The Memo: Lebanon crisis takes center stage with White House meeting

The crisis in Lebanon will move center stage tomorrow as Lebanese President Joseph Aoun is scheduled to meet President Trump at the White House.

The confab will be a vital one for Aoun as he seeks to drain support away from Hezbollah while also showing that he can be trusted to stand up to Israel.

Meanwhile, Iran is looming over everything, especially with Washington and Tehran at risk of sliding into full-scale war once again.

The Trump-Aoun meeting will be a tricky one, especially in a moment where priorities appear to be shifting.

Aoun needs Trump to put pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to, at the least, begin an Israeli withdrawal from some of the areas it currently occupies in southern Lebanon.

But the danger, from the Lebanese perspective, is that Trump might be less likely to use leverage with Netanyahu if he is already losing faith in the chances of making a larger peace with Iran. Three Americans have been killed in the war in the last few days.

“Every time Iran kills an American soldier they will pay for that killing many times over!” the president wrote in a Monday social media post. “This directive has been passed on to Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Caine, and every Leader in the Military.”

On the Lebanese question specifically, however, much could hinge on Trump’s chemistry with Aoun, a former commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces who is about to become the first head of state from his nation to visit the White House since 2009.

Trump is “a person that’s very much driven by personalities, and I think he’s looking to see who Joseph Aoun is as a person, whether or not he’s confident in him, whether or not he can trust him,” Timothy Kaldas, the deputy director of the Tahrir Institute........

© The Hill