The US has escalated its military, economic, and political intervention in Lebanon, fully backing Israel’s war on Hezbollah while pushing for the country’s total disarmament – an aggressive campaign that risks dragging Lebanon into collapse, civil war, or forced normalization with Tel Aviv.
The Cradle's Lebanon Correspondent
The image posted last month, captioned “All in a day’s work,” signaled a new chapter in US strategy that reflects the Trump administration's new blunt, crude approach toward Lebanon.
While the Biden administration had already steered Lebanon toward a “bone-crushing” policy by backing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a decisive battle against Hezbollah, the next phase of US intervention poses no less danger to this small, fragile Levantine state. Lebanon remains caught in a volatile region, with its former lifeline, Syria, today engulfed in sectarian chaos.
A new phase of US intervention
“The new US strategy on the Lebanon conflict: Let it play out” – this was Reuters's headline on 13 October 2024, about two weeks after Hezbollah’s former secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated and Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon.
The report summarized the Biden administration’s stance, making it clear that Washington was determined to ensure that the occupation state emerged decisively victorious in its wars against both Gaza and Lebanon.
This trajectory ultimately led to the collapse of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government and the takeover of Damascus by the extremist militant faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), effectively eliminating Iran and Russia’s influence in West Asia.
With even greater ruthlessness, the new US administration has expanded its support for Israeli military action in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, southern Syria, and southern Lebanon. Trump himself has taken it further, openly advocating for the displacement of Palestinians, the seizure of their land, and the expansion of Israel’s borders in violation of all international laws and conventions – although he has since toned down this rhetoric as Arab states moved to endorse Egypt’s reconstruction plan for the strip.
By contrast, the previous Democratic administration had at least attempted to maintain a facade of balance by criticizing settlement expansion in the West Bank and pressuring Tel Aviv to allow aid into Palestinian territories.
The Trump administration has no intention of walking back its full-fledged support of Israeli aggression in Lebanon. As part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon that took effect in late November last year, Israeli troops were to withdraw fully from Lebanese territory by January. However, this has already been postponed three times with no clear timeline, and the agreement has been violated thousands of times – confirming Washington’s commitment to implementing Israel’s demands without hesitation.
More concerning is that the new administration, dominated by hardline Republican figures in key security and foreign policy positions, views Lebanon entirely through Tel Aviv's lens: a battlefield state from which it plans to deliver a final, conclusive defeat to Iran and the Axis of Resistance.
The strategy: Total disarmament and political engineering
Securing a total victory in Lebanon is not just an Israeli goal; it is an American one as well. However, this pursuit carries enormous risks for Lebanon, as it breaks from the measured pressure strategies of previous US administrations. Those strategies, while aggressive, avoided pushing Lebanon past the brink – ensuring that the state's borders remained intact and that internal tensions did not spiral into a full-scale civil war.
The Trump administration’s determination to settle West Asian conflicts and expand the 2020 Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq will necessitate the complete dismantling of any opposition that could obstruct this project.
This new US approach disregards the internal political balances of these key West Asian states, particularly Lebanon. Meanwhile, Israel’s expansionist ambitions are no longer limited to its traditional adversaries as they now extend toward Egypt and Jordan as well.
For Trump, flipping the region is part of a broader strategy – one that involves de-escalating tensions with Russia in order to concentrate on countering China and its allies, particularly Iran, while rallying regional partners through the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC).
To achieve these objectives, the US is deploying familiar divide-and-rule tactics, ones used in past conflicts such as the 2006 July War in Lebanon and its aftermath. Former US ambassador Jeffrey Feltman admitted in a congressional hearing that Washington spent half a billion dollars on anti-Hezbollah media propaganda campaigns during his tenure in Beirut.
The military and economic war on Lebanon
Additionally, the economic pressure exerted by US Treasury envoy Marshall Billingslea between 2017 and 2019 played a key role in accelerating Lebanon’s financial and banking collapse – particularly after US sanctions targeted Jammal Trust Bank.
But Washington has not yet used the full extent of its coercive measures. The red lines of previous US administrations, whose biggest fear was that Hezbollah might one day seize full military control of the capital as it nearly did on 7 May 2008, no longer hold under Trump's leadership. Now, with Israel’s war having severely weakened Hezbollah’s military capabilities, the US believes the resistance movement is no longer in a position to threaten the occupation state with a large-scale conflict.
Today, the US tools being deployed are mainly military and security-based. Washington has given Tel Aviv the green light to continue using airstrikes to target Hezbollah, assassinate its operatives, and sever its supply lines. Israel has also been permitted to occupy strategic hills inside Lebanese territory and conduct operations in frontline villages – areas that were supposed to be fully secured by the Lebanese army following Israel’s withdrawal.
The likelihood of renewed war remains high, particularly after Trump’s administration approved an additional $3 billion in new weapons for Israel.
Meanwhile, the ceasefire mechanism, overseen by US Central Command General Jasper Jeffers, French General Guillaume Bonchand, UNIFIL, and a Lebanese army officer, has proven ineffective, functioning as little more than an online chat group: Israeli officers share satellite images of suspected Hezbollah sites, instruct the Lebanese army to investigate, and if the army refuses, Israeli warplanes strike instead.
These daily Israeli attacks are not limited to the south and Bekaa Valley but have also reached Beirut itself, where Israel has intrusively demanded inspections of sites in pro-Hezbollah neighborhoods.
The next phase will focus on the complete disarmament of Hezbollah in both southern and northern Lebanon – a core objective of US policy, with responsibility placed squarely on the Lebanese army.
Washington plans to strengthen the army while ensuring all weapons remain under state control, including those held by Palestinian factions in refugee camps. However, this support does not extend to equipping the army for defense against Israeli aggressions – it is solely designed to neutralize domestic resistance groups.
To prevent Hezbollah from rearming, the US is also ramping up support for Lebanese border regiments to tighten control over the Syrian border. To implement this plan, Washington has given the UK a limited but significant role, allowing it to share the operational burden.
This strategy also involves integrating the Lebanese army into the US and allied military framework, facilitated by a direct American military presence at Lebanese air and naval bases. One key advantage of this presence is the creation of a secure environment for US embassy staff, whose numbers may reach 2,000 once the new embassy compound in Awkar (the second largest in the world), near the small Dbayeh port north of Beirut, is fully operational.
Lebanese-American lobbyists have even suggested that Trump might visit Lebanon to inaugurate the embassy later this year or early next year. Since 2006, the US has provided approximately $3 billion to the Lebanese army, none of it remotely useful for combatting genuine foreign threats to the state. Despite Trump’s broader efforts to cut foreign expenditures, his administration recently approved an additional $95 million for Lebanon’s military.
Paving the way for normalization
On the political front, Washington is actively reshaping Lebanon’s internal power balance through multiple initiatives. Israeli-born, former US envoy Amos Hochstein and current US Ambassador Lisa Johnson played a direct role in securing the election of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam – something confirmed by several Lebanese MPs and pro-American journalists in Beirut.
But this is only the beginning. New evidence points to deeper US involvement, particularly in selecting ministers and security chiefs and blocking Hezbollah-linked figures from positions in state institutions. The US and Saudi Arabia also tried pressuring Aoun and Salam to exclude Hezbollah’s allies from ministerial posts, which ended up forcing out key Christian and Sunni partners of the resistance.
Washington is now focusing on securing strategic appointments in Lebanon, particularly in the judiciary, key ministries, and the central bank. Reports indicate that US embassy staff directly pressured politicians, MPs, and business figures, warning them against attending Nasrallah’s funeral – threatening punitive measures for those who did. As a result, neither the president, prime minister, nor key party leaders attended.
Ultimately, Washington seeks to leverage post-war reconstruction efforts to pressure the Lebanese public into distancing itself from Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, making it clear that continued allegiance to these parties will come at a cost. This strategy also aims to influence the 2026 parliamentary elections, reducing Hezbollah’s electoral support.
The US aims to use Israel’s war in Lebanon to erase any opposition to normalization with Tel Aviv – regardless of the potential fallout, be it civil war, governmental collapse, or a divided Lebanese army. Whether Trump succeeds in achieving that goal – or instead triggers widespread Lebanese and even regional backlash – is yet to be seen.
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