For the first time in decades, peace between Lebanon and Israel is becoming a reality. In June, Lebanese and Israeli officials signed a U.S.-brokered framework in Washington, marking their first direct talks since 1983. This achievement was personally facilitated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with key diplomats — Lebanon’s Nada Hamadeh Moawad and Israel’s Yechiel Leiter — engaged in direct negotiations, alongside Ambassadors Mike Huckabee and Mike Waltz, longstanding advocates for the region’s Christian communities. When Aoun meets President Trump at the White House on July 21, these dedicated individuals are prepared to turn this fragile opening into a lasting peace.

Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, is a leader, and this is a critical moment.

Aoun is a president who says out loud what timid men whisper. When Iran’s Revolutionary Guard presumed to dictate the terms of Lebanon’s peace, Aoun answered them to their faces, on television, with Christiane Amanpour: “It’s not your country, it’s our country.”

Everyone understood he was speaking about Hezbollah — the militia contrived and funded by Iran to build a colony inside Lebanon, an armed state within a state that has fomented only war, at home and across every border. The words were so plainly true they should have been unremarkable. Yet no Lebanese leader of Aoun’s stature had ever dared to say them quite so clearly on a platform quite so public. His predecessors were frightened, bought, or weak.

This is why the United States should give President Aoun his due. He inherited a state hollowed out by corruption, a currency turned to paper, a port turned to rubble, and a militia that answered to Tehran, not Beirut. A weaker leader would manage the decline and scrape what personal gains he could for himself. Instead, Aoun leads.

“I will not let my people die,” he says. But keeping people alive is the bare minimum. The harder task now is to help them thrive again — and that he cannot do alone.

If America truly has the partner in Beirut it appears to have, it should validate him with substance, not sentiment: far greater support for the Lebanese army as it meets its commitments, the Gulf mobilized to underwrite reconstruction, and Europe and the wider world rallied behind Aoun — first to deny Hezbollah the power to steal any more of Lebanon’s future, and then to speed regional peace.

Lebanon is worth it.

If Hezbollah, an enemy of Lebanon, of America, and of Israel, is no longer able to deny the Lebanese government a monopoly on force, then regional peace will be inevitable.

The geostrategic arithmetic is simple. A country cannot have two armies. A state cannot be sovereign while a foreign-funded militia holds a veto over war and peace. Disarming Hezbollah is not an obstacle to Lebanon’s freedom; it is the precondition. A majority of Lebanese now say so. The only party still betting on rockets and ruin is the one that dragged Lebanon into catastrophe again and again — and would gladly do it once more.

Now the test: words have carried Aoun to the White House, but only deeds can carry Lebanon the rest of the way. President Trump’s terms should be just as plain: disarm Hezbollah and choose peace with your neighbors, Israel among them, and the United States will be no less a friend to this new Lebanon.

Lebanon’s cedars raised Solomon’s Temple; its shores gave the world its alphabet. It remains the only Arab nation with a Christian head of state, and Christians are still nearly a third of its people, the largest such community left in the region.

St. John Paul II called Lebanon “more than a country; it is a message.” Pope Leo XIV carried that word onto Lebanese soil last winter, preaching “Blessed are the peacemakers” while calling on Hezbollah to lay down its weapons.

To achieve this would rank among the great achievements of any American president in modern history. President Trump would help restore Lebanon and finish off Iran’s most prized proxy, and the price of it all would be peace with Israel.

I can already see the Lebanon that waits on the other side of this decision. I see a Lebanon of open borders and open markets, where a young professional eats lunch in Haifa and dinner in Beirut. I see Beirut restored to its place as the jewel of the Mediterranean, a rival to Dubai and Tel Aviv. I see ancient Christian communities no longer fleeing westward but flourishing in their land. I see the cedars standing tall again — just as the Psalmist promised, “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.”

This Lebanon is waiting for leadership.

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Reverend Johnnie Moore, PhD, is Vice Chancellor and the head of Middle East studies at Pepperdine University. Moore was twice appointed by President Donald J. Trump to the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom. The views expressed in this piece are his own.

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Lebanon’s Peace Means Middle East Peace – And Trump Holds The Key