Our Man in Beirut: General Joseph Aoun, the Commander of Lebanon’s Armed Forces, is Washington’s Handpicked Designee to Safeguard its Local Political Interests

For US policymakers, Aoun is “the only game in town,” in the words of a former Pentagon official.

Screenshot from Twitter page of General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during meeting in Washington on June 12 with General Joseph Aoun, head of Lebanon’s armed forces.

During this week’s visit to Washington by Israel’s charming Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Biden administration sought to appease his concerns it would slow weapons shipments to his country’s military due to its horrific human rights violations by politely noting that nearly half of the $6.5 billion in US security assistance for Israel awarded since last October 7 was approved last month alone, the Washington Post reported yesterday.  Thereby assuaged, Gallant, who International Criminal Prosecutor Karim Khan is asking to be arrested to face charges of crimes against humanity in Gaza, cheerfully declared Israel was prepared to bomb Lebanon – who Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently announced Israel would turn its attention to next since the military campaign against Hamas has been such a smashing success – “back to the Stone Age.”

When Gallant was in town, he met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Earlier this month, another top Middle East defense official passed through Washington almost unnoticed: General Joseph Aoun, Commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, who had discussions with some of the same Biden administration VIPS Gallant did, but much more quietly. The discretion was deliberate because a large chuck of Lebanon’s population, and not just Shias who overwhelmingly support Hezbollah, whose troops, not Aoun’s, will confront the Israel Defense Forces in the event of war, despise the US government owing to its role as Israel’s chief international ally and enabler. 

Making things even more awkward, during Aoun’s visit, which took place the week of June 9, US officials urged him to deploy troops to the country’s border with Israel in predominantly Shia southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is especially popular, as part of Biden’s proposal to negotiate a cease fire in Gaza. The only way that idea could proceed is if Hezbollah agreed to it, which is highly unlikely as it quite understandably doesn’t trust the US to be an honest broker and has made clear that if the US sincerely wants to defuse the military situation in the region, the essential first step is pressuring Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza.

Washington views the Lebanese Armed Forces, or LAF, as its most essential partner in Lebanon, especially to counter Hezbollah, which is a long time US policy priority, though one that’s failed spectacularly. Aoun has had an extremely friendly relationship with the US for years, and has support from all corners of the political spectrum. 

Two years ago, the Biden administration worked furiously behind the scenes in an unsuccessful effort to install him as Lebanon’s president. The general and the LAF are “the only game in town that can preserve the United States’ position and influence in the country,” Bilal Saab, who previously worked at the Pentagon and is currently the director of the Middle East Institute’s Defense and Security Program, once said.

US Marine in position during the 1958 intervention in Lebanon ordered by President Dwight Eisenhower. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

In 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower sent Marines to Lebanon to prop up its pro-Western leader Camille Chamoun, thereby allowing him to complete his term in office. It was the first invocation of the “Eisenhower Doctrine,” which stated that Washington would protect friendly governments threatened by international communism, and an entirely disingenuous rationale to inaugurate it as grounds for military intervention as the major threat to Chamoun's rule came from his predominantly non-communist domestic opponents, who viewed him as a US toady.

Ever since the invasion, the US has trained and equipped the LAF in hopes of transforming it into a comprador military, as it has done so many times in the Middle East and other parts of the world. Washington greatly stepped up its support for the LAF in 2005, when Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon after a 29-year occupation. Between the following year, when Israel and Hezbollah fought a short, bloody war, and 2022, the US sent roughly $2.5 billion in military aid to Lebanon. That includes regular payments to support LAF officers and soldiers beginning five years ago, when military salaries were decimated during the early stages of the country's economic meltdown.

The construction of a mammoth new US embassy complex in Beirut is part of an effort to expand Washington’s influence in Lebanon and the broader region. The CIA and its Lebanese counterpart agency have been close partners for years and sharing intelligence with the US is a condition of continued US underwriting of military pay. As part of the exchange, the B2, the LAF’s military intelligence unit, is required to grant the Defense Intelligence Agency unfettered access to its files, the French publication Intelligence Online reported.

Aoun is not a pure puppet of Washington and has some domestic support beyond the country’s pro-Western parties,but he’s a lot more popular in the US than he is in Lebanon, which is his biggest liability in the eyes of many locals. That’s especially true of Shias, the primary supporters of Hezbollah, but also for other groups who see Washington’s power in the country as a threat to its sovereignty. 

Aoun has allowed US political power in Lebanon to reach “unprecedented levels” since he was appointed to lead the LAF, Hasan Illaik, a journalist with the newspaper Al Akhbar has written. The general is so beholden to Washington, he said, that Lebanon’s “ultimate commander” is the US military attache at the embassy in Beirut.

General Aoun’s ties to Washington date back to 1988, when he came to the US for a Pentagon-sponsored infantry training program. He participated in numerous other military and intelligence initiatives over the following years, including a 2009 counter-terrorism program at the National Defense University (NDU). Aoun came back to Washington shortly after he was appointed to head the LAF eight years later and caught up with old friends and made new ones, and was feted an an event the NDU held in his honor.

As LAF commander, Aoun has embarked on an annual excursion to Washington to discuss bilateral ties between the US and Lebanon. In 2021, he met with General Mark Milley, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brett McGurk, National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, and many other top Pentagon and White House officials. 

A steady stream of congressional delegations have traveled to Lebanon to hold discussions with Aoun as well. Following a 2019 encounter with the general, Congressmen Adam Kinzinger, Tom Graves, and Vicente Gonzalez declared their group included Republicans and Democrats, which they said reflected the universal consensus in Washington regarding the LAF’s critical importance to the US.

Aoun is also beloved in the Washington think tank community as well. The Center for American Progress, which has deep ties to the Democratic Party, issued a report in 2017 after he was named as the LAF’s new commander that emphasized the wide respect he enjoyed among his US counterparts, praised him for “shaking up” the country’s armed forces by appointing “competent officers” to senior positions, at least one who “Hezbollah tried but failed to challenge,” and urged Congress to send more money “to strengthen Lebanon’s counterterrorism capabilities.” 

The general is especially revered in official Washington’s neoconservative circles. “To Push Past Hezbollah Stonewalling, Leverage the LAF,” was the title of a 2021 report published by the Washington Institute, whose Director of Research Patrick Clawson once suggested the US government employ “crisis initiation” to provoke a war with Iran, Hezbollah’s close ally. The report predictably heaped accolades on Aoun for his role as a military leader and US ally.

Aoun’s importance to Washington has only grown greater in recent years as Lebanon’s social fabric unraveled due to a brutal economic crisis, and protests erupted against the country’s corrupt political and business leadership, which became evident in late-2022 following the departure of President Michel Aoun, no relation to the general, when his term expired. Lebanon hasn’t had a president since due to a stalemate that ensued in parliament, which picks the country’s president, between factions backing the two main contenders: Jihad Azour, the IMF's Middle East director, who was primarily backed by Christian and Sunni parties, and the US and its allies; and Suleiman Frangieh, who was supported by Hezbollah and its partner Amal, other domestic forces, and Iran and the two Shia parties’ other friends overseas. 

When neither was able to gain sufficient votes, their foreign supporters began hunting for a compromise candidate. The US, which would have preferred Aoun from the start, promoted the general’s candidacy, which was backed by France, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt as well, but the stalemate continued. 

Installing Aoun would have required a constitutional amendment as military officials are barred from being picked as president unless they’d retired at least six six months before the election in parliament. Aoun, whose tenure as head of the LAF was set to end in January of 2023, hadn’t stepped down at the time of the time of the big push to win him the presidency, though that minor matter was of no concern to his sponsors in the West.

Last December, a majority in parliament voted to extend Aoun’s term at the helm of the LAF for one year, citing the country’s dire political situations, a step that was opposed by Hezbollah, though  backed by its ally Amal. Key support to keep Aoun in place, which the US desperately wanted to happen, came from the Lebanese Forces, a right-wing Christian party that originated as a militia that was financed by Israel and supported it when it invaded the country in 1982. The party has been led since 1986 by Samir Geagea, a convicted war criminal, who helped broker the deal to extend Aoun’s tenure as LAF commander.

Trump administration Secretary of State Michael Pompeo at 2019 meeting in Beirut with Samir Geagea, to his immediate left. State Department photo by Ron Przysucha/Public Domain.

Despite the setback to his presidential aspirations, Aoun remains a political celebrity in Washington. During his visit earlier this month, he met with the usual assortment of top military officials as well as GOP Congressman Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Gregory Meeks, the Committee's ranking Democrat, and Senator Jack Reed, chair of the Armed Services Committee.

The greeting was a sign that General Aoun’s continues to have great prestige in Washington and is viewed as someone who could yet be on great service to the Biden administration and its successors. After all, the US doesn’t have nearly as many friends in the Middle East as it once did, and having a faithful servant in position as Our Man in Beirut still has great value to national security planners.