Hussain Abdul-Hussain, research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and author of The Arab Case for Israel, spoke to a June 8 Middle East Forum podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
The IDF currently declines to withdraw from Lebanon, given the history of the Lebanese government’s unfulfilled promises to disarm the regime’s proxy.
Ten years before the Islamic Republic of Iran’s establishment in 1979, Palestinian Arab organizations and militias in Lebanon attacked Israel, thus predating the regime’s conflict with the Jewish state. In the years since the Iranian regime established Hezbollah, its Lebanese proxy, there have been continual back-and-forth attacks by Hezbollah and Israeli forces across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. Immediately following the October 7, 2023, massacres, the mullahs upped the ante by unleashing their proxy against Israel’s northern region. Earlier this year, the governments of Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement to cease hostilities, conditioned on Hezbollah’s disarmament. However, the Lebanese government failed to enforce it, leaving Israel “to continue policing Hezbollah.”
During the 2026 Iran war, Israel defended itself by confronting Iran with airstrikes targeting military infrastructure and sent the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) into southern Lebanon following Hezbollah’s resumption of rocket and drone strikes on March 2. The IDF currently declines to withdraw from Lebanon, given the history of the Lebanese government’s unfulfilled promises to disarm the regime’s proxy.
Iran is now demanding the cessation of Israeli attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon as the regime’s condition for halting missiles targeting Israel. The regime is repeating the mistake made by the late Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, who tied his attacks on Israel’s northern border to Hamas’s Gaza war against Israel’s southern border. When the U.S. demanded a ceasefire then, Jerusalem made it clear that “no one can dictate how Israel can defend itself” or compromise its sovereignty.
As diplomatic negotiations continued with Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump brokered direct talks between government representatives of Israel and Lebanon—the first such talks in 30 years. “Other channels” in the administration influenced Trump to approach Hezbollah through Nabih Berri, the proxy’s ally in the Lebanese parliament. Trump followed with an announcement that Hezbollah “agreed to a ceasefire.”
This approach risks undermining direct talks between Beirut and Jerusalem by sending mixed messages. Lebanese president Joseph Aoun is willing to part ways with Hezbollah but faces immense pushback from the Iranian proxy. “The basic problem here is that any foreign policy needs one foreign policy, one president. We can’t have one president and two foreign policies.” Asking Aoun to disarm Hezbollah, while at the same time talking to Hezbollah and forcing a ceasefire on the Israelis, serves to strengthen the Iranian regime’s proxy.
Furthermore, U.S. negotiations are focused on the regime’s nuclear, ballistic, and proxy issues. Connecting Lebanon to Iran concedes the American position to an Iranian proxy and would thus eliminate one of the three demands (regarding severing the links with proxies). A “coherent” U.S. policy would place more pressure on the Iranian regime by delinking Tehran from Beirut. Restricting the diplomatic channel to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the diplomats of the governments of Israel and Lebanon can “get rid of all the side noise that’s trying to obstruct this plan.”
The Iranian regime decided to further test Trump by unleashing a missile attack against Israel to measure the U.S. response.
the Iranian regime decided to further test Trump by unleashing a missile attack against Israel to measure the U.S. response.Although Aoun has the will, the opportunity to disarm Hezbollah would require U.S. CENTCOM’s involvement with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) under Israel and Lebanon’s “pilot zone” project. According to this idea, the Israeli side would take and clear a specific area and would then rely on the LAF to hold the zone. The aim is to test the plan’s success in different zones and gauge whether it can be expanded until the LAF is in charge of preventing Hezbollah’s return. Israel would then withdraw from territory where the Lebanese government is in control and enforces order.
Feeling that it had got away with strikes against the Gulf States and closure of the Hormuz Strait, the Iranian regime decided to further test Trump by unleashing a missile attack against Israel to measure the U.S. response. Reports that Trump stayed Israel’s hand went unheeded, and Israel struck Hezbollah. “Had Israel not responded, this would have been one of the worst foreign policy faux pas that we as America would have committed over the past two years.”
How much support for peace with Israel is there among the Lebanese people? According to a reliable poll taken last month by the Lebanese-owned Information International, only 10 percent of Shia Muslims, who comprise just over a quarter of Lebanon’s population and who support Hezbollah, were in favor of peace with the Jewish state. Among the rest of the Lebanese population, which includes Christians, Druze and Sunni Muslims, 65 percent, or nearly two-thirds, “said they wanted peace with Israel” and “wanted Hezbollah dissolved.” Overall, the survey showed that nearly half of the Lebanese people want to make peace with Israel. Moreover, “support for peace [with Israel] has doubled” since the last survey was taken in August 2025.
“The obstacle to peace between Lebanon and Israel is not public opinion on either side. The obstacle is an armed non-state militia actor that pledges allegiance to Iran and that wants to stay dominant [in] Lebanon, regardless of public opinion or who wants peace and who doesn’t want peace.” The Arab leaders in the Middle East generally subscribe to the Palestinian Arab cause, but the problem is that the Palestinians do not want to live next to Israel. “They just want to replace all of Israel,” thereby ending Jewish sovereignty and nationhood. Animus against the Jews goes back to the time of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. Arab nationalists doubled down on the ancient Jew-hatred by importing strains of antisemitism from Nazi Germany and European fascism. Today, the same animus can be found among the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist organizations.
The Arab leaders in the Middle East generally subscribe to the Palestinian Arab cause, but the problem is that the Palestinians do not want to live next to Israel.
Instead of waiting for an intransigent Arab League, the Abraham Accords initiated a new approach. By appealing to national and economic interests of the Arab states in the region that were not enthralled to Palestinian Arab activism, the case for peace with Israel gained traction. “The more normal the relations are between the Arab country and Israel, the more dividends both sides will get in terms of economy.” The cold peace that Jordan and Egypt have with Israel remains such because there is “no people-to-people normalization.”
The unfortunate pattern in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey is that when experiencing economic setbacks, they resort to populism and inveigh against Israel. This is the time for true leadership that would call on its people to normalize ties with Israel. “This is what they should do to lead their populations into better economics and a higher standard of living.”
