Shafaq News (Updated at 12:41)
Lebanon did not negotiate the agreement that nowgoverns its fate. On June 14, the United States and Iran announced separatestatements —Trump posting on Truth Social, Iran's Supreme National SecurityCouncil issuing a formal communiqué— each claiming to have reached a memorandumof understanding ending the war.
The two texts shared three facts and little else. Oneof those facts mattered enormously to Beirut: Tehran's statement named Lebanonexplicitly as a front where hostilities would end immediately and permanently. Washington said the deal “will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region,”without mentioning Lebanon by name.
Beirut was not consulted, and its government did notwelcome the announcement so far. That silence, in the political grammar ofLebanese statecraft, was a precise and deliberate response to being writteninto a deal authored entirely over its head.
The Lebanon clause may prove among the agreement'smost consequential and difficult-to-enforce provisions. It names a front thatneither Washington nor Tehran can control on the ground, binds a party, Israel,that is not a signatory and has publicly rejected the clause's authority, andoffers a Lebanese state protection it lacks the domestic capacity to guarantee. The disconnect between what the clause promises and can deliver is thedocument's defining structural weakness, and Lebanon is where that weaknesswill be felt first.
A Party to the Outcome, Not the Negotiation
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Parliament Speaker NabihBerri on Monday welcomed the US-Iran memorandum of understanding. Aoun said he valued the agreement'sacknowledgment of Lebanon's particular circumstances, and called on all partiesto translate the understanding into practical steps that would end the cycle ofviolence and open a path toward recovery and reconstruction. Aoun also thankedthe states and parties, without naming them, that worked to ensure Lebanon was included in thede-escalation efforts, citing the scale of suffering Lebanese communities hadendured in recent months.
Berri, for his part, said thememorandum preserves Lebanon's full sovereignty without compromising thecountry's independence or freedom of national decision-making.
Aoun had stated earlier that the problem was plain before the MoU was announced. In exchanges with a UN Security Councildelegation, he told visiting officials that Iran was "using Lebanon as abargaining chip in their negotiations with the US. It is unacceptable."The accusation described something precise: Lebanon has functioned throughoutthis conflict as a theater of Iranian deterrence and Israeli military pressure,with Beirut possessing neither the capacity to control its own territory northe diplomatic leverage to shape the frameworks purporting to govern it.
Nothing in the June 14 text changes that. But thetext's silences raise questions more consequential than its stated provisions. There is no clause explicitly prohibiting Israeli forces from issuingevacuation orders to southern Lebanese villages under the cover of a ceasefire,a tactic that would render the agreement's protection theoretical for thecommunities it nominally covers.
The language barring Israel from consolidating themilitary positions it currently holds in southern Lebanese territory was alsoabsent, meaning a ceasefire could freeze an occupation in place rather thanreverse it. And no monitoring mechanism, credible reference body empowered toinvestigate violations, or agreed standard for the definition of a breach werealso announced, which means the party most likely to invoke pretexts forrenewed hostilities faces no institutional obstacle in doing so.
These hypothetical concerns imported from outside thetext follow directly from what the document does not say.
Israel's Position: Outside The Framework, InsideLebanon
No party has been more direct about the MoU's Lebanonclause than Israel, and its directness has taken military as well as diplomaticform. On the evening of June 14, hours before the memorandum was announced,Israeli strikes killed at least three people in Beirut's southern suburbs. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz issued ajoint statement the same day: "Israel will not tolerate firing at itsterritory."
Netanyahu informed President Trump that Israel doesnot consider itself bound by the Lebanon provisions of the emerging agreement. According to Israeli officials cited by Yedioth Ahronoth, he communicated thatIsraeli forces will not withdraw from Lebanese territory, will maintain currentpositions, and will continue operations against Hezbollah infrastructure—responding to any attack regardless of any framework's provisions.
The Israeli Security Cabinet also convened andexpressed broad support for that posture, but divided on the degree of forceand the diplomatic cost of rupturing ties with Washington.
Operations on the ground continued the following day. Lebanon's National News Agency reported Israeli artillery shelling on Mansouri,Kfar Tibnit, and Nabatiyeh al-Fawqa. The army detonated a remote-controlledarmored vehicle on the Haris-Tibnin road. A drone struck a vehicle in KfarTibnit with reported casualties. Explosions were reported in Khiam. The MoU'sink had not dried before its primary prohibition was being tested militarily.
:Israel's war fell on Christians and Shiites in Southern Lebanon
Israel's underlying logic is consistent with itsstated position throughout the conflict. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotricharticulated it within the cabinet: Lebanon falls within Israel's directsecurity sphere; Iran is the domain of US-led diplomacy. The distinction, inIsraeli strategic terms, means the MoU's Lebanon clause addresses a categoryIsrael simply does not accept as applicable to its ongoing operations. Absentany text explicitly prohibiting Israeli freedom of military and securitymovement inside Lebanese territory —language the MoU does not contain— thatlogic carries no legal counterweight within the agreement itself.
Hezbollah's Veto, And The State's Paralysis
The clause also collides with a domestic reality thatBeirut cannot resolve by political will alone. Hezbollah's leader Naim Kassemrejected the June 4 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire framework, characterizing anydemand for the group's fighters to withdraw from southern Lebanon as"surrender and defeat." That rejection preceded the MoU and wasunaddressed by it.
Lebanon has maintained a separate, US-mediatednegotiating track with Israel, but Hezbollah has consistently insisted onlinking both tracks, conditioning any movement on the Lebanese-Israeli front tothe broader US-Iran framework. The MoU now provides that framework. WhetherHezbollah treats it as sufficient political cover to de-escalate, or as adiplomatic instrument that constrains Israeli action while preserving its ownposture intact, will determine whether the Lebanon clause has any operational meaningon the ground. The Lebanese state has no power to compel an answer in eitherdirection.
That powerlessness extends further. There is noguarantee, inside or outside the MoU, that Beirut will deploy the LebaneseArmed Forces to the south independently of any arrangement with Israel. ALebanese government that was excluded from the negotiations producing thisceasefire has limited political incentive, and arguably limited legaljustification, to implement its provisions unilaterally.
If Beirut concludes that it is not a party to theagreement, it may equally conclude that the agreement creates no obligation onits part to act. The possibility that the Lebanese government withholds adeployment order, from institutional caution, factional pressure, or the logicthat a non-party bears no implementation burden, is precisely the kind ofpre-emptive failure the MoU's drafters appear not to have considered.
There is also the subtler risk that Lebanese politicalauthority, as it has at various points historically, accommodates Israeliframing on Hezbollah rather than resisting it, not through explicitcollaboration but through the language of its public positions and thesequencing of its decisions. The MoU contains no text that functions as astructural obstacle to that drift. Whether those responsible for theagreement's implementation are attending to these possibilities is a questionthe document itself does not answer.
:Lebanon's fragmented power blocks peace with Israel
Diplomatic Recognition Without Enforcement
The Lebanon provision establishes, within a US-Iranbilateral framework, that Lebanon is a covered front, a position Beirut caninvoke in Security Council deliberations, in its dealings with Washington, andin any future negotiations over a permanent agreement. For a government thathas spent months being acted upon rather than consulted, that is a marginal butreal diplomatic foothold.
What the clause cannot deliver is enforcement. It doesnot bind Israel. It does not address Hezbollah's weapons or territorialpresence. It creates no monitoring body, no timeline for Israeli withdrawal,and no consequence for violations. A ceasefire without a verification frameworkis, in the experience of previous Lebanese agreements —the 1989 Taif, the 2006UN Security Council Resolution 1701— a political statement rather than asecurity guarantee. Resolution 1701 prohibited offensive operations in southernLebanon and mandated Israeli withdrawal; nearly two decades later, neitherprovision had been fully implemented when this war began.
The broader unresolved problem of the June 14agreement compounds Lebanon's exposure. Iran's nuclear file, the Hormuzmine-clearance timeline, and the sequencing of a permanent deal each representpotential points of collapse —any one of which could reopen the militarydimension of the conflict and render the Lebanon clause irrelevant before it isever tested. Iran has stated explicitly that permanent negotiations areconditional on prior US compliance with the MoU. Washington has made noequivalent acknowledgment. If that divergence produces a breakdown before theJune 19 signing, or within the 60-day window the agreement reportedlyestablishes for final negotiations, Lebanon will find itself once again insidea conflict it did not choose, operating under a framework it did not negotiate,with no mechanism to absorb the consequences.
Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.