Lebanon-Israel Talks Resume in Rome as U.S. Mediates Amid Regional Tensions
Lebanon and Israel are holding new negotiations in Rome on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, under U.S. auspices, as renewed fighting between Washington and Tehran escalates across West Asia. The two nations, officially at war for decades, reached a framework agreement on June 26 after five rounds of talks in Washington aimed at ending the war between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and paving the way for peace.
However, Hezbollah has rejected the agreement, which calls for the group’s disarmament and whose implementation would begin with an Israeli withdrawal from two “pilot zones” in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese presidency announced on Monday that its delegation to Rome was instructed “to demand the immediate start of Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the two pilot zones before any further discussion”.
According to a Lebanese diplomatic source familiar with the talks, “the Lebanese army is ready to gradually take control of the localities from which the Israeli army would withdraw”. Israel, for its part, is willing to withdraw gradually, but on condition “that there will be no presence of Hezbollah in the areas that Israel is withdrawing from”, said Orna Mizrahi of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. She added that Israel seeks to ensure “that the Lebanese army will have the ability to keep it as a neutralised zone that Hezbollah cannot come into again”.
A U.S. military delegation began discussions with the Lebanese army in Beirut on Saturday, July 11, on the process for Israeli withdrawal from one of the pilot zones. The framework agreement was concluded after a fragile ceasefire took effect in the war between Hezbollah and Israel. However, the Israeli army has continued limited strikes in southern Lebanon and has been carrying out demolitions in villages it occupies, according to official Lebanese media. Since the war began in early March, Israeli strikes and ground invasion have killed more than 4,300 people, according to Lebanese authorities.
Karim Bitar, a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, told AFP that “the chances of a breakthrough in Rome are quite limited”. Instead, he said, the talks might serve “to show that the process is still in place… that there are negotiations continuing despite the opposition and obstacles”.
The regional context has worsened in recent days. The U.S. carried out a third consecutive night of strikes against Iran ahead of the planned reimposition on Tuesday of its naval blockade of Iranian ports. Tehran had demanded a ceasefire in Lebanon in order to conclude a memorandum of understanding with Washington on June 17, but now wants to link negotiations over the regional war and Lebanon. The INSS’s Mizrahi said, “We have the wish to disconnect it,” adding that Tehran’s priorities today are the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear file. “The Iranians are using Lebanon as an excuse. They will always use it as an excuse,” she said.
Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the regional war on March 2 by launching missiles at Israel in support of Iran. Bitar said the risk of major fighting returning to Lebanon “is, of course, not negligible”, but he believes Iran “will think twice before asking Hezbollah to launch new strikes against Israel”. Tehran “wants to maintain Hezbollah as a long-term deterrent tool and does not want to use it immediately to open a new front,” he said.
