Rubio Hosts Lebanon’s President Before a Rare White House Visit
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, met President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon in Washington on Sunday ahead of talks with President Trump on Tuesday — the first visit by a Lebanese head of state since Michel Sleiman met Barack Obama in 2009. The State Department said Mr Rubio had commended Beirut’s effort to reclaim Lebanese sovereignty and disarm Hezbollah.
The department’s statement praised “the courage of the Government of Lebanon, under President Aoun’s leadership, for their determined effort to reclaim Lebanon’s sovereignty, disarm Hezbollah and dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, and move towards peace”. That Washington is investing in Beirut at the height of a war with Hezbollah’s principal sponsor is the point: an Iran stretched across the Gulf, Jordan and the Hormuz theatre has less capacity to underwrite its Lebanese proxy. The risk is that a disarmament process moving faster than the Lebanese army can absorb reopens the internal fractures of 2008. Watch what Mr Aoun secures on Tuesday in reconstruction funding and security guarantees.