While Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to maintain a low profile while the Iran war’s violence was at its apex, content to focus on projects closer to his heart in the Americas, he has now re-emerged at the helm of Israel-Lebanon diplomacy. That diplomacy has produced an agreement that is roiling Lebanese society, perceived as a functional surrender to the ongoing Israeli occupation. Many commentators were impressed by Vice President JD Vance’s candid rebukes of Israeli excesses, but Rubio’s Lebanon track demonstrates how the pro-Israel wing of the White House is reasserting itself, peace with Iran be damned.

The Lebanon front may receive far less media attention than the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its economic fallout, but it has been no less central to the helter-skelter effort to end Trump and Netanyahu’s war. When the U.S. and Iran first agreed to a cease-fire in April, Pakistani intermediaries reported the terms to include a cease-fire in Lebanon as well. Within a day, Israel launched one of its deadliest single days of airstrikes on Lebanon since the beginning of the war—named “Operation Eternal Darkness,” in classic Israeli tact—killing at least 357 people. Vance insisted that it was a “misunderstanding” that the Iranians believed the cease-fire extended to Lebanon. Two months later, Iran struck northern Israel in retaliation for what they insisted were Israel’s continued and flagrant cease-fire violations in Lebanon, leading to the first direct military exchange between the countries since April and a high-wire diplomatic intervention from the U.S. to prevent the region—and gas prices—from combusting anew.

The terms of the hailed memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran include, unambiguously, an “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon” and “ensuring [its] territorial integrity and sovereignty” in its very first point. Vance and even President Trump himself made public statements on how Israel’s attacks on Lebanon killed far too many civilians and often seemed perfectly timed to undermine progress in U.S.-Iran talks. The seeming red light from the White House gave its most hawkish, pro-Israel backers evident heartburn; the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which has been the Iran war’s loudest cheerleader and partially staffed Trump’s Iran team, bemoaned how the memorandum protected Hezbollah even as they killed Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil.

Luckily for the hawks, Marco Rubio came to the rescue. On June 26, the secretary announced the official “Trilateral Framework” between Israel, Lebanon, and the U.S., a culmination of diplomacy that had been conducted in fits and starts since April. Far from the memorandum’s hard line on a Lebanon cease-fire and sovereignty, the framework consists of a total surrender of Lebanon’s sovereignty to Israel. Its terms condition the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon on verified disarmament of “non-state armed groups”—a provision aimed squarely at Hezbollah—and the “dismantlement of associated infrastructure,” which has in practice meant the detonation of entire villages by the IDF. In an attempt to clarify any further “misunderstandings” over what diplomacy means for Lebanon, the framework makes copious references to Lebanon’s “sovereignty” and “territorial integrity” solely in the context of how Hezbollah’s continued existence jeopardizes them.