Top US military officer General Dan Caine met with Rodolphe Haykal this week, a spokesman said on Thursday, after a previously planned visit by the Lebanese army commander to Washington was cancelled.
Caine held talks with Haykal on Tuesday and with Qatar’s defence chief the day before, “reaffirming the importance of the United States’ enduring defence relationships in the Middle East,” US Joint Staff spokesman Joseph Holstead said in a statement, without providing further details.
Haykal had been scheduled to visit Washington in November 2025, but the trip was called off after US political and military officials cancelled their meetings with him just hours before he was due to depart, a military source told AFP at the time.
Those who cancelled included influential Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who at the time criticised what he described as Haykal’s “almost non-existent effort to disarm Hezbollah.”
On Thursday, Graham said on X that he had abruptly ended their meeting after asking Haykal whether the Lebanese military considered Hezbollah to be “a terrorist organisation”.
Graham said that Haykal replied, “No, not in the context of Lebanon.”
The Lebanese military announced last month that it had completed the first phase of its plan to disarm the militant group, covering the area between the Israeli border and the Litani River.
Under a November 2024 truce aimed at ending more than a year of hostilities, Iran-backed Hezbollah is required to withdraw its forces north of the Litani and dismantle its military infrastructure in the evacuated areas, while Israeli forces must exit Lebanon.
However, Hezbollah has rejected calls to surrender its weapons, and Israel has continued regular strikes on Lebanon while maintaining troops in five areas near the border that it considers strategic.
