Skepticism In Iran Over Israel-Lebanon Framework Agreement
by Kian Sharifi · Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty · JoinWhen the United States, Israel, and Lebanon signed their trilateral framework agreement in Washington, the reaction in Tehran was swift -- and, across the political spectrum of Iranian state-aligned media -- almost uniformly hostile.
The deal, which commits Lebanon to the verified disarmament of Hezbollah as a precondition for the progressive withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, was variously described as a "document of shame," a "strategic error," and "humiliating" by Iranian outlets ranging from the state broadcaster's newspaper to outlets with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
The consensus critique was less about the deal's existence than its sequencing.
Every major outlet focused on the same structural point: that Israeli withdrawal is conditioned on Hezbollah disarmament, not the reverse -- a formulation Iranian commentators portrayed as proof the agreement was dictated by Israel and rubber-stamped by a Lebanese government they described as "pro-West" and subservient.
Hezbollah is both a militant group and a political party that controls much of southern Lebanon. It is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, while the European Union has only blacklisted its armed wing.
What is largely absent from the Iranian media coverage is any serious engagement with the Lebanese government's own position -- that it had limited leverage in a war where Israel holds decisive military superiority and unconditional US backing.
Lebanon’s government has looked to distance itself from Tehran, which has used the establishment and funding of Hezbollah in Lebanon to make it a strategic linchpin to project regional power. But some in Iran said it may have gone too far in the other direction with this agreement.
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The government-run Iran newspaper called it the "great gamble of Aoun and Salam," a framing that placed blame squarely on Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam personally, rather than on Lebanon as a state.
Iran's official IRNA news agency described the agreement as an "accommodationist agreement," a loaded phrase in Iranian political discourse that carries strong connotations of capitulation.
Hezbollah’s October 8, 2023 rocket attack on Israel, launched in solidarity with the devastating Hamas attack a day earlier, ignited a year-long cross-border conflict that escalated into the killing of Hezbollah’s top leaders, a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, and widespread destruction.
Israel has occupied a swathe of land in southern Lebanon during renewed fighting with Hezbollah that began on March 2, when the Tehran-backed proxy opened fire at Israel after Iran came under attack from US and Israeli air strikes.
Solving the Lebanon-Israel question has been at the heart of diplomatic efforts to end the broader conflict between Iran and the United States. Tehran has been steadfast in insisting that a peace deal includes Lebanon.
Washington, meanwhile, has helped facilitate the dialogue between Beirut and Israel even though Hezbollah leadership has been against the move.
Jaam-e Jam, the newspaper of Iran's state broadcaster IRIB, framed the deal as a violation of Lebanese law, citing a 1955 Lebanese statute prohibiting direct negotiations with Israel.
The paper argued that Beirut had accepted Hezbollah's disarmament "against the national interest" while Israeli forces remain on Lebanese soil, and went further, suggesting Israel was using the diplomatic process to achieve territorial expansion it had failed to secure militarily since 2000 -- a reference to Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon that year after 18 years of occupation.
The Tasnim News Agency, linked to the powerful IRGC, also drew historical parallels, noting when Syria tried to present a moderate face to Washington and Israel last year, only for Israeli jets to bomb the presidential palace in Damascus and Israeli tanks to advance into Syrian villages to protect the Druze religious minority following days of deadly sectarian violence.
The lesson drawn: Accommodation and resistance produce the same result from Israel, so Lebanon should expect no different.
Tasnim also published Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem's statement calling the deal "null and void" and "humiliating," and notably reproduced his demand that the terms of the Iran-US memorandum of understanding on Lebanon be implemented instead -- directly asserting that the Iran-US framework should supersede what Washington brokered between Israel and Lebanon.
In announcing the trilateral framework agreement on June 26, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the deal a "first step" in the process, adding "there's a lot of work ahead."
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"We don’t in any way underestimate the difficulty of the task ahead, but we understand the importance of it, how vital it is,” Rubio said.
The conservative Agaah newspaper saw the agreement, as expected, quite differently, calling it a "document of shame" while singling out Aoun, a former military commander, for particular condemnation, arguing that a soldier had signed away Lebanese sovereignty.
The paper also warned that US funding to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces was designed to provoke internal conflict between the army and Hezbollah, predicting that any such clash would draw in what it called "Takfiri Syria" -- a reference to the government in Damascus, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, as a further destabilizing factor.
Skepticism In Iran Over Israel-Lebanon Framework Agreement
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