Trump team claims truce in Israel's war on Lebanon is their victory

The Biden administration kept President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration closely apprised of its efforts to broker the ceasefire deal in Israel's war on Lebanon that took effect early on Wednesday, according to the outgoing Democratic administration.

Trump's team, however, was quick to spike the football and claim credit for the rare spot of good news for a Democratic administration that's been dragged down by the grinding Israel's wars in both Lebanon and besieged Gaza.

"Everyone is coming to the table because of President Trump," Florida Representative Mike Waltz, Trump's choice for his national security adviser, said in a post on X on Tuesday, shortly before the Israel Cabinet signed off on the agreement.

"His resounding victory sent a clear message to the rest of the world that chaos won’t be tolerated. I’m glad to see concrete steps towards deescalation in the Middle East."

The Biden administration's reported coordination with Trump's team on its efforts to forge the ceasefire in Lebanon is perhaps the example of cooperation in what's been a sometimes choppy transition period.

Coordination between outgoing and incoming teams

Trump's transition team on Tuesday reached a required agreement with President Joe Biden's White House that will allow transition staff to coordinate with the existing federal workforce before Trump takes office on January 20.

There has been some coordination on high levels between the outgoing Biden and incoming Trump teams, including talks between Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Waltz.

Biden in Rose Garden remarks on Tuesday cheered the ceasefire agreement as a critical step that he hoped could be the catalyst for a broader peace in the Mideast, which has been shaken by nearly 14 months of Israel's war in Lebanon where Israel killed nearly 4,000 people, wounded some 16,000 and uprooted over a million.

"This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities," Biden said.

White House officials are now hopeful that a calm in Lebanon will reinvigorate a multi-country effort at finding an endgame to Israel's genocide in Gaza, where Israel has killed nearly 44,000 Palestinians, 70 percent of them women and minors, wounded over 110,000 and uprooted almost the entire 2.4 million people.

Biden said the US, as well as Israel, will engage in talks in the coming days with officials from Türkiye, Qatar, and Egypt to try to get Gaza talks back on track.

But during Biden's moment of 'success' in a conflict that has roiled his reputation at home and abroad, the specter of the incoming Trump administration loomed large.

Trump in the loop

Trump’s senior national security team was briefed by the Biden administration as negotiations unfolded and finally came to a conclusion on Tuesday, according to a senior Biden administration official.

The official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity on a call organised by the White House, added that the incoming Trump administration officials were not directly involved in the talks, but that it was important that they knew “what we were negotiating and what the commitments were."

Trump's team and allies, meanwhile, said there was no doubt that the prospect of the Republican president returning to power pushed both sides to get the agreement done.

Waltz, in addition to giving Trump credit for the ceasefire deal coming together, added a warning to Iran.

"But let's be clear: The Iran Regime is the root cause of the chaos & terror that has been unleashed across the region. We will not tolerate the status quo of their support for terrorism," Waltz said in his post.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, also gave a shoutout to the incoming administration, while giving a nod to Biden's team.

"I appreciate the hard work of the Biden Administration, supported by President Trump, to make this ceasefire a reality," Graham said in a statement.

Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Washington group Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said the moment magnifies that Iran — which he said would have needed to approve of Hezbollah agreeing to the ceasefire — is carefully weighing what lays ahead with Trump.

"There's zero doubt that Iran is pulling back to regroup ahead of Trump coming into office," said Goldberg, a National Security Council official in Trump's first administration.

The Biden White House is also holding on to a sliver of hope that the Lebanon ceasefire deal could help reinvigorate a long sought after Israel-Saudi normalisation deal.

The Biden White House plans to keep the incoming Trump administration looped in on its efforts and "anything that we will do on this ... we won’t do this unless they know what we’re doing," the Biden administration official said.