Trump Wants Syria to ‘Fight Hezbollah’ in Lebanon

And both Israel and Lebanon are appalled. Trump sees Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa as a “strong leader,” someone who can take on Hezbollah and deal better with it than Israel. That is not how either Beirut or Jerusalem sees things. More on Trump’s suggestion that Lebanon let Syria back in to crush Hezbollah can be found here: “Trump presses Syria to take on Hezbollah, raising alarm in both Lebanon and Israel, Associated Press, June 29, 2026:

As the White House has soured on Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, U.S. President Donald Trump has shocked many in the region by pushing an alternative: Let Syria fight the Iran-backed militant group instead.

He has suggested that the battle-hardened and Islamist-led insurgents who overthrew Syria’s autocratic President Bashar Assad a year and a half ago and formed a new government would do a better job of rooting out Hezbollah than the Israeli army.

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa has said he has no interest in doing so, and has asserted that Trump’s comments were misconstrued. But Trump has doubled down on the idea….

On the sidelines of the G7 summit earlier this month, Trump complained that Israel’s war with Hezbollah is dragging on too long and “too many people are being killed.”

More than 4,000 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since Hezbollah joined the wider Iran war with a March 2 attack on Israel, including hundreds of women and children. Israel says its strikes target Hezbollah and that it takes measures to protect civilians.

“You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses and they’re not all Hezbollah,” Trump said.

“I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah. ‘Cause to be honest with you, I think they’d do a better job.”

Days later, on the first day of U.S.-Iran talks in Switzerland, Fox News’ Trey Yingst said that, during an interview, Trump had expressed disappointment that Israel can’t “put Hezbollah away” and said that he is “close to giving it to Syria” because he thinks al-Sharaa would be more precise….

If Trump thinks the Syrian army would be more precise in its strikes, and kill fewer civilians, than the IDF, then he is clearly unfamiliar with how the Syrian army has behaved since 1976, when it first entered Lebanon, guns blazing or when, during the Syrian civil war, it crushed Assad’s enemies. Think only of the 40,000 civilians that the Syrian army killed in 1982, when it flattened Hama.

In a June 21 interview with the Emirati network Al Mashhad, al-Sharaa said Trump’s remarks had been misunderstood.

Trump “spoke about Syria’s role in finding a safe and peaceful solution, but the statement was misinterpreted as if Syria were going to invade Lebanon tomorrow morning,” al-Sharaa said….

No, Trump meant what he said: he thinks Syria should enter Lebanon in order to subdue and disarm Hezbollah. And Syria has no intention of doing that. What we have here, as it says in Cool Hand Luke, is “a failure to communicate.”

Randa Slim, director of the Middle East Program at the Washington-based Stimson Center, said Trump’s proposal is, “at best, driven by a profound ignorance of the dynamics on the ground.”

“Syria needs to focus on a myriad of complex and daunting challenges — not least rebuilding a shattered country and repatriating millions of refugees,” she said. “Syrian forces are far from a coherent military institution; they include thousands of foreign jihadi fighters of uncertain loyalty and discipline.”…

In fact, Trump seems not to realize that al-Sharaa is a Sunni jihadist, and not the “moderate in a suit” that he pretends to be. Al-Sharaa has allowed the Syrian army to attack both the Alawites in Idlib province and also the Druze whose stronghold is the Sweida governorate, between Damascus and the border with northern Israel. Not only should al-Sharaa be concentrating on putting his own house in order, and protecting the country’s minorities — the Christians, Druze, and Kurds — instead of meddling in Lebanese matters, but he needs to be kept out of Lebanon for another reason. Once inside Lebanon, his army would likely remain in Lebanon, setting up permanent bases that will certainly alarm Israel. Fortunately, he’s made clear he doesn’t want to go into Lebanon. He has enough on his plate.

Many Lebanese also have bitter memories of the decades of Syrian occupation of Lebanon, which began during the Lebanese civil war, initially at the request of Lebanese authorities and with the backing of Arab states, ending in 2005.

That history remains firmly in Lebanese minds. They don’t want a repetition of the past, when Syria was invited in to impose a Pax Syriana on the warring parties in the Lebanese civil war, but ended up staying for 29 years, from 1976 to 2005, effectively ruling Lebanon for much of that time.

The [Israeli] official who spoke anonymously said that Israel is also concerned about some signs that Syria could assume its old role in Lebanese politics. But the official said while Israel is closely watching developments between Syria and Lebanon, its main concern is Hezbollah.

And it is not Syria, but the IDF and the newly-strengthened Lebanese Armed Forces that together will disarm Hezbollah, whatever our president may so bizarrely think.

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