An intriguing news story appeared on January 7 in Lebanese newspapers. It claimed that the US envoy to Lebanon, Morgan Ortagus, had expressed her reluctance to attend a session that day of the so-called Mechanism, the five-party committee to discuss implementation of the ceasefire agreement reached between Lebanon and Israel in 2024, because she saw them as “repetitive and where no major progress is being made”.
Whether the quote was correct or not, one thing that is undeniable is that Ms Ortagus is impatient with the slow pace of Hezbollah’s disarmament by the Lebanese state. But this begs a couple of questions: Did the administration of US President Donald Trump ever seriously believe that such a process would be smooth? And if it did, what does this tell us about its competence?
The quality of any negotiation often depends on the quality of the party mediating. Former US president Jimmy Carter, for example, was instrumental in bringing about an agreement between Egypt and Israel at Camp David, as was the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke in helping secure the Dayton Agreement to end the war in Bosnia.
In Lebanon, however, the quality of American mediators has been more questionable. While Ms Ortagus is said to be bright, she doesn’t appear to have much experience in Middle Eastern negotiations. Her initial arrival in Lebanon was marked by a remarkable blunder, when she expressed gratitude to Israel for “defeating Hezbollah”, ignoring that the Israelis had killed more than 2,700 Lebanese.
It was quickly apparent that Ms Ortagus was less there to reach a compromise between the two sides on how to implement the ceasefire deal of November 2024, than to impose Washington’s and Israel’s conditions on the weaker, Lebanese side. She has stuck to this agenda, and if she seems in a hurry today, it’s because Lebanon refuses to enter into an armed conflict with Hezbollah to please the Americans and Israelis.
It would be a mistake to blame Ms Ortagus alone, however. The US mediator during the conflict last year, Amos Hochstein, who was appointed by then-president Joe Biden, merits a significant share of criticism. In Washington’s zeal to give Israel a decisive advantage in the ceasefire agreement, Mr Hochstein negotiated on two parallel tracks: one track leading to the agreement itself; the other, to give Israel a side letter.
What made Mr Hochstein’s manoeuvre so reprehensible is that the side letter gave the Israelis the means to undermine the ceasefire deal. It stated that Israel was entitled to take military action against alleged Hezbollah threats in south Lebanon, while perceived threats outside that area had to be passed on to the Lebanese army to address.
Since November 2024, Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement over 10,000 times, and more than 335 people have been killed and 970 injured, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Effectively, the Americans imposed a ceasefire on one side, while ignoring the violations of the other.
According to the ceasefire agreement, Israel was also supposed to withdraw from Lebanon in late January last year. The Israelis ignored the deadline, and the Lebanese and Hezbollah were forced to accept a new deadline of February 18. Israel ignored that too, and the Trump administration did nothing about it. Perhaps, like Ms Ortagus, they were too grateful to the Israelis to pay much attention.
For a time, it appeared that Ms Ortagus would be replaced by the Trump administration’s ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack. Mr Barrack is of Lebanese origin, so there was some expectation he might deal with Lebanon in a more flexible way. In fact, he proved to be worse than Ms Ortagus, and quickly found himself isolated both in Israel and Beirut.
The nadir of Mr Barrack’s diplomacy came in August last year. Before travelling to Israel, he had managed to secure formal Lebanese government approval for a disarmament plan encompassing Hezbollah. His wager was that if Lebanon took such a major step, he could then persuade the Israelis to make concessions of their own – reducing their attacks and pulling out from some Lebanese areas they occupy – that would strengthen Beirut’s hand in its disarmament talks with Hezbollah.
Before travelling to Israel, Mr Barrack had sounded upbeat, saying: “The Lebanese government has done their part. Now what we need is Israel to comply with that equal handshake.” Except that upon his return to Beirut, he admitted that Israel had rejected making positive steps of its own, contributing to ending Mr Barrack’s role as envoy to Lebanon.
This was more than a setback. It was a sign that Mr Barrack had no leverage over Israel and was not supported by the White House, despite his supposed closeness to Mr Trump. Meanwhile, he was being attacked by pro-Israel figures in Washington, who disliked his declared willingness to deal with and accommodate Iran and Hezbollah. It also showed that the US had no coherent Lebanon policy beyond imposing diktats.
Subsequently, Ms Ortagus returned to Beirut, but she doesn’t seem to have new ideas for how to break the deadlock. The Americans are not asking Israel to respect the provisos of the ceasefire deal they negotiated, but, absurdly, are trying to create dynamics leading to normalisation between Lebanon and Israel. In other words, they want the Lebanese to normalise with a country currently occupying their land and killing their citizens.
For as long as the Americans act as biased mediators, they will fail to achieve their aims. This may suit Israel, as it prefers to deal with Lebanon without US interference, while the Lebanese have largely lost faith in the Americans. All this suggests that war may resume this year, unless changes in Iran completely alter Hezbollah’s calculations.
