‘Will not leave’: Is Israel killing the US-Iran MoU by staying in Lebanon?
Analysts say both sides want the MOU to succeed but Israel’s actions in Lebanon will prove a formidable obstacle. As he visited troops in southern
Analysts say both sides want the MOU to succeed but Israel’s actions in Lebanon will prove a formidable obstacle. As he visited troops in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the military “will not leave” the area as long as the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah remains a “threat” to his nation. A day earlier, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz also said Israel’s military will not withdraw “a millimetre” until Hezbollah is disarmed. But the Israeli stance is squarely at odds with the first clause of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which provides for an immediate, permanent halt to fighting on “all fronts”, including in Lebanon where Israeli forces have occupied approximately one-fifth of the country since early March. That provision has since been undercut by a separate US-brokered framework agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government, which doesn’t require Israeli forces to leave southern Lebanon or halt attacks – a deal Hezbollah has denounced. The result has been an entrenchment of Israel’s military presence in Lebanon, even as strikes have eased to avoid reigniting direct conflict with Iran. That leaves an open question: Is Israel’s position bluster for a domestic audience, or a hard line that could unravel the fragile MoU? We spoke to analysts to find out. ‘Lose-lose’ for Netanyahu Behind Netanyahu’s combative language is an embattled prime minister managing a difficult balancing act, Cyrus Schayegh, professor of international history and politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute, told Al Jazeera. On the one hand, domestic politics has made Netanyahu reluctant to be seen as backing down from the war with Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into northern Israel soon after the first US-Israeli strikes on Tehran on February 28, in which Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed. Israel responded with force and has launched near-daily strikes, as well as an expanding ground invasion, ever since. With elections expected around October, a hasty withdrawal from Lebanon could look like capitulation – and worse, an implicit admission that he only fell into line because of pressure from US President Donald Trump.
But the other side of that “lose-lose” is Washington. Netanyahu, Schayegh says, understands exactly what Trump wants from him: to prevent the Israel-Hezbollah front from unravelling the broader US-Iran negotiations. Defying that expectation risks a rupture with the US at a moment when Israel can least afford one. Iran’s ‘deep commitment’ Tehran has explicitly and repeatedly stated that Israel must fully withdraw from all occupied Lebanese territories before it will entertain signing any sort of peace deal with the US. Schayegh said this reflects Iran’s deep commitment to Hezbollah’s survival – the group has proven itself a vital strategic partner over the years, and the ties between Hezbollah’s leadership and the Iranian regime run deeper than pure strategy, reaching into socio-cultural and even family bonds. Hezbollah is a major issue for Iran, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and it has shown this by its willingness to strike northern Israel and block the Strait of Hormuz over the issue before, geopolitical analyst Joe Macaron told Al Jazeera. But that doesn’t mean Iran expects, or even wants, a full return to the pre-Gaza war status quo, Schayegh says. At least some in Tehran, he believes, understand that getting Israel out of Lebanon won’t mean restoring the arrangement that held before 2023, when the Lebanese army played little to no role in the south, and Hezbollah operated largely unchecked, a dynamic dating back to the 2006 war in which Israel also occupied southern Lebanon. That recognition, Schayegh argues, means the form Hezbollah’s precise posture and footprint in southern Lebanon takes isn’t treated by Tehran as non-negotiable. Instead, it functions as a bargaining chip, one Iran could potentially use incrementally, trading concessions step by step in a slow, deliberate, diplomatic process, he says, adding that although it’s “a delicate path” for Tehran to walk. Diminishing the power of Hezbollah in Lebanon, therefore, it is a path Iran may be prepared to navigate around rather than resist outright. Still, Iran holding on to the Lebanon issue “as much as it could” was reportedly a sticking point that delayed the MoU in the first place, according to Ronnie Chatah, a political commentator, writer and host of The Beirut Banyan podcast.
The BriefWire