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Lebanese President Joseph Aoun will meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday to present a plan for disarming Iran-backed Hezbollah and securing the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon.
The meeting will mark Aoun’s first visit to the White House and his first face-to-face talks with Trump. He will also become the first Lebanese head of state in nearly 20 years to visit the White House.
Aoun, who commanded Lebanon’s U.S.-backed military before being elected president last year, is expected to ask Trump to pressure Israel to implement a U.S.-brokered agreement reached between Lebanon and Israel on June 26.
The agreement seeks to disarm Hezbollah, arrange a gradual Israeli troop withdrawal and prepare the ground for peaceful relations between the two countries.
A Lebanese official said Aoun would give Trump a written proposal outlining how Hezbollah’s extensive weapons arsenal could be decommissioned.
According to the official, Aoun believes Trump is the only leader with enough leverage to pressure Israel to withdraw its forces and help Lebanon restore its sovereignty.
In comments published by his office last week, Aoun said he would ask Trump to “exert the necessary pressure on Israel” to carry out the June 26 agreement.
The meeting comes as Israeli troops continue to occupy an area of southern Lebanon and hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people remain displaced following Israeli attacks.
Hezbollah has firmly rejected direct negotiations between the Lebanese government and Israel, as well as state efforts to remove the group’s weapons.
Aoun has also stopped short of accepting Trump’s call for him to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Aoun, 62, became president last year shortly before Trump began his second term in the White House. The U.S. welcomed his election.
During his swearing-in ceremony, Aoun pledged to affirm “the state’s right to a monopoly on arms.”
His first year as president was largely defined by the government’s effort to disarm Hezbollah, which was founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982 and has fought several wars with Israel.
Lebanese troops deployed in southern Lebanon to collect Hezbollah weapons caches under the terms of a ceasefire that followed the 2024 war.
The operation proceeded without opposition from Hezbollah, which had been weakened by the Israeli offensive.
Aoun’s rise reflected a major change in Lebanon’s balance of power following the devastating Israeli campaign against Hezbollah in 2024 and the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Hezbollah ally.
Those developments weakened the group and reduced its long-standing influence over the Lebanese state.
A new war began early in the second year of Aoun’s presidency after Hezbollah fired at Israel on March 2 in support of Iran, which was under U.S. and Israeli attack.
The Hezbollah assault triggered an Israeli air and ground campaign that has killed more than 4,300 people, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
The reported death toll includes nearly 800 children, women and medical workers.
The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, while Hezbollah has not announced how many of its fighters have been killed.
After the war began, Aoun quickly called for direct negotiations with Israel, marking a historic shift for a country that has been repeatedly invaded by Israel since 1978.
The initiative resulted in the highest-level face-to-face contacts between Lebanon and Israel in decades.
It also prompted strong criticism from Hezbollah and its supporters.
Aoun has maintained his position, criticizing Hezbollah for beginning the war and saying Lebanon was being destroyed for Iran’s sake.
Aoun was born in Sin al-Fil, an eastern suburb of Beirut, while his family originally comes from southern Lebanon.
He is a Maronite Christian, as required under Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system.
Under that system, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister must be a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament must be a Shiite Muslim.
A career soldier, Aoun was wounded twice and continues to carry a shrapnel injury.
His first military assignment came in 1985, when he served as a platoon commander in the army rangers during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.
Shortly after becoming army commander, Aoun oversaw a military campaign that drove Islamic State militants from the Syrian-Lebanese border.
He later led the armed forces through the crisis caused by Lebanon’s 2019 financial collapse, which devastated the national currency after decades of state corruption and poor governance.
During the crisis, Aoun warned that the Lebanese military, which he described as “the backbone of the country,” could collapse.
In an unusually political statement for an army commander, he criticized Lebanon’s political leaders and said soldiers were going hungry along with the rest of the population.
“What do you intend to do?” he asked politicians at the time.
Aoun’s election ended a two-year presidential vacancy that followed the conclusion of former President Michel Aoun’s term in 2022.
The two men are not related.
Joseph Aoun has also pledged to pursue long-delayed economic reforms and seek justice for the victims of the 2020 Beirut port explosion.
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