From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Trump says he is prepared to speak with Hezbollah at Lebanese president’s request
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleJacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
US President Donald Trump says he’s prepared to speak with officials from Hezbollah if Lebanese President Joseph Aoun would like him to.
“I would speak to Hezbollah. I speak to everybody. I’ll speak to people that a lot of people think I shouldn’t be speaking to, and things work out,” Trump tells reporters in the Oval Office alongside Aoun.
“If the president wanted me to speak to Hezbollah, I would,” Trump adds.
Asked whether the US will provide assistance to the Lebanese Armed Forces tasked with disarming Hezbollah, Trump is noncommittal, saying that he’ll be discussing the matter with Aoun privately.
“We have some very concrete plans already in store for that. Others [may be] going in and helping, but [Lebanon is] also becoming much more self-sufficient,” Trump says.
Raising the LAF’s announcement from earlier today that Israeli forces had opened fire in their direction while they were trying to deploy in one of the first pilot zones, a reporter asks Trump whether he will pressure Israel on the issue.
Trump says he just heard about the incident and will be looking into it further. The IDF says it fired warning shots at Lebanese troops crossing into an Israeli-held buffer zone.
The Times of Israel Community.