Hezbollah Snubs Trump Offer of Israel Truce

Hezbollah was quick to reject the latest Israel-Lebanon ceasefire brokered by the United States this week. It did so despite President Donald Trump floating direct talks with the Iranian-backed terrorist group and his public rebuke of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged warmongering. Even if Hezbollah ends up tacitly abiding by the terms of the truce, this snub should prod the president into a strategic rethink. He and the office he holds can ill afford to be seen as courting die-hard malefactors like Hezbollah or Iran — or denigrating a U.S. ally that is fighting for its life.

Ceasefire Deal Aimed To Preclude Hezbollah Control of Lebanon

After hosting four meetings of Israeli and Lebanese envoys, the Trump administration on June 4 announced a new ceasefire between the two countries. Unlike those of November 2024 or April 2026, this deal establishes “pilot zones” in which the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) would take “exclusive control of the territory to the exclusion of all non-state actors.” The ceasefire “is contingent on a complete cessation of Hezbollah fire and the evacuation of all Hezbollah operatives” from south of the Litani River, according to a joint statement by the United States, Israel, and Lebanon.

Within hours, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem dismissed the deal as “disgraceful” and pledged continued attacks on Israel as long as IDF operations against the group persist. Jerusalem was undeterred. “Even at this hour, our troops continue to operate on the ground and with firepower to dismantle terrorist infrastructure and remove threats,” IDF chief Eyal Zamir said.

Still, the IDF reportedly withdrew from Debin, a town just north of the new buffer zone in southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah shelling of a nearby UNIFIL position killed one peacekeeper and wounded two others, and a cross-border drone launched by the terrorist group set off sirens in the Israeli village of Shlomi just as Netanyahu was ending a visit there.

Trump Confirms U.S. Contacts With Hezbollah

That the most recent Israeli-Lebanese negotiations took place at the Pentagon, rather than the State Department in accordance with previous practice, points to U.S. military muscle being applied to the new ceasefire plan.

Trump, however, had also been deploying his personal brand of diplomacy. “We actually spoke with Hezbollah for the first time ever. We didn’t know they spoke,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on June 3. He presumably referred to mediated contacts, apparently accounting for his earlier assertion that the terrorist group would hold fire if Israel refrained from attacks on Beirut.

Trump also confirmed a leaked media report about an expletive-laden phone call he had held with Netanyahu. “I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon, you know,” the president told an interviewer.

U.S. Should Let Israel Defeat Hezbollah

Threats, ruses, and blandishments are legitimate elements of statecraft, which Trump has used, with some success, in the Iran war. There, his Israeli partners have quietly closed ranks despite their clear misgivings about ceasefire talks that could leave the Tehran regime with too many of its capabilities intact.

Replicating that strategy with Hezbollah while simultaneously denigrating Israel is a step too far.

While Iran is the overarching threat to the Jewish state, Hezbollah is the most immediate — a terrorist group capable of endangering hundreds of thousands in Israel’s north with short-range weaponry that leaves little time to take shelter. There, Israel cannot afford to relent — nor to let its ally, the United States, take the lead.

Hezbollah is trying to effect an undeclared “quiet for quiet” truce whereby it will be able to continue attacking Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. That is not the plan brought by the Pentagon — a plan that would enable the Israelis to stay until an orderly takeover by the LAF is possible. For that to happen, Hezbollah must back out — and honeyed words from the U.S. president will not do the trick. Force of arms — Israeli, for now, and LAF in the future, ideally — is what is required, and there must be no mixed signals from Trump about that.

Mark Dubowitz is the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from Mark and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Mark on X @mdubowitz. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.