A US-brokered ceasefire that aims to halt an “idiotic war” between Hezbollah and Israel will stop “senseless killing”, President Donald Trump’s envoy Tom Barrack said.
The ceasefire agreed to late on Thursday was a first step towards a longer-term end to the conflict, Mr Barrack said in response to a question from The National at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey.
“This is just the beginning of the road,” he said. “Ceasefires are so delicate because everyone has been equally untrustworthy.”
He described Mr Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “stepping in strongly” to put pressure on Israel to call a timeout on the conflict with Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, which has destroyed large areas of Lebanon and killed thousands.
“I think the brilliance of what happened yesterday is it stopped the senseless killing, and President Trump and Secretary Rubio stepping in strongly with Israel, saying, ‘We need a timeout,’ not the definition of what all the architecture around that timeout could be, because there are two people missing from that table – Hezbollah and Iran,” Mr Barrack said.
The 10-day ceasefire took hold at midnight local time, although Hezbollah and Israel exchanged strikes in the hours immediately before.
US envoy
Strikes on Lebanon have killed more than 2,000 people and displaced in excess of one million since February 28. The ceasefire declaration followed US-brokered talks between Israel and Lebanon in Washington this week.
Mr Barrack described Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri as “the best set of leaders we have”. The US envoy said there must be a “path with Hezbollah. And the path has to not be killing Hezbollah”.
As US special envoy for Syria and ambassador to Turkey, Mr Barrack has played a central role in Washington's backchannel diplomacy between Israel and Lebanon.
Securing a longer-term agreement was now key, he said, using a mechanism set up as part of a previous ceasefire in 2024 to relay messages between Israel and Lebanon.
“Everyone is in atrophy over this idiotic war. So will the ceasefire stick? What will we do? It’s baby steps,” he said. “Everybody's rushing to fill in those pieces and see what didn't work in that 2024 [ceasefire] – we have a whole organisation … that responds to requests for action from either side. It's trust-building, and it's the first step of trust building.”
