The US-brokered cease-fire between Lebanon and Israel lasted less than 24 hours on paper. Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun called the deal his country’s “last opportunity” on June 4, the morning after Israeli and Lebanese envoys signed it in Washington. By that afternoon, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem had rejected it outright, calling it “humiliating” and tantamount to surrender, while Israeli bombardment continued across the south.
Aoun, a former military chief who spent eight years commanding Lebanon’s army before becoming head of state, told CNN on Friday that Iran was using his country “as a bargaining chip” in its nuclear negotiations with Washington, the bluntest criticism yet by a Lebanese president of Tehran’s role in a conflict that has killed more than 3,500 people and pushed 1.2 million from their homes since March.
A Cease-Fire Without the Combatant
Under the agreement formally presented June 3, Hezbollah was required to stop all fire and withdraw its fighters south of the Litani River, 29 kilometers north of the Israeli border. Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) units and UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) peacekeepers would then assume exclusive control of “pilot zones,” cleared of all non-state fighters within 13 days. Israel would pull back from those same areas under a 60-day transitional framework. The joint statement from the US, Israel, and Lebanon said the deal would “enable progress towards a comprehensive peace and security agreement” and rejected “any attempt, by any state or non-state actor, to hold Lebanon’s future hostage.”
Qassem issued a written rejection the following day. Any deal, he said, must begin with a full Israeli military pullout from Lebanese territory, a condition the agreement did not include. Israeli forces had occupied broad stretches of the south since March, when Hezbollah launched rockets and drones at Israel on March 2, responding to a US-Israeli strike on Tehran that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader. Qassem called the terms “futile, humiliating, and disgraceful for Lebanon” and said Hezbollah would continue firing as long as Israeli troops remained.
Washington could not negotiate with Hezbollah directly; the US designates it as a terrorist organization. Talks ran instead through Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Shia politician with long historical ties to the group, and Hezbollah was not a signatory to what emerged from Washington.
| Party | Signed the agreement | Position by June 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Lebanese government (Aoun) | Yes | Called it the “last opportunity”; supports implementation |
| Israeli government | Yes | Signed; IDF operations continue “at this stage” |
| Hezbollah (Qassem) | No | Rejected; demands full Israeli withdrawal first |
| Parliament Speaker (Berri) | No | Rejected; insists on mutual simultaneous withdrawal |
Beirut’s Break with Tehran
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Friday, Aoun said what Lebanon’s heads of state have rarely said to Iran’s military establishment on the record.
It’s not your country, it’s our country. They are using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in their negotiation with the United States. It’s unacceptable.
In the interview, he was addressing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hezbollah’s principal military patron. To Qassem directly, he added: “The Lebanese people are not your people.” The remarks came from someone with standing. Aoun served eight years as army chief before entering politics. He says he still carries shrapnel in his body, his hearing damaged by close-quarters combat. Since becoming president he has pressed for Hezbollah’s disarmament through persuasion, calling in April for direct talks with Israel, a stance that put him immediately at odds with the group’s leadership. CNN reported that Israeli strikes have shaken the Grand Serail presidential complex in Beirut. He has kept pursuing diplomacy from inside it.
Iran’s response arrived within hours. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media: “Had Lebanon been a bargaining chip for Iran, we’d have a deal long ago.” He added, addressed to Aoun: “Save Lebanon from your real foe, Mr. President,” a reference to Israel. Iranian officials have consistently maintained that Israeli attacks in Lebanon violate the broader US-Iran ceasefire that took effect in April, a position Tehran has used to link every escalation in the south to the wider nuclear negotiations.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam made the same accusation separately, at a UN press conference for a Lebanon aid appeal the same day. “Have mercy on our south,” Salam told Tehran. “Stop treating it and its people as merely a bargaining chip to improve the terms of your negotiations.”
The Lebanese judiciary offered a different signal on Friday, sentencing two anti-Hezbollah activists in absentia to 15 years in prison for inciting Israeli attacks against the group. It was the harshest such verdict issued against critics of Hezbollah to date. Lebanon’s government was sending more than one kind of message at once.
The Speaker’s Veto
Berri has held Lebanon’s parliament speakership since 1992, making him Washington’s most durable back-channel to Hezbollah in moments of crisis. American envoys, barred from speaking to the group directly, routed the Washington negotiations through him. That arrangement gave the process its institutional cover on the Lebanese side. It did not guarantee his endorsement of the outcome.
In written comments distributed on Friday, the speaker called the deal “hybrid, unfair, rigged, inequitable, and not worth mentioning.” He said it had been “booby-trapped” by its requirement that Hezbollah cease fire and withdraw from the south without a parallel Israeli pullback. His threshold for any agreement: both sides pull out simultaneously, with the IDF matching Hezbollah’s retreat south of the Litani.
The Enforcement Gap
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called the LAF-enforcement arrangement “a serious mistake,” arguing the Lebanese army was incapable of compelling Hezbollah to comply. The agreement required the LAF to assume exclusive security control of the pilot zones within 13 days, clearing all non-state fighters from designated areas of southern Lebanon. Ben-Gvir’s concern was shared by others: the Israeli army’s own chief of staff reportedly told ministers that a ceasefire now was preferable to the same terms arriving in a month under worse conditions, suggesting the military was not confident the deal would hold.
The LAF has approximately 80,000 active personnel and no advanced air defenses. Hezbollah commands an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 fighters and more than 150,000 rockets, with two decades of tunnels, command centers, and launch sites built into the hills south of the Litani. A Serbian UNIFIL peacekeeper was killed near Marjayoun on June 3 by mortar fire; a UN source attributed the mortars to Hezbollah. Seven UNIFIL peacekeepers have been killed since the war restarted in March.
An earlier US-brokered ceasefire took effect April 16 and did little to halt the exchange of fire in Lebanon. Israeli forces have maintained and expanded their presence throughout, including at Beaufort Castle, a historic hilltop fortress retaken by Israeli forces in early June, reviving an occupation pattern with roots going back decades. Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed on Friday that IDF forces would not withdraw from their current positions. The EU approved a new 100 million euro military assistance package for the LAF on June 4, bringing total European Peace Facility support to 182 million euros since 2021.
Iran’s Nuclear Talks Hang on Lebanon
Iran set a Lebanon ceasefire as a stated condition for any peace agreement with Washington months before this week’s negotiations began. The wider US-Iran conflict, triggered by a joint US-Israeli strike on Tehran on February 28, has been managed through a patchwork of temporary ceasefires and Pakistani mediation. Iran’s position, affirmed repeatedly by senior officials, is that Israeli attacks in Lebanon violate the broader truce, whatever Washington says about Lebanon being a separate theater.
On June 1, after Israel threatened a strike on Beirut’s Dahiyeh district, Iran paused negotiations with Washington. Trump pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in what Axios described as an expletive-laden call and told him to stand down from the planned operation. Netanyahu pulled back. Talks resumed. Four days later, Hezbollah rejected the June 3 cease-fire, and the cycle started again. In an NBC interview, Trump said “Vietnam lasted 19 years. I’m into my third month,” framing the Iran conflict as a long-haul problem he believed he was managing on a faster timeline.
Trump described the Lebanon conflict as “interconnected with Iran” in Oval Office remarks on June 4. His administration sent envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to meet with nuclear experts at a federal laboratory in Tennessee the same day, per a US official, working toward a framework on Iran’s uranium program. A senior Iranian military adviser told CNN on Friday that any peace deal requires Washington to release $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets, a figure the Trump administration has not publicly confirmed. The UK Parliament’s research briefing on US-Iran negotiations in 2026 documents how Lebanon’s status has been a recurring factor in each stall and resumption of those talks since April.
The Ground Below the Diplomacy
The town of Anqoun sits on a hillside about 16 miles from the Israeli border. It had previously been spared the evacuation orders covering most of southern Lebanon. On Friday, Israel’s military told its residents to leave; Lebanese authorities said the town had been sheltering roughly 2,500 displaced people when the order arrived, many of them already relocated from elsewhere.
Four people were killed in Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon on June 5, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, the day after the cease-fire was announced. Hezbollah kept up rocket and drone attacks targeting Israeli ground forces through the same period.
- 3,526 people killed in Lebanon since March 2, per Lebanon’s Health Ministry
- 1.2 million displaced, roughly one in five of Lebanon’s total population
- 40,000+ homes destroyed in southern Lebanon
- 14% of Lebanese territory under Israeli evacuation orders, per the Norwegian Refugee Council
No part of the June 3 agreement has taken effect.
