Hezbollah Slams Lebanon's Direct Talks With Israel

From Washington, the picture was bleak. Two hours of direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel: Israel secured the prestige of the image, while Lebanon walked away empty-handed after Israel refused to agree to a ceasefire. The Israeli ambassador, who sat across the table from Lebanon's ambassador to Washington at U.S.-sponsored talks, declared that the security of his country's civilians was non-negotiable — even as Lebanon accepted the premise of negotiating over the blood of children and women killed in cold blood in Beirut, and killed daily for more than forty days across the south and Beirut's southern suburbs.

The 'preparatory' meeting concluded with no clarity on Lebanon's position going forward — no halt to the Israeli killing machine, and no rebuttal to the Israeli ambassador's claim that he and the Lebanese delegation had agreed that Hezbollah constitutes a threat to both sides, and that Israel is working with Lebanon on both the civilian and security fronts. Most alarming was his statement: 'We are in agreement with the Lebanese side on liberating it from Iranian occupation forces — namely Hezbollah.'

Two defeats and bitter moments that history will record harshly, adding to a long record of failed negotiations — though the concession Lebanon granted this time is without precedent. The hopes of those who had counted on American pressure to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon were dashed. The joint statement issued by the U.S. State Department affirmed Israel's right to self-defense, while a Lebanese position that fell far short of the gravity of the situation was relegated to its final lines — limited to a call for a return to the November 2024 agreement, as though the catastrophic reality that prevailed under that agreement were somehow the desired outcome.

At the meeting, the American delegation was represented by the Secretary of State alongside the U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, together with the Israeli ambassador to Washington, while Lebanon's ambassador stood alone, negotiating on behalf of a country that was, at that very moment, being subjected to wave after wave of Israeli airstrikes. The American-Israeli presence overwhelmed the Lebanese, and Lebanon suffered a defeat in both form and substance.

A presidential silence fell over all three Lebanese leadership offices the moment the joint statement was announced and the negotiations concluded. The session also opened a new domestic rift and a sharp internal divide, with little justification for the insistence on negotiating at a time when Israel was asserting through its own media — before the session had even begun — that there would be no ceasefire.

Hezbollah's Position

From the outset, Hezbollah had placed no stock in the Washington meeting that brought Lebanon and Israel to the table for direct negotiations — negotiations that, in Hezbollah's view, served to legitimize the ongoing aggression against it. It is believed that the Lebanese state itself understood, at a deeper level, that it had been dragged into this track under pressure, and that it sought as little as possible from the process so as not to give away free concessions. Hezbollah had expected nothing from the meeting — and nothing is what it got. The Israeli position was unambiguous: the session was designed to give Israel an escape route from the ceasefire obligation under the Islamabad framework, and to create a separate negotiating track.

President Joseph Aoun is reported to have said that he had not expected the negotiations to yield the desired results, but that Lebanon had to do what was required and put the ball in the other side's court. This is a logic that Hezbollah does not share. The group has remained focused on the battlefield in the south, where its own information disputes every account of the battle for Bint Jbeil — a town in southern Lebanon that has been a focal point of Israeli ground operations — asserting that Israel has not achieved its goal of controlling the town, and will not. Hezbollah's gaze, meanwhile, is fixed on the Iran-U.S. negotiations, within which it believes a ceasefire in Lebanon will be secured.

 According to information available to the group, Iran continues to insist that a ceasefire in Lebanon is a core condition in the forthcoming round of talks between the two sides — talks it believes are not far off.

Hezbollah regards what took place in Washington as nothing more than a step in the wrong direction by an authority that continues to commit errors and surrender cards for nothing in return. In the group's words: 'What we heard is part of the free concessions — going to a direct negotiation meeting at the very moment the Lebanese flag was placed alongside the Israeli flag, while Israel was killing and occupying, announcing it would continue its occupation, establishing a buffer zone eight kilometers deep, pushing to the Litani River, and dictating to the Lebanese government its mission: the dismantlement of Hezbollah's weapons south of the Litani.'

Hezbollah sees this as an image that has wounded every patriotic and honorable Lebanese citizen — the image of a state whose officials speak of sovereignty while forgetting that, before sovereignty, there is the protection of the people. A protection the authorities never bothered to provide, instead watching as Lebanese civilians were targeted for more than a year and a half without moving their diplomatic apparatus.

Hezbollah believes that Lebanon, in this step, abandoned a ceiling that existed within the Islamabad framework — one backed by more than one country pressing for the completion of an Iranian-American agreement to restore regional stability and halt the deterioration of the global economy.

The group expresses frustration at those who feel that sovereignty was diminished by Iran's attempt to secure a ceasefire tied to its agreement with the United States — while seeing no such diminishment in Israel's arrogance or in the Israeli ambassador's statements, which revealed intentions that were never hidden.

 Lebanon, in Hezbollah's view, went to ask the executioner to kill it — only more gently. Hezbollah sharpens its criticism of the state by arguing that no self-respecting country could accept what took place: entering negotiations without agreement on their outcome, and then accepting the issuance of a statement such as the one that was released.

Hezbollah has turned the page on a meeting from which it expected nothing — having warned against the dangers of direct negotiation — but continues to affirm that a ceasefire remains achievable through an Iranian-American agreement.

Iran-U.S. Talks: Three Sticking Points

According to reliable sources, indirect talks between the two sides have made significant progress, but three points remain unresolved:

1. Uranium enrichment: The United States had initially demanded a ten-year moratorium on enrichment; Iran countered with five years. Washington subsequently raised its demand to twenty years.

2. The Strait of Hormuz: Iran rejects any U.S. role in the strait, maintaining that its governance is the exclusive domain of Iran and the regional states.

3. Enriched uranium transfer: Iran has rejected the American demand that enriched uranium be transferred to the United States rather than Russia.

Iran calculates that the embargo harms the United States more than any other party, and that a full closure of the strait would trigger a crisis for all — including Washington, which would not be shielded from the economic fallout and to which it attaches considerable importance.

As for Lebanon, Iran maintains that it has expended considerable effort in pursuit of a ceasefire, but that the Lebanese position has weakened its hand. Tehran, according to these sources, will return at the first negotiating session to demand that Lebanon be included in any ceasefire agreement, and will not abandon that position.