In brief
- Lebanon announced a partial ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel.
- The agreement does not end the conflict, but calls for Israel to refrain from strikes on Beirut.
Lebanon on Tuesday announced a partial ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel, in what would amount to a limited de-escalation of a conflict that has killed thousands of people and inflamed the broader war with Iran.
According to Lebanon's United States embassy in Washington DC, the agreement calls for Israel to refrain from strikes on the Lebanese city of Beirut and its suburbs controlled by Hezbollah, while the Iran-aligned group would halt its attacks on Israel.
Hostilities in southern Lebanon continued early on Tuesday morning.
US President Donald Trump, who first announced the agreement, said Hezbollah, through intermediaries, had pledged not to attack Israel. No US president has ever spoken with Hezbollah, with or without intermediaries. The group is designated as a terrorist organisation by the US.
Trump also said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to pull back any troops preparing to attack Lebanon.
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After Trump's announcement, Netanyahu said Israel would continue military operations in southern Lebanon, where ground forces are pushing toward the Zaharani River, their deepest incursion in Lebanon in 25 years.
Hezbollah parliamentarian Hassan Fadlallah said the militia would support a full ceasefire across all Lebanon as a precursor to the withdrawal of Israeli troops. He did not say whether the group would stop its strikes on Israeli territory.
Lebanon said it would seek to expand the ceasefire in talks with Israel in Washington DC on Wednesday.
That could clear the path for renewed efforts to end the three-month-old war between the US and Iran, which has been stuck in limbo for weeks under a fragile ceasefire as negotiators have been unable to agree on an initial framework for peace talks.
The Israel-Hezbollah war erupted on 2 March as an offshoot of the broader conflict and has been entangled with it ever since.
Iran has insisted on a halt to Israeli attacks in Lebanon as a condition of any deal to end the war, while the US has said the two conflicts are separate.
Iran threatens to break off talks
Iranian state media said on Monday that Iran was halting indirect negotiations with the US and might end a ceasefire that has largely held since early April, citing the war in Lebanon.
There was no direct confirmation of the reports from Iranian officials, and Trump told an NBC reporter that he had not heard from Iran.
Since mid-March, Trump has repeatedly said he is close to signing a peace deal but has yet to do so. Despite the ceasefire, Iran and the United States have exchanged strikes several times over the past week.
Trump told the US-based ABC News on Monday that he thinks there will be a deal with Iran to extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz "over the next week", according to a post from the outlet on X.
Meanwhile, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, Esmaeil Qaani, threatened to expand its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another chokepoint at the mouth of the Red Sea.
Iran has already bottled up maritime traffic in the Gulf that before the war provided one-fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas, sending prices sharply higher.
Oil prices rose 4 per cent on Monday on the heightened tensions.
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