Benjamin Netanyahu has said there is “no ceasefire in Lebanon” and that Israel would continue “to strike Hezbollah with full force” as the country’s military launched fresh strikes.
The prime minister’s comments and the latest attacks on what the IDF called “Hezbollah launch sites” came shortly after Donald Trump said he had asked Netanyahu to be more “low-key” in Lebanon. Later on Friday, a US state department official said Israel and Lebanon will hold talks in Washington next week.
The announcement landed in a tense pocket of uncertainty: neither Israel nor Lebanon have publicly confirmed the US talks for next week. Still, Netanyahu ordered his ministers to seek direct talks with Lebanon focused on disarming Iranian-backed Hezbollah. Earlier, the Lebanese government had said a ceasefire must be agreed before any talks could begin.
On the ground, Israel’s renewed use of force quickly became the story. Deadly Israeli strikes hit Beirut, with footage circulating as the city absorbed another round of impact—somewhere, near the static crackle of the broadcasts, it’s hard not to imagine the air itself changing with dust and smoke. In a written message, Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said the Islamic republic did not want war with the US and Israel, but would protect its rights as a nation, state television reported on Thursday.
“We did not seek war and we do not want it,” he said. “But we will not renounce our legitimate rights under any circumstances, and in this respect, we consider the entire resistance front as a whole,” he added, in an apparent reference to Lebanon. Misryoum reporting also highlights that more than 300 people were killed by Israeli bombing in the 24 hours after the announcement of a ceasefire in the Iran war on Tuesday night.
The bombardment—ostensibly aimed at Hezbollah targets—included strikes with heavy munitions on densely populated areas, which drew outrage from the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international humanitarian organisations. The ferocious attack on Lebanon threatened to derail hopes of a negotiated end to the war in Iran, which began with a US-Israeli attack on 28 February. Despite claims by Donald Trump that the Pakistani-brokered ceasefire had marked significant progress, the truce looked in danger of collapsing on its first day.
Iran warned that, in response to the Israeli attacks after the ceasefire, it would once more close the strait of Hormuz, the economically critical waterway it had agreed to open for the two-week duration of the ceasefire. The country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said negotiations were “meaningless” as long as Israel continued to bomb Lebanon, placing in doubt US-Iranian talks in Pakistan scheduled for Saturday. Pezeshkian vowed Iran would not abandon the Lebanese people. According to Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, Iran had been held back from responding forcefully by Pakistani intervention urging restraint in the interests of a broader peace agreement. Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, condemned Israel’s “ongoing aggression against Lebanon”.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, insisted Lebanon was not included in the Tuesday night ceasefire agreed by Donald Trump, and vowed the Israeli military would continue to strike Hezbollah targets “wherever necessary”. Trump backed Netanyahu’s version too, telling the public broadcaster PBS that Lebanon was “not included in the deal” because of Hezbollah’s role, referring to the conflict in Lebanon as a “separate skirmish” from the Iranian war. He added: “That’ll get taken care of, too. It’s all right.” Misryoum newsroom reported that Netanyahu’s push for peace talks with Lebanon came at the urging of the US president, who is keen to extricate the US from a war that he was persuaded to join by Netanyahu, according to multiple accounts of the lead-up to the conflict.
In Pakistan, authorities began implementing strict security measures in anticipation of delegations for talks expected to begin on Saturday. As the ceasefire’s future looked shaky, Trump issued his latest ultimatum on social media, vowing a return to US attacks if Iran failed to comply with “the real agreement”. He made clear Tehran had to reopen the strait of Hormuz fully to international shipping and have “no nuclear weapons”—and he did not mention Lebanon.
US allies have insisted the ceasefire should be comprehensive, and a joint statement by the UK, EU countries, Canada and Japan called on “all sides to implement the ceasefire, including in Lebanon,” where Israel is seeking to destroy the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement. Kaja Kallas said Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into the war, but Israel’s right to defend itself does not justify inflicting “such massive destruction”. France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, condemned the strikes as “unacceptable”, while Britain’s Yvette Cooper described them as “deeply damaging”, adding that failure to include Lebanon would “destabilise the whole region”.
At the same time, diplomatic efforts worldwide are focused on reopening the strait of Hormuz, a gateway to a fifth of the global flow of oil and liquefied natural gas. Misryoum editorial desk noted that only 11 ships—four Iranian, four Greek, one Chinese, one Omani and one unknown—were allowed to pass through the strait in the 24 hours after the ceasefire, less than a tenth of the prewar flow. About 1,400 ships remain anchored in the Gulf, trapped first by the war then the uncertainty that has accompanied the vague and shaky truce. After an initial plunge in global oil prices after the ceasefire announcement, it began to creep up again towards $100 a barrel on Thursday—though whether that reflects confidence or just nerves, honestly, depends on who you ask.
Orbán’s pivotal vote as Europe watches closely