Negotiators from Iran and the US yesterday prepared for high-level talks with their ceasefire still shaky, as Israel and Hezbollah traded fire and Tehran maintained its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
There remain many issues that could derail the truce — as well as negotiations for a broader deal to permanently end the war.
Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency, close to the Revolutionary Guard, claimed that talks set for today would not happen unless Israel stopped its attacks in Lebanon, and US President Donald Trump complained that Iran was “doing a very poor job” by not allowing the free flow of ships through the strait, through which 20 percent of the world’s traded oil once passed.
Photo: AP
Meanwhile, Kuwait said it faced a drone attack on Thursday night that it blamed on Iran and its militia allies in the region. Although Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard denied launching any assault, it has carried out attacks across the Middle East in the past that it did not claim.
And yet, preparations for the talks between Iran and the US in Pakistan appeared to move forward, with US Vice President J.D. Vance taking off from Washington.
Negotiations between Israel and Lebanon are expected to begin next week in Washington, according to a US official and a person familiar with the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the delicacy of the matter.
Israel’s insistence that the ceasefire in Iran does not include a pause in its fighting with Hezbollah, which joined the war in support of its backer, Iran, has threatened to scupper the deal.
The day the truce was announced, Israel pounded Beirut with airstrikes, killing more than 300 people, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said.
Trump on Thursday said that he has asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to dial back the strikes. Early yesterday, Israel’s military said it hit approximately 10 launchers in Lebanon that had fired rockets toward northern Israel a day earlier.
Netanyahu said that he had authorized the negotiations with Lebanon “as soon as possible,” with the aim of disarming Hezbollah militants and establishing relations between the neighbors, which have technically been at war since Israel was established in 1948.
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