Trump to skip Swiss treaty signing as Lebanon offensive clouds peace accord

ÉVIAN-LES-BAINS, FRANCE: The White House has confirmed it will move forward with Friday’s historic Switzerland signing ceremony without President Donald J Trump physically present, even as officials reveal that Israel’s intense offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon remains completely excluded from the bilateral framework.

Speaking alongside French President Emmanuel Macron at the 52nd G7 Summit in Évian-les-Bains, Trump announced that Vice President JD Vance will travel to Geneva to execute the definitive memorandum of understanding to end the 100-day war with Iran.

The sudden decision to skip the formal finalization of his premier foreign policy achievement coincided with a striking operational admission from senior administration officials.

The State Department confirmed that a permanent Israeli military withdrawal from sovereign Lebanese territory was never a condition of the US-Iran agreement, exposing a massive regional loophole that could immediately destabilize the broader truce before the ink dries.

Vice president to lead landmark summit

"He was originally going to do it. I’ll probably be gone by then," Trump noted to reporters on the sidelines of the G7 economic meetings, indicating his impending departure from Europe before Friday's summit. 

While senior aides clarified that both the president and vice president have already validated the core treaty documents virtually, delegating the physical execution to Vance represents a surprising narrative shift for an administration celebrating a signature geopolitical triumph.

The move allows Trump to maintain a transactional distance from the Swiss proceedings while navigating mounting trade tensions with European allies over French digital taxes.

By anchoring the physical delegation around Vance, the White House intends to project a unified executive front while freeing the president to focus on a sequence of bilateral summits with key Arab state mediators.

Lebanon carve-out preserves defense rights

Behind the scenes, the administration’s formal confirmation of the Lebanon carve-out has laid bare the limits of Tehran’s regional influence.

A senior US official established that if Iran is completely unable to restrain its proxy networks from targeting northern Israeli municipalities, Jerusalem preserves an unyielding statutory right to defend itself and respond with overwhelming force. 

Israeli defense officials had spent weeks insisting they would not back off their specialized northern campaign, flatly rejecting initial Iranian demands to fold the Levant into the comprehensive maritime ceasefire.

While Washington expressed optimism that separate, localized negotiations between Jerusalem and Beirut will eventually bear fruit, the administration made it clear that active cross-border bombardments will not be permitted to hold up the final normalization of the Strait of Hormuz.