Aoun is scheduled to meet with Donald Trump on Tuesday as Beirut seeks US help to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Published July 19, 2026
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has begun a series of high-level meetings in Washington, meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and seeking US support for Beirut to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and ensure Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
According to an X post from the Lebanese presidential office, Prime Minister Aoun told Rubio on Sunday that Lebanon and the United States need to work together to bring into force the U.S.-backed agreement that Lebanon and Israel signed on June 26. It begins with the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.
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Rubio praised the Lebanese government’s “determined efforts to restore Lebanese sovereignty, disarm Hezbollah, dismantle terrorist infrastructure, and move toward peace,” according to a statement from the U.S. State Department after the meeting.
Mr. Aoun and First Lady Naima Aoun arrived at Joint Base Andrews on Saturday at the start of an official visit, the Lebanese president’s office said.
Aoun is scheduled to meet with US President Donald Trump on Tuesday and meet with senators and other administration officials.
This is the first visit to Washington by a Lebanese head of state since Michel Sulaiman met with President Barack Obama in 2009.
This comes at a critical time for Lebanon. In Lebanon, Israeli forces remain in parts of the south months after the latest war with Hezbollah, complicating Beirut’s efforts to reassert state control while hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced.
Lebanese officials told Reuters that Aoun plans to present Trump with a written proposal outlining how Hezbollah’s arsenal could be dismantled while ensuring Israel’s withdrawal under a U.S.-brokered deal.
Before leaving Beirut, Aoun said he would ask President Trump to “apply the necessary pressure on Israel” to implement the agreement that demobilizes Hezbollah, gradually withdraws Israeli troops, and charts a path toward more stable relations between the two countries.
The official told Reuters that Aoun believes Trump is in a unique position to pressure Israel to withdraw its troops and help restore Lebanese sovereignty.
The US visit follows separate US-brokered talks between Lebanese and Israeli officials in Rome earlier this week, where negotiators discussed how to implement the June framework.
The negotiations revealed the challenges facing Aoun’s government. Hezbollah has rejected Lebanon’s efforts to directly negotiate with Israel and strip it of its arms groups, but Israel insists it will not withdraw completely unless Hezbollah is disarmed and demilitarized.
Aoun, 62, is a former commander of the US-backed Lebanese army and was elected president last year after more than two years without a head of state. His selection reflects a major shift in Lebanon’s political landscape after Israel’s 2024 offensive weakened Hezbollah and the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad deprived the Iran-backed group of one of its closest allies in the region.
At his swearing-in ceremony, Aoun vowed to restore the state’s “arms monopoly” and make disarming Hezbollah a decisive goal of his presidency.
The Lebanese army then deployed to various parts of southern Lebanon to recover Hezbollah weapons caches under a cease-fire agreement after the 2024 war.
But those efforts were complicated when fighting escalated again in March, when Hezbollah launched attacks on Israel in support of Iran, which is under attack by Israel and the United States. This triggered further Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Since then, Aoun has publicly criticized Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into war. In a virtual meeting with European Union officials in March, he said the group “places no value on Lebanon’s interests or the lives of its people” and said it was working “in the interests of the Iranian regime.”
He immediately called for direct dialogue with Israel, marking a significant departure from policy in Lebanon, which has suffered repeated invasions by Israel since 1978. The move has drawn heavy criticism from Hezbollah and its supporters, even though Aoun did not respond to President Trump’s call for a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
