Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tuesday that a tentative peace deal to end the war with the U.S. requires Israel to withdraw from Lebanon [2].
The demand introduces a significant complication to diplomatic efforts, as it ties a bilateral agreement between Tehran and Washington to the actions of a third party. Because Israel has already rejected this condition, the viability of the peace framework remains uncertain [2].
Araghchi said that the war would "not fully come to an end" without Israeli forces leaving territories occupied during the present conflict [1]. The Iranian envoy said that the continued presence of Israeli forces in southern Lebanon would violate the terms of any agreement reached with the U.S. [3].
This positioning suggests that Iran views the regional conflict as a single, interconnected theater. By linking the U.S. peace process to the Lebanese border, Tehran is leveraging its diplomatic negotiations to pressure Israel into a strategic retreat, a move that contradicts Israel's current security posture.
State television reports indicate that Iranian officials consider the end of the occupation of Lebanon a non-negotiable component of the broader ceasefire [5]. The U.S. has not yet issued a formal response to Araghchi's specific demand regarding the Lebanese territories.
“War 'not fully come to an end' without Israeli forces leaving territories occupied during present conflict.”
By conditioning a peace deal with the U.S. on Israeli troop movements in Lebanon, Iran is effectively expanding the scope of negotiations. This strategy shifts the focus from a direct U.S.-Iran conflict to a broader regional settlement, making the agreement dependent on Israeli compliance. Given that Israel has already rejected the condition, the peace deal faces a stalemate unless the U.S. can broker a separate compromise with Israel or Iran decides to decouple the two issues.
