on Lebanon since the renewed war began, sending 50 fighter jets and roughly 160 munitions into Beirut and across the country during rush hour, killing<\/a> 361 people in densely populated civilian areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, on June 14, the day the US and Iran announced the memorandum of understanding, Israel again struck Dahiyeh, the Beirut suburb home to Hezbollah\u2019s political heart. Trump condemned<\/a> the strike directly: \u201cThis morning\u2019s attack on Beirut should not have happened, particularly on a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran,\u201d he wrote, adding that \u201cthere should be no more attacks by Israel anywhere in Lebanon.\u201d Trump\u2019s rhetoric, however, seems to lack the concrete force of the available US leverage to stop Israel\u2019s transgressions. Iranian officials have assessed as much, as parliamentary speaker and leading negotiator Mohammad Qalibaf responded<\/a> that Israel\u2019s incursion into Dahiyeh \u201chas once again shown that America either lacks the will to fulfill its commitments or the ability to do so.\u201d In other words, Israeli strikes Lebanon effectively exercise a veto over US diplomacy, and Washington seemingly absorbs it, every time.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, some US lawmakers have been trying to force the White House to reckon with this dynamic. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib introduced the Lebanon War Powers Resolution in March, which would mandate the removal of US Armed Forces\u2019 participation in unauthorized hostilities in Lebanon, including involvement in targeting assistance and intelligence sharing for Israeli airstrikes and ground operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The vote attracted more widespread opposition within the Democratic Party than Iran war powers resolutions, with numerous lawmakers and aides describing<\/a> the behind-the-scenes dynamic as Democrats fuming that Tlaib was forcing them to take an agonizing vote. House Democratic leadership issued a late statement that they would vote no on the resolution and cited a drafting issue, arguing the resolution\u2019s operative text directed removal of forces \u201cfrom Lebanon\u201d rather than specifically \u201cfrom hostilities\u201d, and pledged<\/a> instead to support a revised version, H.Con.Res. 108, which was drafted in consultation with the Democratic ranking member of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee with narrower language and carve-outs for cooperation with the Lebanese Armed Forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael\u2019s escalation in Lebanon has provided friction to prevent progress from holding.\u201d<\/p>\n

In spite of this dynamic, 92 Democrats voted yes, including several more moderate lawmakers, with the Congressional Progressive Caucus whipping in favor. US Representative Summer Lee argued<\/a> on the floor that \u201cif Trump is serious about ending this war, then we must prevent Israeli escalation in Lebanon\u201d and that ending US participation \u201cis a necessary place to start.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House Democratic leadership team pledged<\/a> to work with Tlaib to \u201csupport and build consensus\u201d for H.Con.Res. 108, the first time leadership had formally committed to opposing US participation in Israel\u2019s war. All but 22 Democrats voted for the revised resolution, though it still failed amid near-universal Republican opposition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, House Democratic leadership\u2019s support for the resolution came with significant rhetorical caveats. Leadership insisted<\/a> throughout that \u201cthere are no US servicemembers involved in combat operations or hostilities in Lebanon,\u201d including a speech on the House floor from Representative Gregory Meeks \u2014 a claim that rests both on an extremely limited interpretation of the War Powers Resolution and the limited information that the Pentagon has told Congress. As The Intercept reported<\/a>, there are widespread suspicions that the US has provided support for Israel\u2019s operations in Lebanon \u201cin the form of intelligence sharing and other coordination,\u201d and the administration has not responded<\/a> to a May 4 letter from Senator Peter Welch and a dozen colleagues asking precisely this question. As Nathan Thompson notes<\/a> in the American Prospect, Pete Hegseth\u2019s Pentagon is \u201cnot exactly known for its commitment to transparency.\u201d The claim that there are no hostilities is, at best, leadership merely repeating what it has been told rather than something it has verified.<\/p>\n

There remain outstanding questions about the depth of US involvement in Israel\u2019s war in Lebanon. But the more pressing question is whether mainstream Democrats who claim to oppose Netanyahu\u2019s and Hezbollah\u2019s excesses are, knowingly or not, pushing Lebanon toward civil war.<\/p>\n

On June 26, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the Trilateral Framework between Israel, Lebanon, and the US \u2014 conditioning IDF withdrawal from Lebanon on the verified disarmament of Hezbollah and the dismantlement of its infrastructure. Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem declared the agreement \u201cnull and void,\u201d calling it \u201chumiliating, shameful, and a surrender of sovereignty.\u201d But the more fundamental problem is not Hezbollah\u2019s reaction. It is what this framework demands of a country being actively destroyed.<\/p>\n

As Brookings analysts<\/a> have noted, today\u2019s Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) is simply not capable of disarming Hezbollah by force. Israel\u2019s own expanding occupation has failed to defeat the group militarily after months of bombardment, and the LAF ranks 118th out of 145 countries in the Global Firepower index. Hezbollah\u2019s leadership has warned that there \u201cwill be no life\u201d in Lebanon if the Armed Forces confronted the group directly. Forcing that confrontation on an underprepared military, in a country whose population is watching its villages be bombed and its people actively displaced, while simultaneously asking them to turn their guns on the group many still view as their only protection, is not a path to peace. It is a path to civil war.<\/p>\n

Tlaib herself warned on the floor: \u201cLearn the lessons of the countries before you and the lessons of Lebanon\u2019s own history \u2026 A ceasefire with Israel means you cease, they fire.\u201d She went on: \u201cDo not abandon your land and your people and become another subcontractor for the Israeli occupation.\u201d That warning applies as much to American lawmakers as it does to the Lebanese government.<\/p>\n

You cannot bomb a country into submission and then hand its army a mandate to disarm a heavily armed militia on a timeline set by the occupying power. Democrats who have rightly condemned Israel\u2019s conduct in Lebanon should be clear-eyed about what they are endorsing when they sign letters urging the White House to \u201cempower\u201d the Lebanese government to pursue Hezbollah\u2019s \u201cfull demilitarization,\u201d\u00a0 as 75 members did this week in a J Street-backed letter. Lebanese sovereignty and forced disarmament under military occupation are not the same goal. Conflating them does as much of a disservice to the Lebanese people as it does to any prospect of durable peace.<\/p>\n

Whether the fighting between Washington and Tehran continues, the United States has sufficient leverage over Israel to compel a real ceasefire in Lebanon. That leverage exists. The question is whether Washington will use it to actually end the war, or whether it will keep absorbing Israel\u2019s vetoes while calling the result diplomacy, and asking Lebanon \u2014 and the American people \u2014 to pay the price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the United States and Iran reached a ceasefire earlier this summer, both sides agreed to \u201cthe immediate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-760218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}