Can Washington force Israel to comply with a U.S.-Iranian deal it rejects?

The U.S. and Iran both say they’ll sign a memorandum of understanding to end months of hostilities, but its ultimate success or failure may hinge on two regional actors left outside the room.

Neither Israel nor the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah was represented in the negotiations that produced the framework, which was announced late Sunday and subsequently confirmed by U.S. President Donald Trump and Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Monday.

Iranian officials are unequivocal that Lebanon is covered by the agreement and that Israel must not just halt hostilities against Hezbollah, but that the Israel Defence Forces must also withdraw from all the areas of southern Lebanon they now occupy.

Ending the war in Lebanon is an inseparable part of the ceasefire agreement, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Monday.

In response to a question from CBC News senior international correspondent Margaret Evans, who’s in Tehran, Baghaei said the Iranian expectation is that the U.S. will ensure Israeli compliance.

“America must live up to its responsibility to ensure the Zionist entity [Israel] will stop its war against Lebanon,” he said.

In his country’s first official statement on the U.S.-Iran deal, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz  said his country will not be bound by the terms of the deal, nor will it withdraw from southern Lebanon.

“The IDF will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza without a time limit,” he said in a statement.

Katz characterized Israel’s seizure of territory south of Lebanon’s Litani River, where it has destroyed homes and villages the IDF claims are being used by Hezbollah, as “among the IDF’s greatest achievements in the war.”

Speaking on U.S. television Monday, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance appeared to suggest Israel has little choice but to go along with the deal.

“We certainly expect the Israelis will be participants in this peace process,” said Vance.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia, and Israel have been locked in war for much of the last 40 years.

The militants, who draw their members and strength from Shia communities in southern Lebanon and Beirut, joined Hamas in attacking Israel following its Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.

Successive ceasefires negotiated by mediators have been broken by both sides, with the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon expanding since late May.

‘Escalation valve’

“In many ways, this is a de-escalation bridge,” said Sajjan Gohel, international security director at the Asia-Pacific Foundation and a visiting teacher at the London School of Economics.

Gohel said the difference now is that Iran has successfully linked the fighting in Lebanon to the broader conflict in the Middle East.

“It has been looking at Lebanon … as an escalation valve where it can put direct pressure on the United States. And that of course creates uncertainty because Israel is not a signatory to this ‘de-escalation bridge’ so it complicates how this may progress,” Gohel told CBC News Network.

Veteran Middle East watcher Janice Stein, founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, says the day following the deal began relatively quietly in Lebanon — but who knows for how long.

“It’s one of the really important areas of ambiguity. Iran says Lebanon is a party [to the deal]. Israel says it is not,” said Stein.

“I think a big takeaway here is that neither the United States but also Iran does not want to go back to war.”

For Trump, economists say the war has pushed up energy prices, fuelling inflation and driving up costs for Americans preparing to vote in mid-term elections.

People in Iran’s who recently spoke to CBC News described a broken economy with basic goods doubling or tripling in price since the war began.

Time and again during Monday’s Iranian Foreign Ministry briefing, Baghaei evoked the economic possibilities the deal with the United States could bring.

Iranian media have reported the country has more than $24 billion US of assets frozen overseas and reopening the Strait of Hormuz could let the country start selling its oil to overseas customers once again.

Baghaei also talked about relief from years of crippling international sanctions, although that is one of the key points to be negotiated over the next 60 days.

“Iran has emerged from the war significantly weakened militarily, facing an economy under even greater strain than before the conflict,” Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, said in a briefing note that also struck a note of caution.

“Weakened does not mean without leverage,” it said.

Lebanon’s government, which was also not part of the agreement, issued a statement Monday on behalf of President Joseph Aoun, saying the “recognition of Lebanon’s stability and security” must be part of any lasting deal in the region.

Aoun’s government has been trying to assert its own sovereignty in the conflict by holding historic direct talks with Israel, and attempting — largely unsuccessfully — to get Hezbollah militants to turn over their weapons to the country’s national army.

Many Lebanese, particularly Christians, Druze and Sunni Muslims, which make up roughly two-thirds of Lebanon’s population, oppose the Shia-dominated Hezbollah, but even together have been too politically and militarily weak to reign in the militant group.

Israel has agreed in principle to return some small parts of southern Lebanon it now occupies and let the Lebanese army take over, but details on how that will work have been vague.

Internal divisions

Within Israel, Trump’s agreement with Iran has been condemned by many media commentators as a sellout that will only empower the Islamic republic.

Many Israelis, particularly in northern Israel, are in favour of continuing to attack Hezbollah and support the IDF’s occupation of southern Lebanon.

“For Israel, in one word, it’s a bad agreement, in two words, a very bad agreement,” former prime minister Ehud Barak said in an interview with CBC News.

“We tried to make wars very short, aggressive on enemies’ territory and within the shortest possible time to translate achievements on the battlefield into sustainable … political diplomatic results. Somehow we, our leadership, forgot these lessons,” he said.

Channel 12 commentator Amit Segal, who’s seen to be close to the Netanyahu government, also lamented the apparent bind created for Israel by the agreement in an online post Monday.

Segal said the Trump-negotiated agreement “leaves the door open for Iran to drag its feet in negotiations” at Israel’s expense, that it’s time for Israel to “stand up to Trump” and that Netanyahu shouldn’t let the U.S. president dictate Israeli policy.

War goals unfulfilled

Israel and the United States co-launched the current war against Iran on Feb. 28, targeting the country’s top leadership, nuclear installations and ballistic missile sites.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Iranians to overthrow their leaders, as he stated the goals of the war were to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile threat to Israel and destroy its network of proxy armies, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Despite tactical blows, those goals remain unfulfilled.

The agreement leaves the Islamic regime in place, the ballistic missile threat intact and Hezbollah weakened but still lethal. Even the status of Iran’s nuclear program is uncertain as its stocks of enriched uranium will be part of the discussions over the next 60 days.

Indeed, in an apparent statement of defiance, Iran has scheduled the funeral for the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated by U.S. and Israeli missile strikes, for July 4, the same date as the United States will celebrate its 250th anniversary.

Sajjan Gohel of the London School of Economics doubts that’s a coincidence.

“It could be that Iran maybe deliberately is trying to demonstrate that they have been able to withstand this conflict, that they’ve been able to endure.”