In brief
- A fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran was announced on Wednesday.
- However questions remain about whether it will hold.
It's day two of what is supposed to be a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran, but both sides have already accused each other of violations.
Israel carried out its heaviest strikes on Lebanon since the conflict with Hezbollah broke out last month, killing more than 250 people on Wednesday, as the Iran-aligned group resumed rocket attacks on northern Israel after a brief pause under the two-week US-Iran ceasefire.
Hezbollah vowed its retaliation would continue "until the Israeli-American aggression against our country and our people ceases".
It's just one of several ways the truce is already under pressure. Here are the main fault lines.
Will dispute over Lebanon blow up the deal?
The most immediate dispute is whether Lebanon — and by extension Hezbollah — is even covered by the ceasefire.
The US and Israel say it isn't.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as much in a televised address on Wednesday as his military continued striking Hezbollah targets.
US vice president JD Vance also told reporters Lebanon had never been included in the ceasefire agreement, describing the situation as a "legitimate misunderstanding".
But Iran, Hezbollah and Pakistan — the war's key mediator — say otherwise.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the truce would include Lebanon. Hezbollah says it was told explicitly it was covered — and had halted attacks on that basis.
"Hezbollah was informed that it is part of the ceasefire — so we abided by it, but Israel as usual has violated it and committed massacres all across Lebanon," senior Hezbollah spokesperson Ibrahim al-Moussawi told Reuters.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned the US and Israel that it would deliver a "regret-inducing response" if attacks on Lebanon did not stop.
Other world leaders, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and French President Emmanuel Macron, have said Lebanon must be covered by the ceasefire.
That's in addition to Iran launching fresh missile and drone attacks against US-allied Gulf states after the ceasefire took effect, with Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain all reporting strikes.
Do both sides agree on what they signed?
Even setting Lebanon aside, there are fundamental disagreements about what each side actually agreed to.
Iran has put forward a 10-point peace plan, while the US has its own 15-point framework.
A senior US official said Iran's 10-point plan was not the same set of conditions the White House had agreed to in order to pause the war.
Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said the "workable basis on which to negotiate" had already been violated, citing three alleged US breaches: continued attacks in Lebanon, a drone entering Iranian airspace, and denial of Iran's right to uranium enrichment.
Fundamentally, Iran's core demands — including sanctions relief, enrichment rights, war damage compensation and control over the Strait of Hormuz — also remain deeply at odds with the US position.
Is the Strait of Hormuz already a flashpoint again?
Under the ceasefire, Iran agreed to temporarily reopen the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil passes — but reports emerged on Wednesday that it had been fundamentally shut down again, something the White House called "completely unacceptable".
Iran has since announced alternative shipping routes, citing the risk of sea mines.
Iran's terms for any permanent deal include charging fees for shipping transiting Hormuz, a move that would reverberate far beyond the Gulf, hitting global energy markets and the economic lifelines of states along the opposite shore.
Meanwhile, Trump has previously threatened that Iran would be "living in hell" if it didn't open the strait, making any problems there ripe for rupture.
Can anyone predict Trump's next move?
The ceasefire also faces a harder-to-quantify pressure: Trump himself.
In just a day, Trump went from threatening that "a whole civilisation will die" to hailing the ceasefire agreement as a great day for world peace — and has since announced sweeping tariffs on countries that supply arms to Iran, a move he may lack the legal authority to impose.
"A Country supplying Military Weapons to Iran will be immediately tariffed, on any and all goods sold to the United States of America, 50%, effective immediately. There will be no exclusions or exemptions!" Trump said in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, late on Wednesday.
"President Trump is proving to be an increasingly unpredictable force and unreliable ally," Peter Loge, director of George Washington University's School of Media, told Agence France-Presse.
Critics say Trump has used the same maximum-pressure tactic on everything from tariffs to wars to his threats to annex Greenland, especially as markets start to react unfavourably.
The phenomenon now has its own acronym, originally beginning with traders — TACO, or "Trump Always Chickens Out".
— With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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