Report: US asks Lebanon to keep Hezbollah out of any Iran war to avoid strike

President Joseph Aoun’s latest reassurance that “specter of war has become distant” was based on “information received by the Lebanese official authorities from high-ranking international parties and Western embassies,” a prominent Lebanese official said.

“During their Dec. 29 meeting in Florida, U.S. President Donald Trump and the enemy’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed on striking Iran if it does not engage in a settlement according to the U.S. conditions,” the official told al-Akhbar newspaper.

Trump and Netanyahu “also agreed on launching the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement and on keeping Lebanon out of any strike targeted against Iran during this period,” the official said.

The official added that keeping Lebanon out of the conflict is “conditional on Hezbollah staying out of the confrontation, seeing as any participation by the party will be met with a broad and deep Israeli strike that will especially target Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa.”

Keeping Lebanon neutral “does not mean that the enemy’s dailuy attacks will stop,” the official said, noting that “the Americans have said that Israel will not change its rules of engagement, but that the war’s expansion will be linked to what happens with Iran.”

The official also revealed that Saudi Arabia is exerting strenuous efforts with Iran to “push it to a settlement,” adding that Riyadh fears that any chaos in Iran might affect the Gulf countries.

“The Americans are convinced that Iran’s engagement in a settlement under their conditions -- which are a total halt of the nuclear program and the cessation of support for the Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen -- would lead to a settlement over the Lebanese file,” the official added.

“In the event of a strike against Iran, its outcome will also affect the Lebanese file, because Hezbollah will be weaker and less capable of maneuvering should the attack on Iran lead to defeating the regime in it, seeing as according to the U.S. vision, a policy of exhausting and dismantling Hezbollah could be adopted after breaking Hezbollah’s strategic and essential depth, striking its sources of strength and severing the channels that enable it to continue arming itself,” the official went on to say.

The Americans will also seek to undermine Hezbollah’s domestic legitimacy and boost border monitoring to prevent arms smuggling in parallel with continued precision strikes against its infrastructure and leaders, the official said.