Trump meets with Lebanese leader, pledges support for peace efforts with Israel

The United States supports efforts to mediate a deal between Lebanon and Israel, President Donald Trump said in a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Tuesday, amid shaky efforts to restore Lebanese control over its southern territory following an Israeli military incursion.

“Lebanon has been a very mistreated country for a long period of time,” Trump said, as he sat down for the first Oval Office meeting with a Lebanese president since 2009.

The meeting was the White House’s latest effort to broker an Israeli pullout from Lebanon. Trump has tangled with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s conduct in Lebanon, demanding that the Israeli leader be more careful about civilian casualties as he presses attacks on Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia and political movement that has its stronghold in southern Lebanon.

Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon in March, after the joint U.S.-Israel attack on Iran. Netanyahu has said that Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel are an unacceptable danger for Israelis.

The Israeli military action has worsened an already difficult economic situation for Lebanon, which faces financial crisis and the collapse of its banking system. The continued military action has killed more than 4,300 citizens, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been involved in an effort to mediate between Israeli and Lebanese leaders to help bring about a pullback of both Hezbollah and Israeli forces. The diplomacy has been lower-profile than the White House engagement with Iranian leaders to discuss a deal that would restrict Tehran’s nuclear program. But it has also faced challenges amid long-standing hostility between Israel and Hezbollah.

Aoun has backed a deal with Israel reached last week in Rome that foresees a gradual handover of Lebanese territory from Israeli control to the Lebanese Armed Forces. But the Lebanese force has historically struggled to contain Hezbollah.

“We are committed” to the deal, said Aoun, sitting alongside Trump. He added that he believed that his country’s speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, a Shiite Muslim who talks with international mediators on behalf of Hezbollah, also wants “to see the end of this war. … He knows he did his best to rebuild the south, but unfortunately, the south’s being destroyed in front of his eyes.”

Trump said he would be willing to speak to Hezbollah or to anybody whom Aoun wanted him to — an offer that drew a laugh from the Lebanese leader. Trump also floated a role for Syria to keep the peace inside Lebanon and push back Hezbollah — an idea that is unlikely to gain traction given the complicated history between the two countries, including a decades-long Syrian occupation.

“It’s all about implementation. It’s going to take time. This is not easy. Nobody believes for a second that this is going to be an easy task in any way,” said Massad Boulos, a Lebanese-born businessman who advises Trump on the Middle East and is the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany. Boulos spoke to reporters outside the West Wing after the meeting.

In another move that may deliver a boost to the Lebanese economy and will hearten Lebanon’s large U.S. diaspora, Trump said he was directing his administration to allow direct flights between the United States and Lebanon “so that Americans can easily visit this beautiful land.” A ban on direct flights has been in place since 1985, a Reagan-era restriction that was imposed after Hezbollah hijacked a TWA flight.

The friendly White House meeting was rare for a Lebanese leader. Then-President Barack Obama was the last to receive a Lebanese president, Michel Suleiman, in the Oval Office, early in his first term, although the two also met in 2013 at the U.N. General Assembly. In Trump’s first term he met only then-Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Israel will hold elections in October, and Netanyahu, who depends on votes from security-conscious Israelis, seems unlikely to agree to a full pullout from Lebanon while leading his campaign. The deal reached last week in Rome has already faced challenges.

On Monday, Israeli soldiers barred a Catholic aid group accompanied by a Washington Post reporter from entering parts of southern Lebanon that the Israeli military controls, despite the group’s having required authorization from United Nations peacekeepers. The Israeli restrictions highlight the difficulties Lebanese have faced in moving freely in the south since the war between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in March, and underscore the difficulties in securing a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon.

Mohamad El Chamaa in Beirut contributed to this report.