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 optics of US President Donald Trump’s newly appointed envoy to Lebanon, Morgan Ortagus, flaunting a rocket-propelled grenade from Hezbollah’s arsenal while posing beside a Lebanese army officer, was a clear and deliberate statement.
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.
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