U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Lebanese President Joseph Aoun at the White House on Tuesday, July 21, marking the first meeting between the two leaders and the first visit to Washington by a Lebanese head of state in nearly 20 years.
Aoun arrived seeking direct American pressure on Israel to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon and presented Trump with a written plan for disarming Hezbollah. The visit comes as Israel has begun a limited pullback from several villages it occupies in southern Lebanon, part of a "pilot zone" agreement brokered by Washington last week in Rome.
The talks come at a fraught moment for Lebanon, with hundreds of thousands displaced in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, as Aoun pushes for U.S. military and financial support to help enforce a June framework agreement calling for a phased Israeli withdrawal in exchange for Hezbollah's disarmament.
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