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Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of the Republic of Lebanon, Jul. 21, 2026

July 21, 2026 · The White House · 0:30:13

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump hosted the President of the Republic of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun, for a bilateral meeting at the White House on July 21, 2026. “It’s a great pleasure to be with the president of Lebanon. He’s highly respected in his country and actually long beyond his country,” Trump said, adding that Lebanon “has been a very mistreated country for a long period of time” and that “we’re going to have it properly treated and treated with respect that it deserves.” He acknowledged, in his words, that “there’s a Hezbollah problem, but we’ve done some things that I think the world will take notice.”

President Aoun, speaking of a framework, described “the ultimate objective of ending the state of hostility between Lebanon and Israel forever,” telling Trump, “I think Mr. President this will be your legacy… It’s about time for Lebanon and for the whole region to be stable and secure.” Asked by a Lebanese reporter whether there is a clear timeline for the Israeli army to fully withdraw from Lebanon, Trump said, “They’re in the process of doing that. They’re in the process of redeploying to other sections,” and called the agreement Lebanon signed with Israel “a great agreement.” The two also took a question on the Abraham Accords and Lebanon’s 1955 law criminalizing contact with Israelis, which Aoun said he would raise.

Why it matters

A Lebanon–Israel framework would extend the administration’s Middle East normalization track beyond the Abraham Accords, and this meeting is the file’s anchor document: the objective as the Lebanese president stated it, and the withdrawal answer as the President gave it, both on the record.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: the framework objective stated by President Aoun (ending the Lebanon–Israel state of hostility) and President Trump’s on-record statement that Israeli redeployment is already in process. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; the entry itself stays review-gated.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of the Republic of Lebanon,” July 21, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All characterizations as stated by the two presidents at the meeting.