Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon, three diplomats briefed on the deal said Friday, with the truce scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Eastern. The agreement came after the deadliest flare-up in fighting between the two sides since the U.S. and Iran reached a memorandum of understanding on Sunday.
President Trump and Iran’s president signed that memorandum on Wednesday, and it calls for hostilities to end on all fronts, including in Lebanon. But the truce immediately faced a problem: Hezbollah said on Friday that it would continue attacking Israeli troops, while the Israeli military said its operations in Lebanon would continue until the threat posed by Hezbollah is eliminated.
That is why the ceasefire matters now. The fighting in Lebanon had already delayed the next phase of direct U.S.-Iran talks on Iran’s nuclear program and other contentious issues, which had been expected to start Friday. Mr. Trump said on Friday that the U.S. would play out the 60-day negotiation period laid out in the memorandum of understanding, even as the talks slipped because of the renewed violence.
Hezbollah’s public response cut against the idea of an immediate calm. It accused Israel of not complying with any ceasefire agreement pertaining to Lebanon for nearly two years and said Israel had intensified what it called its continuous violations, including attacks on residential buildings and civilian infrastructure. It also said Israel had continued land assaults in areas it had been unable to reach before the agreement, while calling on its fighters to defend their land and people with courage and to keep inflicting losses on the enemy army among its officers and soldiers.
The broader deal is meant to run far beyond the battlefield pause in Lebanon. The memorandum of understanding says the U.S. and regional partners will develop a reconstruction plan for Iran worth at least $300 billion, a number that points to how wide the agreement is supposed to be. Mr. Trump also said Iran would get no money, not ten cents, and insisted the talks had not been driven by U.S. urgency. “We didn’t meet out of desperation, Iran did. They are FINISHED!” he posted on Truth Social.
What happens next depends on whether the ceasefire that was scheduled for Friday morning actually takes hold and whether the 60-day negotiation period moves forward on schedule. For now, the deal on paper has set out a path to lower the fighting, but both sides are still talking as if the shooting has not stopped.
