U.S. and Iran agree to halt attacks as Lebanon truce falters
Washington and Tehran said they would stop attacks, but Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon kept the Lebanon front active and put the truce under immediate strain.
Washington's effort to cool the Israel-Iran confrontation collided with new Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon on Sunday, hours after the United States and Iran agreed to halt attacks. The clash underscored how the war in Gaza and its proxy fronts have kept widening even as diplomats tried to separate the Lebanon file from the broader regional fight.
The agreement between the United States and Iran came as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon continued to threaten negotiations between Washington and Tehran. On Friday, the United States, Israel and Lebanon signed a trilateral framework in Washington aimed at ending the fighting in Lebanon and tying any broader ceasefire to Hezbollah disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal from occupied areas in southern Lebanon.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun pressed the case directly with Donald Trump on Saturday, saying he hoped Washington would help prevent violations of the framework and push Israel to withdraw from occupied areas so the Lebanese Armed Forces could deploy along the border. His appeal came against a backdrop of sustained cross-border fire that has repeatedly complicated U.S.-brokered diplomacy and left more than a million Lebanese displaced.
Hezbollah's response was immediate and blunt. Naim Qassem rejected the security agreement on Saturday, calling it a surrender to Israel and refusing any link between Israeli withdrawal and Hezbollah's disarmament. That position kept the core dispute intact: Israel wants the armed group weakened and pushed back from the frontier, while Hezbollah has treated any disarmament demand as politically impossible without a full Israeli pullback.
Israel signaled on Sunday that the fighting was still active. In a joint statement, Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF was striking in southern Lebanon, keeping pressure on Hezbollah positions despite the newly announced halt in attacks between Washington and Tehran. The continued exchanges show how fragile the latest diplomatic channel remains, especially with Lebanon still tied to the wider conflict and both Israel and Hezbollah continuing to test the limits of earlier ceasefire efforts.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
