Lebanon’s prime minister came to Washington on Monday seeking a timetable for Israeli withdrawal and help disarming Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister arrived the same day with critical shipping routes under threat from another Iranian ally, the Houthis.
By Wednesday, the final U.S. troops left Iraq, ending a 12-year mission against the Islamic State. A deadline for Iran-aligned militias to disarm on the same day of the U.S. departure meanwhile had been pushed to next year.
The week’s events showed how much could be on the table in renewed U.S.-Iran diplomacy beyond reopening the Strait of Hormuz and addressing Iran’s nuclear program. For U.S. partners, a remaining concern is whether a ceasefire deal would also bring relief from attacks by Tehran’s allies.
Asked by MBN whether Washington is seeking commitments from Iran to restrain its proxies as part of a ceasefire, a State Department spokesperson referred the questions to the White House, which did not respond.
Even which conflicts an agreement should cover remains unsettled. Iran regards the Saudi-Houthi conflict as separate, while demanding a ceasefire include Lebanon. Washington, meanwhile, has sought to negotiate the Israel-Lebanon agreement separately, even as it insists Iran’s ongoing support for Hezbollah is a live issue for talks with Tehran.
Pakistan, which has helped mediate U.S.-Iran talks this year, cautioned against assuming Tehran’s allies will follow its lead.
“Some of these proxies, they become rogue,” Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said Tuesday, suggesting that the Houthis and some Iraqi militias act with substantial independence from Iran.
Lebanon’s Unfinished Agreement
The U.S.-Iran war spread to Lebanon on March 2, two days after the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Tehran. Hezbollah attacked Israel, citing the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Israel responded with airstrikes and later a ground invasion that led to its occupation of southern Lebanon.
The Israel-Lebanon conflict was part of a June 17 U.S.-Iran ceasefire memorandum, but every side involved almost immediately disputed what the agreement meant. Tehran said it required Israeli withdrawal; Israel rejected that condition, and U.S. officials said the agreement did not require it.
A week later, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio brokered a separate framework that called for phased Israeli withdrawal as Lebanese troops took control of “pilot zones,” with further withdrawals tied to the program’s success. Disarming Hezbollah was a central U.S. objective.
However, implementation remains limited. During Monday’s meeting with Rubio, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam sought a timetable for further withdrawals and a mechanism to verify compliance, according to his office.
Lebanese government sources separately told MBN that during Salam’s visit to Washington, Beirut was urged to act more concretely on Hezbollah’s disarmament, to expand the army’s deployment in the south, and dismantle the group’s financial networks as part of the security deal with Israel.
In his public readout of the meeting with Salam, Rubio said the “only path to a durable peace” with Israel was the U.S.-brokered deal.
“The United States stands with a sovereign Lebanon, free from Hezbollah and Iranian influence,” Rubio said.
Saudi Arabia Seeks Protection
Saudi Arabia’s immediate objective is protection from attacks by the Houthis, whose place in a wider U.S.-Iran settlement remains less clear.
In his Monday meeting with Rubio, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan stressed the need for an “uninterrupted flow of global trade and supply chains” through Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to the west, according to the readout.
Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline carries its oil to the Red Sea, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz and the threat Iran poses to ships there. But attacks on the pipeline have exposed the vulnerability of that alternative route, even as tanker loadings at Yanbu resumed this week.
With the U.S.-Iran war now in its eighth month, Riyadh has explicitly sought American strikes against the Houthis, who have threatened to attack Saudi-linked tankers, but has been denied. Iranian officials, for their part, have offered to help “mediate” a Saudi-Houthi deal.
But Tehran’s insistence that the Saudi-Houthi conflict is separate from its conflict with the United States leaves unclear what restraint it would seek — or could secure — under a broader ceasefire deal with Washington.
Iraq’s Deferred Disarmament
The attacks on Saudi Arabia also show why Iran’s role in Iraq matters to the wider regional security order. Baghdad acknowledged last month that strikes on the East-West pipeline originated on Iraqi territory, although an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias there denied responsibility.
Baghdad had intended the militias’ disarmament to coincide with the Sept. 30 withdrawal of U.S. forces. The troops left on schedule, but Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi has extended the deadline for giving up weapons to June 2027, after failing to secure agreements from the powerful Shiite militias.
As the last U.S. forces departed Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said responsibility for addressing Iraq’s remaining threats, including the Iran-aligned militias, “now rests with the Government of Iraq.”
U.S. President Donald Trump expressed confidence in Zaidi’s ability to manage things. “Prime Minister al-Zaidi, is outstanding, and he will hopefully be able to handle things very well,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Baghdad must now prevent cross-border attacks while the Iranian-backed groups it has pledged to disarm retain their weapons. The broader question, though, is whether Tehran will commit to restraining its allies —and whether Washington will seek to make that a condition of a ceasefire deal.
