In an effort to prevent a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the Pentagon welcomes Lebanon’s army chief for discussions

WASHINGTON – The Lebanese Army Commander met with senior Biden administration officials and congressional lawmakers this week during his first visit to Washington in more than a year.

General Joseph Aoun’s visit, the first since February 2023 to Washington, comes as the Biden administration seeks to avoid an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, with both sides launching increasingly deadly retaliatory attacks on Lebanon’s southern border amid the Israeli war. in Gaza.

Aoun, who has been in command of the Lebanese Armed Forces since 2017, has sought financial and moral support from the United States, Gulf states and European countries, as he seeks to stabilize the ranks of his forces amid shortages in wages and recruitment largely as a result of the worst economic crisis Lebanon has ever faced.

At the same time, the Biden administration is pushing for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza as an advance step toward a negotiated de-escalation between Hezbollah and the Israeli army.

Dangerous escalation: Retaliation on the Lebanon-Israel border took an aggressive turn on Wednesday when Hezbollah fired nearly 215 rockets into Israel in retaliation for airstrikes the night before that killed a senior militia commander.

Talib Sami Abdullah was the highest-ranking Hezbollah commander to be killed since the latest round of fighting began in October 2023 due to the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza. He and three other Hezbollah officials were killed in Israeli raids on the southern town of Joya. The group said that Abdullah was the commander of the militia’s Victory Unit.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Aoun sat down with senior White House officials and lawmakers from both parties in Congress earlier this week.

Sources close to the discussions said the general’s interest in seeking material support for his forces was met mostly favorably by lawmakers, despite lingering skepticism among some House Republicans who have pushed to restrict U.S. funding to Lebanon because of Iran’s outsized influence in the country.

The Biden administration and senior Pentagon officers have long viewed the Lebanese army as a promising asset through which to build a bulwark to contain Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon. Efforts to stabilize the Lebanese Army amid the deepening crisis in Lebanon have been the subject of renewed attention in Washington, as Iranian proxies have threatened to open new fronts against the Jewish state from Iraq, Syria and Yemen in response to the Israeli campaign in Gaza.

The Pentagon said in a press release that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant on Tuesday to discuss “efforts to de-escalate tensions along the Israeli-Lebanese border in the wake of increasing aggression by Lebanese Hezbollah.”

The army commander in Washington, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Brown, met with Aoun at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

The two leaders exchanged views on the current security situation in the Middle East, including ongoing goals to resolve tensions along the Israeli-Lebanese border and the common goal of avoiding regional escalation,” Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Captain Geral Dorsey said in a press release.