ABNA24 - A week after the ceasefire between Iran and the US, finally on Thursday the Lebanese front was covered by the truce, too, and despite the serious opposition by Tel Aviv to linking the Iran war to Lebanon war, the Israeli regime accepted to stop its attacks on Lebanon.
Like the conditions that followed the two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran, the Israeli regime launched a propaganda campaign to distract the global public opinion from the fact that Tel Aviv was forced to accept Resistance camp's terms. This is significant especially because of its impacts on the state of the Washington-mediated Lebanon-Israel talks and also mitigating the home pressures on the security cabinet of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Washington, the Lebanese government and Tel Aviv are trying to sell this 10-day truce to the Lebanese public opinion as an outcome of the direct talks between Beirut and Tel Aviv despite serious opposition from Hezbollah, its allies, and the people of Lebanon to the decision of President Joseph Aoun to hold direct talks with the Israeli regime at a time the Israeli occupation kept heavily bombing Lebanese civilians and still occupies parts of the Lebanon’s territory. Actually, they want to pretend that making compromises to the Israelis is a way better than resistance to Tel Aviv and can secure Lebanon’s national interests and so it is better for the country to continue its talks with Israeli regime, even if it have to accept to sign what the Israelis and Americans are seeking: A peace treaty. This means recognition of Israel and moving towards disarming Hezbollah, the core shield of Beirut against Israel expansionism.
Even American and Israeli officials are now floating the possibility of unprecedented direct talks between Joseph Aoun and Benjamin Netanyahu, a move that effectively hands Tel Aviv a major assist on a silver platter, legitimizing it as the aggressor and occupier.
With American backing, the Israelis have made no secret that their primary objective in this latest round of aggression against Lebanon is to pressure the Lebanese government into disarming Hezbollah, in line with the terms of the November 27, 2024 ceasefire agreement. Alarmingly, the Aoun government has already tipped its hand, setting an end-of-2025 deadline for Hezbollah's disarmament and signaling active collaboration with the US , Saudi Arabia, and the Israeli regime.
This is the same Joseph Aoun administration that emerged from the emergency conditions following the 66-day war, a government born of the Hezbollah’s flexibility in breaking a two-year political deadlock over the presidency, a concession meant to pave the way for post-war reconstruction and domestic stability. Yet today, that government has morphed into a hostage cabinet for a single faction, failing entirely to reflect the diverse political currents within Lebanese society.
This reality is starkly evident in Hezbollah's stance. Commenting on the recent Washington talks between Lebanese and Israeli representatives, MP Mohammad Raad, head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, said: "If the Washington meeting demonstrated anything, it was Lebanon's diminished standing within US agendas."
"This issue is in the face of the propaganda pushed by those eagerly scrambling to follow America's lead, the very same country that sponsors a criminal and rogue Zionist regime," added Raad.
Describing the statement of the Washington meeting as "shameful" and questioning the claim of the Lebanese government that it tied the talks to ceasefire, Raad asserted that this result of the talks with the Israeli regime even shatters all of the claims that the Lebanese government cherishes national sovereignty and that this course of talks boots submission to the demands of the Israeli enemy and its backer the US.
Amid this grim landscape shaped by the Aoun government's posture, it was Iran, not Beirut's diplomatic overtures, that forced Trump's hand. By making the continuation of the ceasefire conditional on an immediate halt to Israeli strikes on Lebanese soil, Tehran compelled the US president, by his own admission, to strong-arm the Israelis into standing down.
From the outset, Tehran had been unequivocal: any truce must include a cessation of attacks against all Resistance factions across the region. Sources indicate that Iranian officials delivered a blunt ultimatum to the American side, telling it to halt the regime's assault on Lebanon by Thursday evening, or face a missile barrage raining down on the occupied territories. Statements from Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, further suggest that Tehran only permitted the limited passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz on the explicit condition that the war in Lebanon be brought to a stop.
Thus, despite initial stubbornness, Washington and Tel Aviv were ultimately cornered into accepting Iran's terms. The Aoun government's pro-compromise approach played absolutely no role in extracting concessions from Netanyahu's war cabinet. In fact, months of eager footwork by the Lebanese Foreign Ministry under Youssef Raji failed to secure even a token Israeli withdrawal from the five positions occupied in the aftermath of the 2024 ceasefire. Moreover, Netanyahu was acutely aware that agreeing to halt military operations would trigger a firestorm of backlash from hardliners within his own government and among northern Israeli settlers living along the Lebanese border.
According to Israeli media outlets, the hardliners in the cabinet are infuriated by Netanyahu’s decision to submit to Trump's pressure to end the war, arguing that the PM betrayed tens of thousands of settlers of the northern settlements displaced as a result of the Hezbollah’s retaliatory attacks and also retreated from the plan to disarm Hezbollah.
Channel 12 reported that fury is raging in Israel since Trump announced Lebanon ceasefire before a planned vote on the truce by the Israeli security cabinet. Channel 13 admitted that with Lebanon ceasefire taking effect in Lebanon, Iran has made its first achievement in the talks with the Americans.
These pressures on Netanyahu are so heavy that he, to assuage the political attacks and concerns of the displaced settlers, in a video message bluff voiced his agreement to setting up a buffer zone along the Lebanese border from Jabal Sheikh to the Syrian borders in the occupied Golan Heights. This military bluff did not prove effective as in the last minutes before start of the ceasefire Hezbollah launched drone and rocket attacks at the Israeli settlements on the border with Lebanon.
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