IDF claims continuing strikes come after Iran-backed group repeatedly violated ceasefire; JD Vance cancels trip as US-Iran talks set for Friday cancelled
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency is saying at least 16 people have been killed in the Israeli airstrikes, which Israel’s military said were ongoing, while Hezbollah said there was intense fighting in southern Lebanon.
The fighting poses a threat to the new US-Iran agreement on ending the war, which calls for an immediate halt of military operations “on all fronts, including in Lebanon”.
Vance lashed out at Israeli critics of the Iran deal, saying Donald Trump was Israel’s only ally left in the world, in a sharp rebuke that referenced the billions in defence aid the country receives from America. Trump “is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time”, Vance told reporters.
Trump said the US expected “a complete ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel”, adding in a social media post: “We encourage everyone in the Middle East Region to maintain their commitment to allowing our negotiations to beautifully unfold.”
Iran’s supreme leader said he approved the deal with the US despite having a “different view”, without elaborating. Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said in message read on state television: “In principle, I had a different view [about the memorandum of understanding], but I issued my permission due to the commitment that the honourable [Iranian] president, as the chairman of the Supreme National Security Council, gave me on behalf of himself and other members to protect the rights of the Iranian nation and the resistance front.”
In Khamenei’s message on Thursday – his first reaction to the Iran-US deal – he claimed Trump had “used all kinds of levers” to secure the deal “out of desperation”. The US president has claimed the agreement is a victory for Washington and averts a “worldwide depression”.
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