Lebanon Army Chief Heads to Pakistan as Munir Pushes Iran Mediation

BEIRUT — Lebanese army commander Gen. Rudolf Haykal is travelling to Pakistan at the invitation of Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, as Islamabad steps up an effort to broker an off-ramp to the US-Israel war on Iran, Middle East Eye reported Saturday. The visit lands the same day Israeli munitions killed three Lebanese army soldiers in the south, putting Lebanon’s exposure to the broader regional war at the center of the Pakistani initiative.

Haykal’s trip, confirmed by the Lebanese army, is the highest-level military exchange between Beirut and Islamabad since the Iran war began and is the clearest signal yet that Pakistan intends to draw Lebanon into the mediation track it has been building since spring. Munir’s team has spent the past five weeks shuttling between Tehran, Washington, Doha and Riyadh, and Lebanon has emerged as one of the key pressure points the mediators are trying to defuse.

Pakistan widens the mediation map

Pakistan’s role in the current cycle began with the Iran peace proposal it carried into Washington on May 1, a phased framework built around Strait of Hormuz freedom of navigation and a return to nuclear talks. Tehran responded to the US counter-proposal through Islamabad on May 10, keeping Pakistan as the back channel even after the formal Muscat track stalled.

Since then, Munir has run what amounts to a dual-track effort, pairing direct contact with Iranian Supreme National Security Council officials with consultations in Western capitals. The Lebanese leg widens that map for the first time to include a state on the receiving end of Israeli fire rather than a sponsor of the talks themselves.

The choice of Haykal as the interlocutor is deliberate. The Lebanese army is the institution the US, France and the Gulf states have been trying to empower as the sole armed authority in south Lebanon under the November 2024 ceasefire. Pakistan, by routing the conversation through Haykal rather than through the foreign ministry, is signaling that the mediation it has in mind is security-led — and that Lebanon’s army, not its politicians, will be expected to enforce whatever deal emerges.

Israeli strikes on Lebanon are now a mediation file

Lebanon entered Saturday’s diplomacy with fresh casualties. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the Israeli strike that killed three Lebanese army personnel, calling it a violation of the November 2024 ceasefire and demanding international accountability. The strike, on a vehicle in the south, brought the day’s overall Lebanese death toll to at least 10, with seven civilians among the dead.

America Strikes reported earlier Saturday that the killings were the heaviest single-day loss for the Lebanese armed forces since the truce was signed, and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the same day to publicly deny that any agreement with Lebanon was currently in place. That combination — Lebanese soldiers killed, Israeli leadership disavowing the ceasefire framework — is precisely the dynamic Munir’s team has been telling US interlocutors must be addressed if any wider Iran deal is to hold.

Pakistani officials have privately argued for weeks that the Lebanon front cannot be decoupled from the Iran file, a position that has put Islamabad at odds with Israeli officials who prefer to keep the two tracks separate. That tension was on display in the Netanyahu-Trump exchanges over the Pakistani-Qatari peace memo last month, when Israeli officials objected to language tying Lebanese de-escalation to Iranian nuclear concessions.

Cairo track adds parallel pressure

The Pakistani initiative is unfolding alongside a separate Egyptian-Qatari effort on Gaza. Hamas confirmed Saturday that Cairo talks on Gaza ceasefire implementation have begun, with Egyptian and Qatari mediators leading the discussions. The two tracks — Cairo on Gaza, Islamabad on Iran and Lebanon — are not formally linked, but they share overlapping mediators in Doha and overlapping pressure points in Israeli policy.

For Lebanon, the parallel tracks matter because the country’s exposure to Israeli strikes is partly a function of the broader Israeli campaign across multiple fronts. A Gaza implementation deal that holds would reduce one source of Israeli operational tempo. An Iran de-escalation brokered through Islamabad would reduce another. Beirut is hoping that the convergence of the two produces enough relief to make the November ceasefire stick.

What Haykal carries to Islamabad

Lebanese military sources have not detailed Haykal’s agenda, but the political backdrop suggests three priorities. The first is the immediate question of Israeli strikes on Lebanese army positions, which Beirut wants raised with US and Gulf interlocutors through Pakistani channels. The second is the slower-moving question of Hezbollah disarmament, which Pakistani mediators have been quietly discussing with Tehran since Munir’s Tehran visit on May 23. The third is the operational question of how the Lebanese army would secure the south if a wider regional deal is reached.

None of those files is solvable in a single visit. But the fact that Lebanon’s senior military officer is in Islamabad at all, on the same day his soldiers are being buried in the south, is the clearest indication yet that the Pakistani track is being treated in Beirut as the most credible diplomatic channel currently available.

Whether Washington agrees is the next test. The State Department has not publicly endorsed the Pakistani initiative, and Israeli officials have continued to brief against it. But with the November ceasefire visibly failing and Iran talks frozen, the alternatives on the table are thinning. Haykal’s plane to Islamabad is one of the few moving pieces left.