Joseph Aoun is the first Lebanese head of state in nearly 20 years to visit the White House. He arrived Tuesday and met Trump face-to-face for the first time.
US President Donald Trump said during a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Tuesday that Lebanon had been hit hard for decades and that the United States would help the country going forward. During the Oval Office meeting, Trump promised that he would have Lebanon “treated properly.”
“It’s been a very badly treated place and country, and we’re going to have it properly treated, and treated with the respect that it deserves,” Trump said.
According to a Reuters report, Aoun’s meeting with Trump at the White House on Tuesday was for him to present a plan on how to disarm the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and secure Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon.
Aoun, who served as the commander of Lebanon’s US-backed army before being elected president last year, is the first Lebanese head of state in nearly 20 years to visit the White House. He arrived Tuesday morning and met Trump face-to-face for the first time.
The meeting comes at a crucial moment for Lebanon: Israeli troops are occupying a swathe of the country’s south, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese remain displaced following Israeli strikes, and Hezbollah has firmly rejected the government’s direct talks with Israel — and efforts by the state to strip it of its arms.
Lebanon urges implementation of US-brokered deal
Joseph Aoun arrived in Washington over the weekend and met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday, telling him that Israel should begin withdrawing from southern Lebanon in line with the US-brokered June 26 agreement between Lebanon and Israel.
That deal aims to disarm Hezbollah, see a progressive Israeli troop withdrawal and set the stage for peaceful ties between the two countries.
Hours ahead of Aoun’s meeting with Donald Trump, Lebanese army troops began taking control of territory vacated by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon — the first test of the plan.
A Lebanese official said Aoun believes only Trump possesses the leverage needed to pressure Israel to withdraw its troops and help Lebanon restore its sovereignty. The official said that Aoun, in addition to asking the US president to press Israel to withdraw, would also present Trump with a written proposal on how to decommission Hezbollah’s massive arsenal.
Power shift in Lebanon
62-year-old Joseph Aoun became president just before Donald Trump began his second term in the White House. The US welcomed Aoun’s election.
Aoun is a Maronite Christian, as required by Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system, which stipulates that the prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament must be a Shi’ite Muslim. A career soldier, Aoun was wounded twice and still carries a shrapnel wound.
His rise reflected a major shift in the power balance in Lebanon, following a devastating Israeli offensive against Hezbollah in 2024 and the ousting of Hezbollah’s Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad — seismic events that weakened the group and its long-decisive hold over the state.
At his swearing-in ceremony, Aoun vowed to affirm “the state’s right to a monopoly on arms”.
His presidency’s first year was defined by a government bid to secure the disarmament of Hezbollah, which was founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982 and has fought numerous wars with Israel.
Lebanese troops deployed in southern Lebanon to collect Hezbollah weapons caches, in line with a ceasefire after the 2024 war and without opposition from a weakened Hezbollah.
But early into his term’s second year, a new war erupted when Hezbollah fired at Israel on March 2 in support of Iran, which was under US and Israeli attack.