Iran fights to keep Lebanon as leverage in high-stakes US deal

(Reuters)

BEIRUT, June 11 – Iran is waging a calculated campaign to preserve Lebanon as its last bastion of influence on the Mediterranean, tying the country’s fate to a grand bargain with Washington as it seeks ​to end Hezbollah’s war with Israel on its own terms, not Beirut’s.

That effort is colliding with a historic U.S.-sponsored negotiating track between Lebanon and Israel aimed at ending decades of conflict along their frontier ‌and redefining the balance of power in a country long caught between regional foes.

Yet Beirut is not backing down. President Joseph Aoun told Reuters on Wednesday that “Lebanon’s future is in the hands of the Lebanese, not Iran — nor Israel,” casting the negotiations as a struggle for Lebanon’s sovereignty.

“Cooperation with Iran is one thing, but we do not accept that the Iranians dictate to us,” Aoun said. “We are a sovereign state. Iran cannot speak in our name. We do not accept that Lebanon becomes a field for other people’s wars.”

“I am determined to proceed with the diplomatic ​track,” he added. “There is no military solution. We have no choice but to negotiate to end this conflict, and neither do the Israelis.”

Still, Lebanon finds itself at an impasse.

Hezbollah has publicly rejected direct talks with Israel, calling them ​shameless, but Aoun said the group had not presented the government with its own roadmap to end the crisis.

He warned that if Hezbollah chose to remain on a war footing, ⁠the Shi’ite group would harm the very community it claims to defend, prolonging a conflict that erupted on March 2 in parallel to the Iran war and has strained Lebanon’s sectarian and political faultlines.

Tehran, meanwhile, has made a ceasefire in Lebanon a ​condition for any broader deal with Washington, giving it leverage over a process from which it is formally excluded.