Mike Baker

But when you look a little closer at what was discussed on Tuesday, the gap between Jerusalem and Beirut is still very real, and it's not clear just yet how to bridge it.

Israel is walking into this process with a red line, no ceasefire, no deal, until Hezbollah is disarmed.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar has made clear that disarmament has to come before any normalization or peace agreement.

From a U.S.

and Israeli perspective, that logic is straightforward.

As we've long discussed here on the PDB, Hezbollah isn't just some proxy.

It's an Iranian-backed terror group sitting on Israel's northern border, launching rockets and effectively acting as an extension of Tehran's regional strategy.

But on the other side, the Lebanese government doesn't even have the authority to meet that demand.

Their envoy came into these talks with a much narrower mandate, focused strictly on securing a ceasefire and easing immediate military pressure in the country.

Now, even as these talks wrapped up in Washington with no clear breakthrough, the fighting on the ground is intensifying.

This current phase of the war really traces its roots back to the immediate aftermath of Hamas's brutal 7 October attacks in 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel after those attacks in support of Hamas.

Since then, there have been lulls and pauses in operations, but in reality, what we're seeing now is the same conflict as post-7 October.

Since then, Israel has been steadily expanding its operations inside southern Lebanon.

According to the Israeli military, the IDF has now encircled several key towns in Lebanon's south, while also carrying out intensified strikes Tuesday just some 60 miles south of Beirut.

At the same time, Hezbollah hasn't slowed down.

Rockets are still being launched into northern Israel, with at least 10 detected within the first hour after talks began yesterday.

Now, layer on the broader regional picture, and the pursuit for peace becomes even more challenging.

These talks were carried out just a week into the fragile ceasefire between the U.S., Israel, and Iran.

But I want to point out that the agreement doesn't clearly cover Hezbollah or the Lebanese front.

Tehran has been pushing to include Hezbollah in any broader deal, trying to tie this front directly into negotiations over the wider war and to draw the U.S.