Israel strikes Beirut despite truce, Iran threatens to retaliate
Written by: Maya Gebeily, Parisa Hafezi and Bo Erickson
BEIRUT/DUBAI/NEW BRUNSWICK, New Jersey, June 7 (Reuters) – Israel struck the outskirts of Beirut on Sunday for the first time since the United States announced a ceasefire plan for Lebanon last week, and Iranian officials threatened retaliation, throwing talks to end the war into new jeopardy.
Iran has long said that any peace deal with the United States would also be contingent on a ceasefire in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters who crossed the border in solidarity with Tehran.
Iran’s chief peace negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, said US bases and Israeli assets were legitimate targets due to hostile actions, including “violations of agreements on Lebanon.”
He wrote of X: “They showed that they understood only the language of power”.
Ibrahim Rezaei, an influential and radical lawmaker who serves as speaker of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, reported on X that Iran would give a “decisive and painful response” to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon on Sunday.
“Look at the sky of the occupied territories tonight,” he wrote, clearly referring to some kind of attack on Israel. Iran has not directly targeted Israel since a ceasefire in the broader war was reached in April.
Washington and Tehran have made little progress in reaching an agreement to end the war that President Donald Trump launched in February with a campaign of airstrikes against Iran alongside Israel. Trump has repeatedly threatened to restart attacks unless a deal is reached soon.
“We’re very close to a deal, or I’m going to blow them up,” Trump told NBC News in an interview commemorating the 100th day of the conflict. The comments were recorded Friday and aired Sunday as Trump visited his New Jersey golf course.
TRUMP APPROACHED NETANYAHU
Trump has leaned on Israel to scale back his campaign in Lebanon to make room for a peace deal with Iran, including berating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with obscenities in a phone call last week. Following the call, Netanyahu canceled air strikes on Beirut and agreed with the Lebanese government on a final ceasefire plan.
But Israel never fully halted its offensive in Lebanon, which killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands from their homes. Hezbollah, which is not a party to the ceasefire and will be disbanded according to the terms of the agreement, also continued its attacks and says it will not give up its weapons unless Israel stops fighting and withdraws.
Netanyahu said Sunday’s attack on the southern outskirts of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, long a Hezbollah stronghold, was in response to Hezbollah opening fire on Israel.
The Israeli army had previously announced that it had intercepted two bullets fired at the border. An evacuation order has been issued for the city of Tire in southern Lebanon and surrounding areas ahead of a possible attack.
Elsewhere in Beirut on Sunday, mourners held a military funeral for senior officer Brigadier General Wissam Sabra, who was killed in an attack on his vehicle in the south the previous day.
The broader war has been stalemated since the United States and Israel halted attacks on Iran in early April; Tehran has blocked most ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the main transit route for Middle East oil. Washington imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports.
While both sides say they are close to a preliminary agreement to reopen the strait, they have repeatedly traded attacks, with attacks escalating in recent days, including attacks on nearby Arab countries that host US bases.
U.S. forces struck Iranian coastal radar sites at Goruk and Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz early Saturday after shooting down drones launched by Iran that U.S. Central Command said posed a threat to maritime traffic. Two more Iranian attack planes threatening ships in the strait were shot down, the US military said late Saturday.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards announced that they retaliated against US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. The Kuwaiti army said that it opened fire with seven ballistic missiles that passed over residential areas, causing material damage but no casualties.
Trump has said any deal to end the war must prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and said he was under pressure to offer tougher terms than those agreed to under then-President Barack Obama in 2015 in a deal that Trump later rejected.
Tehran’s demands include the lifting of US and international sanctions, recognition of its sovereignty over the strait and the release of billions of dollars of frozen assets. Washington may offer Iranian assets to its Gulf neighbors to repair the damage done by Iran, a source familiar with US plans said on Saturday.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus. Writing by Peter Graff. Editing by William Maclean and Mark Potter)
