Israel and Hezbollah kept trading fire on Tuesday even after Donald Trump said he had stepped in to stop the shooting between the two sides the day before. On the ground, the fighting did not stop: Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported three Israeli strikes in the south, while air raid sirens sounded in northern Israel after rocket and drone attacks.
The timing matters because Trump was telling reporters and posting online that talks with Iran were moving at a rapid pace, with a deal he described as possible over the next week. He also said he believed an agreement could extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a route whose status has been part of the wider bargaining. For readers watching the conflict, Tuesday was the test case for whether his intervention had any immediate effect.
Trump had already announced major combat operations against Iran on Feb. 28 after massive joint U.S.-Israeli strikes hit military, government and infrastructure sites. In April, the first round of U.S.-Iran talks in Pakistan after the two-week ceasefire failed to produce a peace deal, and Trump later extended the ceasefire without a fixed end date while keeping a U.S. blockade in place until negotiations are finished one way or another.
That broader diplomacy makes the new fighting harder to ignore. The IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee, issued fresh evacuation warnings for residents of Nabatiyeh and said forceful action was planned against alleged Hezbollah targets there. Lebanon’s armed forces said two of its soldiers were wounded, and the state news agency said one person was killed in the Israeli strikes. Hezbollah, meanwhile, claimed it hit an Israeli tank in Hadatha in the early hours of Tuesday, underscoring that both sides were still acting as if Monday’s calm never arrived.
Trump tried to cast the disruption as temporary, saying there was “a little glitch” that he turned around quickly and that he had spoken with Hezbollah and with “Bibi” to tell them no shooting. He said the resulting deal could be “even better than a military victory.” For now, though, the ceasefire he says he is trying to extend is still being measured against the sound of sirens, drone strikes and evacuation orders.
