Strait of Hormuz closed again as Israel bombards Lebanon
Updated ,first published
Washington: Donald Trump has issued a fresh warning to Iran that American forces will remain nearby until the country fully complies with a yet-to-be-signed peace deal, saying the “firing” will resume if Tehran does not agree to a deal.
The US President’s threat came at the end of the first day of a fragile ceasefire between the US, Israel and Iran, weakened by Israel’s deadly bombardment of Lebanon – the largest since the start of the war – and a row over the status of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran accused the US and Israel of violating the ceasefire, and the White House was forced to clarify that Lebanon was never included in the ceasefire after Pakistan previously said it was.
US Vice President JD Vance, who will lead the American delegation to peace talks in Pakistan this weekend, said Iran’s belief that Lebanon was involved was a “legitimate misunderstanding”.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it hit 100 Hezbollah targets within a 10-minute period during the daylight attack on Wednesday afternoon (Lebanese time). The attack hit busy commercial and residential areas in central Beirut and came without any warning, the Associated Press reported.
Although the death toll was not immediately clear, Lebanon’s civil defense agency said at least 254 people were killed, the highest single-day death toll in the last Israel-Hezbollah war. It was stated that 1100 people were injured.
An IDF spokesman said there would be no pause. “As long as Hezbollah continues to threaten our civilians, we will continue to operate against them,” he said.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later said he was allowing direct negotiations with Lebanon “as soon as possible” in response to the Lebanese government’s demands.
Talks would focus on disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful relations between the neighboring countries, he said, while welcoming the Lebanese prime minister’s call to demilitarise Beirut.
Netanyahu also warned that Israel is ready to continue hitting Iran at any time. “We are ready to return to war at any moment. Our finger is on the trigger,” he said. “Iran is weaker than ever, Israel is stronger than ever.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says the world has seen Israel’s “massacre” in Beirut and the ball is in Trump’s court to take action, while Lebanon’s exclusion from the ceasefire threatens to derail a potential peace deal.
“The United States must choose: a ceasefire or continued war through Israel. It cannot have both,” he said.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif initially announced that Lebanon was included in the ceasefire, but the United States and Israel later announced that this was not the case.
Vance told reporters that he believed Iran thought the ceasefire included Lebanon, but “it doesn’t.” “We never made this promise, nor did we say that it would happen like this,” he said.
The vice president, who is campaigning on behalf of Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary, will lead negotiations with Iran in Islamabad along with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump and Netanyahu could discuss including Lebanon in a ceasefire in the future, but gave no indication that the United States wants such an outcome anytime soon.
Trump didn’t mention Lebanon or Israel when he posted on social media late Wednesday night (Washington time) that all U.S. ships, planes, military personnel and weapons will remain near Iran “until the REAL DEAL is fully implemented.”
“If for some reason, which is highly unlikely, then ‘The Shooting Begins’ will be bigger, better and stronger than anyone has ever seen it before,” Trump wrote.
He reiterated that Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons and that the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, must be “open and safe”.
Trump’s reference to the “real deal” comes amid serious confusion over the agreement reached between the US, Iran and Pakistani mediators in the hours before the ceasefire was declared.
The president said the 10-point proposal the Iranians handed over to mediators differed significantly from the earlier plan distributed by various units of the Iranian government to media outlets and on the Internet.
Leavitt said the regime had since “acknowledged the truth” and put forward a much more plausible and completely different proposal, but would not elaborate or make the document public.
Briefing journalists at the White House, Leavitt said that the United States was closely monitoring the Strait of Hormuz and that reports that the strait was still closed were “incorrect.”
He said what Iran says publicly, including to state-run media outlets, is different from what it tells the United States privately.
“We saw that the traffic on the Bosphorus increased,” he said. “This is something we monitor minute by minute, hour by hour.”
Wall StreetJournal Iran allowed four ships through the strait on Wednesday, “the fewest number of ships ever in April,” S&P reported, citing market data. New York Times He said no oil tankers had yet passed through the waterway.
Leavitt said it would be “completely unacceptable” if Iran kept the strait closed. But he added: “This is a fragile ceasefire. Ceasefires are inherently fragile… We understand things take time.”
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Galibaf accused the United States and Israel of violating the agreement, including the attacks on Lebanon, and of denying Iran the right to enrich uranium, which he said was article six of Iran’s ceasefire framework.
“‘A very viable basis for negotiating’ has been clearly and unambiguously violated,” Ghalibaf said in a statement written in English and posted online. “In such a situation, a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations are illogical.”
Another outstanding question is the fate of hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium in Iran’s possession, which could form the basis of its future nuclear weapons program and was apparently the root cause of the war when it began 39 days ago.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that the US reserves the right to take back uranium by force if necessary. But he also argued that he knew the “new Iranian regime” would never have nuclear weapons.
“He’s buried and we’re tracking him. We know exactly what he has in his hands,” Hegseth said. “They will either give it voluntarily… Or if we have to do something else, like we did in the past. [Operation] “We’re reserving that opportunity for Midnight Hammer or something like that.”
Meanwhile, Trump suggested that the US and Iran would work together to remove nuclear “dust” and that the US would discuss easing sanctions and tariffs on Iran.
He continued to insist that Tehran was experiencing “a very productive Regime Change”; this claim has been rejected by most Iran experts; While U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed many of Iran’s former senior personnel, he says the regime’s foundations remain strong.
Trump said Iran could begin the rebuilding process. “There will be lots of positive action! Big money to be made,” he wrote on social media.
AP via Reuters
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EXPLANATION
An earlier version of this article stated that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed to have hit 100 targets in Lebanon in one minute. The one-minute claim was made in an IDF post on X. A separate IDF post on the platform stated that the attacks were actually carried out over a 10-minute period.
Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political correspondent in Canberra.Connect with: X or email.
