Iran Uses Lebanon to Wedge Trump Against Netanyahu
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- Trump held two expletive-laden calls with Netanyahu demanding he retreat from a major military offensive in Beirut against Iranian-backed Hezbollah, telling the New York Post he was "perturbed" and told Netanyahu, "Bibi we gotta stop this."
- Iran conditioned its ceasefire with the US on a halt in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, and the Israeli retreat from Beirut served as a win for Tehran.
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers the US is "trying to view the Lebanon-Israeli talks as separate and distinct from Iran, and what Iran wants to do is mix it all together."
- Trump appears willing to punt on tough negotiations over Iran's nuclear program to strike a narrower deal reopening the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil and gas flows and whose closure has sent US gas prices soaring.
- Sarit Zehavi, president of the Alma Research and Education Center, warned The Hill that the US demand for Israel to retreat against Hezbollah empowered the US-designated terrorist group and weakened the Lebanese government, setting back US goals in Beirut.
- Netanyahu faces intense domestic pressure to hit Hezbollah hard ahead of a fall election where he has framed himself as Israel's strongest defender.
- Israel scored a major strategic victory over Hezbollah in September 2024 by detonating exploding pagers carried by approximately 1,500 of the group's rank and file.
Why it matters: Iran gains a diplomatic lever: by keeping the Israel-Hezbollah front alive, Tehran can extract concessions from a Trump administration prioritizing a narrow Strait of Hormuz deal over a maximalist nuclear pact, while Netanyahu's fall reelection math pushes him toward escalation that could derail both negotiations.
