A Peace Worth Its Name in Iran Must Include Lebanon

Unsurprisingly, JD Vance’s attempt to make a last-minute ceasefire with Iran into a lasting peace has been unsuccessful. At the whirlwind negotiations in Pakistan, the difference between the US demands and the position of the Iranian government was a chasm that even a dream team of professional diplomats would struggle to bridge, and the team of Vance, the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and special envoy Steve Witkoff falls substantially short of that bar.

The first indication that the negotiations would likely be fruitless, however, came when the Vice President indicated that the US position was that the ceasefire did not include Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, while Iran’s position was that it did. Such a basic disagreement—about which theaters of conflict are covered by a ceasefire—was certainly a bad sign regarding the preparation for negotiations and accuracy of communications between belligerents. But on a deeper level, the reality is that while Hormuz is grabbing headlines—and for good reason—Lebanon cannot be left out of any peace treaty if it’s going to be worth the paper it’s written on.

The conflicts are inextricably tied

The Israeli preference, and apparently the American one, is to treat Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah and the US/Israeli conflict with Iran as separate spheres of conflict and negotiate them separately—but this falls flat for a number of reasons. 

First and foremost, Iran has insisted that the two be treated together. Given that peace in Lebanon is on its own merits desirable, endangering the broader peace process by insisting on separating the issues is foolhardy in the extreme—there are enough sticking points, why add more? 

However, even if a separate peace with Iran can be obtained, it is certainly a worse outcome on both logical and practical grounds. Logically speaking, it is quite obviously the same war—Hezbollah began its rocket attacks on Israel in support of Iran, and no one seriously denies the close connection between Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. On a practical level, breaking up the peace processes makes any real peace in Lebanon much less likely. Hezbollah has little leverage, and the Lebanese government even less. As Trump likes to say, ‘they have no cards’. However, in the present moment the US is motivated to secure a peace, because Iran can inflict actual, if mostly indirect, harm on its interests. And the US holds leverage over Israel—meaning a broad based peace is attainable now to an extent that is unlikely to hold true later. A peace of extreme unequals, negotiated between Hezbollah and Israel, will almost certainly end up like the ‘peace’ between Hamas and Israel: bogged down in an endless low-level conflict where the IDF continues lethal airstrikes and maintains its occupation of the territory it has invaded. With Hamas negotiating essentially on its own, with no conventional military leverage to speak of, this situation is a morass with no readily visible way out. No one can reasonably call this peace, and the potential for future flare ups is a matter of when, not if. And if the Lebanon war is not ended now, it has the potential to be even more dangerous than the US strikes on Iran. 

A war of potential conquest

The US attacks on Iran are mostly unprecedented in scale—not scale of the attacking force, but of the defenders. Iraq and Afghanistan were, at the time the US occupied them both, together less populous than Iran, and both were militarily and economically marginal by 2001 and 2003. The size and resilience of the Iranian state presents a larger and likely insurmountable challenge for the US military, which rather easily toppled Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. But its Iran operation is fairly familiar—attempting to use military coercion or, failing that, regime change, to alter the behavior of a faraway state. This kind of adventurism is almost always highly destructive, often counterproductive, and generally illiberal—but it is familiar, and while we may use the term ‘forever war’ for these drawn out conflicts, they do in fact terminate at some point.

There is a real risk that Israel is here waging a different kind of war. The invasion of Lebanon may, if unchecked, become a war of conquest—akin to Israel’s takeover of the Golan Heights or West Bank. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Finance Minister, has already called for the annexation of southern Lebanon, and the widespread depopulation of the countryside could make such a project, including a resettlement of the territory, possible.

This kind of a long-term project would, if history is any guide, hobble any efforts for peace on Israel’s northern frontier for decades. Another generation of displaced people would have reason to replenish the ranks of Hezbollah and other armed organizations battling Israel’s military and settlement, and be willing to align with Iran or other regional actors committed to the same. The stage would be set for further invasion and hostility at any point in the future when it served either Hezbollah or Likud’s interests to reignite the conflict.

Precedent-setting

Beyond the immediate context—horrific as it is—of creating another theater of occupation and ethnic cleansing in the Levant, there are major precedential concerns to allowing the war to end without resolving the situation in Lebanon. The effect of allowing a nuclear power to take territory in such a way would be destabilizing to the non-proliferation norms that have taken decades to establish. The weaker that state borders are as insurance against depredation, the more attractive that the acquisition of nuclear weapons becomes. If the US remains committed to non-proliferation by states besides Israel in the Middle East, it would be drawn further into enforcing non-proliferation on countries that have stronger and stronger incentives to abandon it.

Moreover, while it’s unlikely to concern President Trump too much, the Western world turning a blind eye to an annexation and occupation by Israel while attempting global sanctions on Russia for the same thing will doubtless strike any somewhat objective observer as hypocrisy. What marked Russian aggression in 2022 as so shocking to the international order was the openness with which Russia was seeking aggrandizement, the absolute abandonment of any fig leaf of seeking friendly regime change or creating ‘independent republics’ on its periphery. With Smotrich and others openly declaring the same, pressure must be brought to bear to include a ceasefire in Lebanon and a path to the withdrawal of Israeli troops.

The path forward

None of this, unfortunately, seems likely to faze the US administration. Donald Trump has scarcely acknowledged the question of Lebanon at all. Vice President JD Vance dismissed the entire question as “dumb.” And while Israel and the Lebanese government are set to begin talks on peace, Lebanon has little in the way of negotiating power, and Israeli strikes continue. So who are the other actors, and what paths are open to them?

The European Union likely has the most immediate leverage. Along with the US and China, the EU makes up one of Israel’s key trading partners, and several EU companies have ties to the Israeli arms industry. While some states have long been vocally opposed to Israel’s policies, the opposition remains mostly that—verbal. But Israel has created a refugee crisis on the immediate periphery of Europe, and the ramifications are sure to be felt in Europe much more acutely than in the US. European Union trade policy needs to reflect the reality that Israel’s behavior is entirely at odds with proclaimed European human-rights values and with the interest of the EU in a stable Levant. Putting real pressure on Israel would also ease diplomacy with nearly every other country in the Middle East and North Africa, a region that, try as it might, Europe cannot afford to ignore.

Within the United States, there is a real, if still somewhat narrow, path for the Democratic party to gain control of Congress early next year. There is little doubt that Trump will veto real action against arming Israel, just as he vetoed efforts to stop arming Saudi Arabia’s Yemeni war during his first term. But nonetheless passing bills like Block the Bombs Act that can hold Israel accountable for violations of international law with binding legislative restrictions can keep the issue live in the US political realm, and hopefully create an expectation of future accountability that can put limits on the most radical ambitions of the Israeli government, setting the stage, or at least leaving open the possibility, for peace on the Israel-Lebanon border.  

Featured image is ISRAEL ATERRORIZA LIBANO, by koldo