Vehicles drive past a billboard depicting President Joseph Aoun and reading "the decision is Lebanon's" on April 24, 2026 in the capital Beirut. (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP)
Anthony Elghossain is a lawyer and writer. He advises organizations on geopolitics, U.S. foreign policy and the rule of law.
Lurching from conflict to conflict, leaders have failed to create, unlock, or seize opportunities in the Levant. Instead, they have pushed disjointed policies, scribbled parchment guarantees, and established inadequate mechanisms to put principles into practice. The Lebanese have touted passivity as prudence. The Israelis have cast destruction as triumph. And the Americans have dressed reactive diplomacy as proactive policy or effective facilitation.
Against the backdrop of renewed war, invasion, and occupation, Lebanese leaders and Israeli counterparts have nonetheless taken an important step: They have agreed to talk. Engaging in their first open, direct talks since the 1980s, they must now agree on a meaningful framework for the future. They all have interests in doing so, at some point. The Lebanese need to keep reasserting state control, however fitfully and imperfectly, while managing acute crises and structural challenges. The Israelis need to move from unbound conflict to a political strategy in their neighborhood. And the Americans need to consolidate geopolitical change in the Levant.
Ultimately, underlying understandings and sustained behavior matter as much as — even more than — words on paper. Moving forward, the Lebanese must know when to act and the Israelis must know when to stop. Otherwise, the former risk squandering an opportunity to recover what they have lost and the latter risk unmaking the very moment that they have made with force.
While the Lebanese have a long way to go, they have already come a long way since the Cedar Revolution and even in the year since the last Israel-Hezbollah war. Coming into office in 2025, the Lebanese president and premier had to launch full-spectrum campaigns just to get back to zero. And they did so, for all their flaws and limitations. For instance, they formed a more cohesive Cabinet; issued a policy statement reasserting state primacy; appointed hundreds of civilian officials and security officers after years of vacuum, paralysis, and rejectionist influence; redeployed security forces across Lebanon for the first time in 50 years or, in some areas, ever; and consolidated control at the international airport, including by revamping its interagency security committee, purging problematic employees, and revising policies on access. As they reanimated the state, which remains imbalanced and flawed in ways beyond the scope of this piece, Lebanese leaders also began disarming Hezbollah and other factions — part of processes that U.S. diplomats pushed and touted, only to later critique and condemn.
In turn, Lebanon’s partners have sought compliance instead of promoting cooperation, offered assurances instead of providing assistance, and spoken of opportunities in crises instead of creating them. American, European, and Arab leaders have again pressed the Lebanese to act in Beirut while postponing gatherings to bolster security forces and while maintaining chasms between resources, demands, expectations, and policies. They have also declined or failed to nudge the Israelis to return occupied territory such as in exchange for technical progress that the Lebanese reported, the Israelis conceded, and the Americans celebrated. Partners have also fallen short of effectively constraining the Iranian regime and Hezbollah. Indeed, European leaders have continued to prop up both through cynical diplomacy. Arabs are pressing Lebanon to do in Beirut what they themselves do not do in their own capitals (or banking systems, airports, seaports, and other infrastructure).
Reactive U.S. officials and desperate Lebanese leaders have also failed by serving as conduits for Israeli military pressure, elevating the tactical preferences of one party to a conflict over political, strategic, operational, and technical programs necessary in the long run. In doing so, they have warped their security-sector partnership, undermined border-security strategy, and pushed flawed disarmament efforts. Since at least the summer of 2024, U.S. officials have dangled dollars for the Lebanese to recruit and deploy units to southern Lebanon only, rather than supporting forward-looking, long-term programs to help the Lebanese secure all border areas and reorganize security forces. For their part, despite lacking the fiscal means or the economic base to sustain enlarged security agencies, the Lebanese accepted a triple-whammy — an incoherent disarmament sequence, a warped border force posture, and additional costs — to stop the shooting.
Good partnership requires good partners, who each offer what they can so that they may together do what they must. To make a new deal meaningful, U.S. leaders must work with their partners to address some core challenges: control for the Lebanese and vision for the Israelis. In Lebanon, they may move on at least three fronts. First, they must push for political understandings that make sense in the long run — not just words to halt violence today and beget renewed violence tomorrow. Second, they may craft evidence-based, outcome-oriented plans instead of treating the tactical preferences of incumbent Israeli leaders as the way forward. Third, Americans and Lebanese must pursue outcomes and build enduring processes instead of fixating on outputs and celebrating illusory or fleeting results.
They may begin with border security, which is vital and emblematic of deeper challenges. After all, unless they control borderlands and points of exchange, Lebanese leaders will struggle to implement even limited, phased programs such as the one they recently developed to handle Hezbollah. They will yet again find themselves running races against — and losing to — evaders (a dynamic, not static, Hezbollah) and invaders (an impetuous, not prudent, Israeli government).
Moving towards proactive, comprehensive cooperation, American and Lebanese partners may create new and strengthen existing programs on border security. They must double down on developing Lebanese land border regiments and extend their control over all border zones — including southern Lebanon and the central Bekaa Valley. Working with partner states to fund long-range bridge programs for Lebanese security forces, whose livelihoods remain precarious, U.S. leaders must also provide flexible, action-oriented support for border security operations (building and improving on older reimbursement programs). They may also launch a State Partnership Defense program for Lebanon, enabling security forces to benefit from peer-to-peer cooperation for military, policing, crisis management, and disaster relief with the National Guard of a participating U.S. state. Beyond that, they may establish a global group to advise the Lebanese on security sector reorganization. Including American, British, and Arab partners, the group would help the Lebanese help themselves.
At higher levels, U.S. leaders may explore new Levant programs. To begin with, U.S. legislators may require or commission specialized reporting on borderlands challenges in the area. They may embed advisors focused solely on transnational border challenges. With eyes on the future, they may help create and convene a dedicated Levant border security initiative, including ministerial committees and working groups of vetted Lebanese, Jordanian, and Syrian officers.
Leaders have taken an important step toward moving past the past. Unless they wish to take the scenic route right back to war, they must help create the opportunity that has so far been missing in the crisis. Above all, they must avoid repeating the patterns — Lebanese passivity, Israeli pressure, and American reactiveness — which helped trigger this latest war in the first place.
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