Lebanon Agrees to Be an Israeli Protectorate

https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/06/trilateral-framework-between-the-united-states-of-america-the-state-of-israel-and-the-republic-of-lebanon

Here is the trilateral framework agreement between the US, Israel, and Lebanon from the US State Department website. The key operational clauses are 2. and 3. The statements in the subsequent clauses are legalistic and clever. They seek to establish that the agreement insures Lebanon’s sovereignty. That may be used in the near future to argue that Israel’s continued military occupation of Lebanon is not a violation of the Islamabad agreement between the US and Iran..

The later clauses make clear that the intention is to  eliminate the non-state armed groups in Lebanon before Israel withdraws. The continued enforcement of that is on the LAF, the Lebanese government’s military, which is very weak and whose primary funding comes from the US. To any reasonable person, it looks like a justification for a forever war of expansion against Hezbollah by Israel into Lebanon.

The agreement cleverly supports the worst interests of those who control the US, Israeli, and Lebanese governments. The US can now assert that Lebanese sovereignty has been restored and the US is therefore not in violation of clause 1 of the Islamabad agreement. In other words, it frees the US from its obligation under the agreement to restrain Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Israel can assert that its occupying forces are not invaders but rather in place and fighting at the bequest of Lebanon. The Lebanese government gets help in retaining their place as the sole legitimate governing body of the nation, even though they are incapable of self defense and incapable of maintaining peace within their own borders. If the LAF is kept weak through lack of funding as will almost certainly be the case, the Israeli occupation will push Hezbollah into territory outside the occupied zones and the occupation will then be justified in their further expansion.

This agreement will, in my estimation, be a likely model for an agreement the US and Israel will attempt to forge with the Palestinian Authority to justify the continued Israeli military/police presence in Gaza and possibly in the West Bank also. That would bring those regions under protectorate status as has been done for Lebanon.