WATCH LIVE: Trump holds meeting with Lebanon’s president on tackling Hezbollah

A Lebanese president sitting in the Oval Office asking for help dismantling Hezbollah is not something that happens every decade. It happened Tuesday. Whatever comes out of that meeting, the fact that Joseph Aoun brought Washington a plan rather than a wish list is worth pausing on. Lebanon has spent forty years treating Hezbollah as a permanent feature of its landscape, like the mountains or the cedar trees. A sitting president showing up to discuss actually rolling that back is new.

Skeptics will say Beirut has cried wolf before, that promises to rein in Hezbollah tend to evaporate the moment Iran applies pressure. Fair. Lebanon's government has never had the spine or the firepower to back up its own sovereignty in the south. But that's exactly why this meeting matters more than the usual diplomatic photo-op. If Aoun is serious, he needs American backing, intelligence, and probably money, and he needs it now, while Hezbollah is weaker and more isolated than it's been in years after the battering it took from Israel.

This is where the administration's instincts have actually been right. Don't rebuild Lebanon's army by treating Hezbollah as just another political faction to be managed. Treat it as the terrorist organization it is, and make support conditional on real disarmament, not another round of paper commitments. Skepticism is warranted, but so is recognizing an opening when one appears.

If this goes nowhere, nobody will be surprised. Lebanon has a long history of good meetings followed by nothing. But if Washington uses this moment to actually pressure Hezbollah's grip loose, that's a genuine win for regional stability, not a talking point.