Beirut on Thursday felt like a city holding its breath, even as the damage from Wednesday’s Israeli airstrike still sat in plain view. People moved cautiously past the battered edges of apartment buildings—one of those moments where you can practically hear the silence settling.
A chorus of global officials denounced the strikes and demanded that Lebanon be included in the ceasefire framework tied to U.S. and Iran negotiations. British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the escalation Israel carried out “was deeply damaging,” adding she wanted “to see an end to hostilities,” according to Misryoum reporting. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said it was “hard to argue” the strikes were self-defense, while France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, called the attacks “intolerable” and stressed that “Lebanon must absolutely be covered by this truce.”
Not everyone agrees what “covered” really means, though. Iranian officials have insisted Lebanon was included in the ceasefire deal agreed to by Washington and Tehran, and they pointed to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Shari, described as a lead mediator, saying explicitly that Lebanon was part of the truce. Misryoum newsroom reported that parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf took a harder line, saying there is “no room for denial and backtracking,” warning that continued attacks on Lebanon would bring “explicit costs and STRONG responses.”
The Trump administration’s posture remains firm: American officials continue to deny that Lebanon was included in the agreement. Vice President JD Vance, who is set to lead Trump’s team in the talks, described Lebanon’s supposed inclusion as a “legitimate misunderstanding,” and said Iran would be “dumb” to let negotiations collapse over it. Still, Iranian statements and the mediator’s reported remarks keep pulling the debate back toward the same question—what exactly was written into the ceasefire, and what was left out.
Behind the diplomatic language, there’s also a separate, parallel thread. A senior administration official said Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call on Wednesday to scale back Israel’s strikes in Lebanon, framing it as a way to help ensure the success of Iran negotiations. The official also said that while the Trump administration and Israel have both said Lebanon is not covered by the ceasefire, Israel agreed “to be a helpful partner.” Netanyahu, speaking Thursday, said he was seeking “open direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible.” Those talks, he suggested, would focus on disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful relations—yet at the same time the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for entire neighborhoods in Beirut.
The contradiction is landing hard on ordinary people. Across Lebanon, Israel’s ongoing attacks sent shock waves, and a national day of mourning was declared Thursday. “I feel betrayed and devastated,” said Marwan Saleh, a student of law and international affairs at the Lebanese University’s Beirut campus—his words still hang in the same space as the immediate aftermath. And even with the ceasefire debate unresolved, the city’s timetable looks like it’s being set by airstrikes first, diplomacy later—if diplomacy comes at all, or maybe not in the form everyone is demanding.
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