Israel carried out its heaviest strikes on Lebanon since conflict broke out last month.
Reuters
The ceasefire deal reached between U.S. President Donald Trump and the Iranian leadership on Tuesday looked at risk of collapse just a day later as Israel carried out its deadliest attacks to date on Lebanon.
There was widespread confusion over whether the 14-day Iran ceasefire covered the war’s second front between Israel and Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia allied with Tehran.
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Iran’s Tasnim official news agency warned on Wednesday that the country would withdraw from the ceasefire deal unless Israel halted its attacks. Tasnim later reported that Iran had once more closed the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway that Mr. Trump had only a day earlier celebrated reopening.
Both Iran and Pakistan – which mediated talks that led to the agreement between Tehran and Washington – said the 14-day ceasefire was supposed to apply to Lebanon as well, with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif saying the agreement involved “an immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere.”
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel – which has fought alongside the United States in the 40-day war against Iran – would end its attacks on Iran, but declared that the deal did not include Lebanon, and Israel escalated its assault on the country in the hours after the ceasefire announcement.
Iran’s official news agency Tasnim warned on Wednesday the country would withdraw from the ceasefire deal unless Israel halted its attacks on Lebanon.
“The battle in Lebanon continues, and the ceasefire does not include Lebanon,” Avichay Adraee, the Arabic-language spokesman for Israel’s military, wrote in a social media post.
Hours later, Col. Adraee announced that Israel had carried out its largest-scale attack on Lebanon since the start of the war, striking 100 “Hezbollah-affiliated” targets in a 10-minute span.
Rescuers gather at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Wednesday.Hussein Malla/The Associated Press
Mr. Trump, who had previously threatened to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure if the strait remained closed, also said that Lebanon was not covered by the Iran ceasefire agreement. He called it “a separate skirmish” that would “get taken care of.”
Lebanese health authorities said more than 250 people were killed in Wednesday’s onslaught.
“Our teams are responding to mass influx of injured patients, including children,” said Christopher Stokes, emergency coordinator in Lebanon for Médecins Sans Frontières.
“Patients are arriving with shrapnel injuries and heavy bleeding. One patient arrived to the hospital having lost both legs. The situation is chaotic as more people are brought in.”
Before Wednesday, the number of Lebanese killed since the start of the conflict stood at 1,530. At least 12 Israeli soldiers have also died in the fighting, and six divisions of troops and tanks are reportedly now deployed in southern Lebanon.
Residents of Israel’s battered north want war against Hezbollah – with or without peace in Iran
Hezbollah, which opened the second front on March 2 by launching rockets at Israel in retaliation for the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Wednesday that it was holding fire in accordance with the region-wide ceasefire. However, Ibrahim Moussawi – a Hezbollah-affiliated member of Lebanon’s parliament, warned that the region-wide deal would collapse if Israel continued its campaign in Lebanon.
Nine of those killed in Lebanon on Wednesday died when a missile struck their house – which the family had returned to after the announcement of the ceasefire – in the town of Srifa. The Lebanese Health Ministry said eight others were killed when an Israeli missile struck a café in the Lebanese city of Sidon.
The Israeli military said the wave of attacks was “based on precise IDF intelligence and was planned meticulously over weeks.” In a statement posted to its official Telegram channel, it blamed Hezbollah for any civilian casualties. “Most of the infrastructure that was struck was located within the heart of the civilian population, as part of Hezbollah’s cynical exploitation of Lebanese civilians as human shields in order to safeguard its operations.”
Ahead of the attacks, the Israeli military issued a fresh order for Lebanese living south of the Zahrani River – 40 kilometres north of the Israeli border – to evacuate. Israel also issued a similar warning for the southern suburbs of Beirut ahead of expected air strikes there.
Both south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut are considered strongholds of Hezbollah. The predominantly Shia Muslim group is regarded as the strongest military force in Lebanon and has taken the country into three destructive wars with Israel over the past two decades.
Hezbollah has faced a wave of criticism from inside Lebanon since the start of the conflict. The Lebanese government has declared the group’s initial attack on Israel “illegal” and has called for the militia to disarm, though it lacks the military power to take Hezbollah’s weapons by force.
Some 1.2 million Lebanese have been driven from their homes during the fighting, and Israel has said that it plans to demolish homes in southern Lebanon to prevent residents from returning as it creates a “security zone” there.
A woman is assisted at the site of an Israeli airstrike that struck an apartment building in Beirut.Bilal Hussein/The Associated Press
Mr. Trump indicated on Tuesday that the ceasefire was agreed to after Iran proposed a 10-point plan that he called a “workable basis” for negotiations over the next two weeks. A 10-point framework published by Iranian state media on Wednesday includes a specific call for a “cessation of war on all fronts.”
How Pakistan came to play peacemaker in Iran
The 10 points that Iran’s Press TV said it had received from the country’s Supreme National Security Council also include an end to U.S. sanctions against the country, a U.S. military withdrawal from the Middle East and Iran’s continued control of the vital Strait of Hormuz. The framework appeared to involve few concessions by the Iranian side, other than a repetition of the regime’s previous commitment not to pursue nuclear weapons.
Mr. Trump later told Britain’s Sky News that the 10 points he called workable were “not the maximalist demands that Iran is claiming.” He said the U.S. was ready to return to war if negotiations collapsed.
Hezbollah, Israel and the battle for Lebanon’s future
The reported terms of the deal were slammed within Israel by critics from across the political spectrum. Former prime minister Yair Lapid, who leads the centrist Yesh Atid party, posted on social media that the deal was a “political disaster” for Israel.
“Israel wasn’t even at the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security,” Mr. Lapid wrote. “Netanyahu failed politically, failed strategically and didn’t meet a single one of the goals that he himself set.”
Meanwhile, Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, said a ceasefire deal that gave Iran a chance to rebuild and regroup “without abandoning its goal of destroying Israel, halting uranium enrichment, stopping ballistic missile production and ending support for terror organizations” would only lead to another war.
“We will have to return to another round under worse conditions and pay a heavier price,” he said.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, however, welcomed the ceasefire deal in a statement on Wednesday. He said he hoped it “would be a first step toward a final and comprehensive agreement” that would bring peace to the region.