Israel’s UN Ambassador Danon tells CNN the Lebanon ceasefire extension is “not 100%,” warning Hezbollah is firing rockets to sabotage the truce and the Lebanese government cannot control the group. (CNN/Truth Social).

Summary:

• Trump announced via Truth Social that the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has been extended by three weeks following an Oval Office meeting
• The meeting included VP JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, alongside high-ranking representatives from Israel and Lebanon
• Trump said the US will work with Lebanon to help it protect itself from Hezbollah, and looked forward to hosting Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in Washington
• Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told CNN the extended ceasefire is “not 100%,” expressing doubt about Lebanon’s ability to enforce the truce
• Danon said the Lebanese government has no control over Hezbollah, which he accused of firing rockets to deliberately sabotage the ceasefire
• Israel has stated it will retaliate every time it identifies a threat, creating a volatile hair-trigger dynamic
• Danon acknowledged the situation is “significantly better” than before but stopped well short of confidence in a durable outcome

President Donald Trump announced via Truth Social on Thursday that the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has been extended by three weeks, following what he described as a historic Oval Office meeting with high-ranking representatives from both countries. Within hours, however, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations was casting significant doubt on how durable that extension would prove to be.

Trump’s post outlined a senior-level gathering that included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa. The President said the meeting went very well, that the United States would work with Lebanon to help it protect itself from Hezbollah, and that he looked forward to hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in Washington in the near future. “It was a Great Honor to be a participant at this very Historic Meeting,” Trump wrote.

The upbeat tone from the White House was quickly complicated by remarks from Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon, speaking to CNN’s Jim Sciutto. Asked about the ceasefire extension, Danon was notably guarded. “I have to be honest,” he said, adding that the Lebanese government has no control over Hezbollah and that the group is actively firing rockets in an apparent effort to sabotage the truce. Israel’s position, he made clear, is that it will retaliate every time it identifies a threat, a stance that creates a volatile and unpredictable dynamic on the ground regardless of what has been agreed diplomatically.

Danon did acknowledge that the current situation represents an improvement on what existed before the ceasefire, describing it as “significantly better.” But he was careful not to overstate confidence in the outcome, expressing concern about whether the Lebanese military is genuinely capable of implementing and enforcing the terms of the agreement in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah operates with considerable autonomy from the central government in Beirut.

The gap between Trump’s characteristically bullish framing of the White House talks and Danon’s on-the-record caution is telling. It reflects the fundamental tension at the heart of the Lebanon ceasefire: an agreement reached between governments and diplomats that must ultimately be enforced on terrain where one of the principal actors, Hezbollah, operates outside the Lebanese state’s control and has its own strategic calculus shaped as much by Tehran as by Beirut.

For the ceasefire to hold and for the three-week extension to translate into something more durable, the Lebanese military would need to demonstrate a capacity and willingness to restrain Hezbollah that it has not yet shown. Until that changes, the extension buys time but does not resolve the underlying problem, leaving the situation one miscalculation away from renewed and potentially broader escalation.