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Donald Trump reinstated direct US flights to Lebanon after a four-decade ban during a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun at the White House on Tuesday.
Flights by US carriers were banned by the Reagan administration in 1985 after a TWA airliner was hijacked by Hizbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, during the country’s civil war.
“I am hereby directing my Administration to allow all US airline carriers to fly directly to Lebanon so that Americans can easily visit this beautiful land,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform after the meeting.
But the first visit to Washington by a Lebanese head of state in nearly two decades yielded little else of substance for Aoun, who needs Trump’s support to implement a US-brokered deal with Israel as Lebanon struggles to maintain stability.
“All we are asking is [to] keep supporting the [Lebanese Armed Forces],” said Aoun as he sat beside Trump in the Oval Office. “The Lebanese Armed Forces are the backbone of security and stability,” he added and warned that “without the LAF, everything will collapse”.
Aoun’s fragile government in Beirut faces fierce domestic pressure to show that its heavily criticised deal with Israel can secure peace in the battered country.
Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been displaced from the country’s south, where Israeli forces have continued to occupy a large swath of land and carry out strikes that they say are targeting Hizbollah.
Hizbollah and its allies have rejected the framework agreement as a capitulation to Israel, while many others across the political spectrum are sceptical that Israel, which occupied the country for 18 years until 2000, will actually withdraw.
Hours before the US and Lebanese leaders met, Lebanon’s army accused Israel of undermining a day-old effort for the country’s military to take over “security responsibility” from the Israeli army in “pilot zones” in parts of the south.
“The Israeli occupation forces opened fire in close proximity” to Lebanese forces as they sought to deploy to the town of West Zawtar, the army said in a statement Tuesday.
In his meeting with Aoun, Trump appeared sympathetic to Lebanon’s plight, telling reporters that “Lebanon has been treated incredibly badly”, like a “whipping post” for Iran and Hizbollah.
“Maybe I’m a little prejudiced in favour of Lebanon because I have so many Lebanese friends,” Trump added as his senior adviser for Arab and African Affairs, Lebanese-American businessman Massad Boulos, looked on.
But it was unclear what, if any, material wins Aoun would be able to deliver on his return to Beirut.
Trump’s 2027 budget request to Congress seeks to slash funding for the LAF.
Trump declined to offer a timeline for an Israeli withdrawal or say whether he would be willing to put additional pressure on its government to pull out of Lebanon. “They’re in the process of redeploying,” Trump said, adding that Israel and Lebanon “get along very well”.
But he said he would “be looking at” the circumstances around Israeli fire in the pilot zone earlier on Tuesday.
Aoun, former commander of Lebanon’s army who was elected president last year, is struggling to build the credibility and capacity of his weak government and its armed forces, and to exercise control over Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon after years of de facto control by Hizbollah.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that Aoun “could become one of the most important leaders in the Middle East” if the nascent peace deal between Lebanon and Israel succeeded.
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