Lebanese President Joseph Aoun will make his first visit to the White House this week, where he is expected to present U.S. President Donald Trump with a plan for disarming the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah and securing Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon.
Aoun, who served as commander of Lebanon’s U.S.-backed military before being elected president last year, will become the first Lebanese head of state in nearly 20 years to visit the White House. Tuesday’s meeting will also mark his first face-to-face talks with Trump.
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Joseph Aoun, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu
(Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/AP, ANWAR AMRO/AFP, Shutterstock, Shalev Shalom)
The visit comes at a critical moment for Lebanon. Israeli troops remain deployed across part of the country’s south, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been displaced following Israeli strikes, and Hezbollah has firmly rejected both direct negotiations with Israel and government efforts to strip the group of its weapons.
In remarks published by his office last week, Aoun said he would ask Trump to “exert the necessary pressure on Israel” to implement a U.S.-brokered agreement reached between Lebanon and Israel on June 26.
The agreement calls for Hezbollah’s disarmament, a gradual Israeli troop withdrawal and steps toward peaceful relations between the two countries.
A Lebanese official said Aoun would present Trump with a written proposal outlining how Hezbollah’s vast arsenal could be decommissioned. According to the official, Aoun believes Trump is the only leader with sufficient leverage to pressure Israel to withdraw and help Lebanon restore its sovereignty.
Seeking Hezbollah’s disarmament
Aoun, 62, was elected president last year shortly before Trump began his second term in the White House. The United States welcomed his election.
Aoun is a Maronite Christian, as required under Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system, which reserves the premiership for a Sunni Muslim and the position of parliament speaker for a Shiite Muslim.
Hezbollah supporters riot in Beirut earlier this month
(Photo: Ibrahim AMRO / AFP)
A career soldier, Aoun was wounded twice during his military service and still carries shrapnel in his body. His rise reflected a major shift in Lebanon’s balance of power following Israel’s devastating 2024 offensive against Hezbollah and the removal of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a key ally of the group.
Those developments significantly weakened Hezbollah and eroded its longstanding influence over the Lebanese state.
At his swearing-in ceremony, Aoun vowed to uphold “the state’s right to a monopoly on arms.”
The first year of his presidency was dominated by government efforts to disarm Hezbollah, which was established by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1982 and has fought several wars against Israel.
Under the ceasefire that ended the 2024 war, Lebanese troops deployed across southern Lebanon and began collecting Hezbollah weapons caches, facing little resistance from the weakened group.
A new war erupts
Early in the second year of Aoun’s presidency, however, a new war erupted after Hezbollah fired at Israel on March 2 in support of Iran, which was under attack by the United States and Israel.
The Hezbollah attack triggered an intense Israeli air and ground campaign that has killed more than 4,300 people, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, including nearly 800 children, women and medical personnel.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem
The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, while Hezbollah has not published a death toll for its fighters.
After the war began, Aoun quickly called for direct negotiations with Israel, a historic departure for a country repeatedly invaded by Israel since 1978. The initiative led to the highest-level face-to-face contacts between the two countries in decades.
It also made Aoun the target of fierce criticism from Hezbollah and its supporters.
Aoun has remained firm, accusing Hezbollah of starting the war and saying Lebanon was being destroyed for Iran’s sake.
He has nevertheless stopped short of accepting Trump’s call for him to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A military veteran
Aoun was born in Sin al-Fil, a suburb east of Beirut, and his family originally comes from southern Lebanon.
His first military assignment was as a platoon commander in the army’s Ranger Regiment in 1985, during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.
Shortly after being appointed army commander, he oversaw an operation that drove Islamic State terrorists from the Syrian-Lebanese border.
He later led the military through the crisis that followed Lebanon’s 2019 financial collapse, which devastated the national currency after decades of corruption and mismanagement.
At the time, Aoun warned that the crisis could lead to the collapse of the Lebanese army, which he described as “the backbone of the country.”
In an unusually political statement for a serving army commander, he criticized Lebanon’s leaders over the economic collapse, saying soldiers were going hungry alongside the rest of the population and asking politicians: “What do you intend to do?”
Aoun’s election ended a two-year presidential vacuum that followed the conclusion of former president Michel Aoun’s term in 2022. The two men are not related.
Since taking office, Joseph Aoun has pledged to advance long-delayed economic reforms and deliver justice for the victims of the 2020 Beirut port explosion.