Israel, Lebanon extend ceasefire
Israel and Lebanon extended a shaky ceasefire by three weeks, President Donald Trump said Thursday, as the United States remained at a standstill in negotiations with Iran to end the Middle East war.
Trump announced the truce extension as he met with ambassadors of the two countries and despite recent Israeli strikes in Lebanon and fresh rocket fire from Iran-backed Hezbollah, which was not part of the talks in Washington.
“I think there’s a very good chance of having peace. I think it should be an easy one,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. The initial truce had been set to expire on Sunday.
Still, the US president said earlier he was in no rush to end the war with Iran, adding that “the clock is ticking” for the Islamic republic as a third American aircraft carrier arrived in the Middle East.
Iranian media reported blasts over the capital Tehran, a first since the ceasefire in the Middle East war came into effect two weeks ago.
It was not clear what caused the explosions, though an Israeli security source told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that their country was not currently striking Iran.
Hanging in the balance
Prospective peace talks in Pakistan were hanging in the balance, meanwhile, with no sign of a return to diplomacy to end a standoff in the Strait of Hormuz.
Since the ceasefire, the United States and Iran have shifted their focus to the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas exports ordinarily flow. Iran has effectively closed it in retaliation for the war.
“I have all the time in the World, but Iran doesn’t—The clock is ticking!” Trump said on social media.
Trump, who on Thursday ruled out the use of a nuclear weapon against Iran, had earlier ordered the US Navy to destroy any Iranian boat caught laying mines in Hormuz.
The USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier has arrived in the Middle East, the US military said Thursday, bringing the number of the massive American warships operating in the region to three.
A second carrier was operating in the Red Sea on Thursday, while a third is also in the region, according to social media posts by US Central Command (Centcom).
‘Maritime interdiction’
Iran has vowed it would keep the strait closed to all but a trickle of approved vessels for as long as the US Navy blockades its ports, brushing off demands from Trump to both reopen Hormuz and surrender its enriched uranium.
The United States has imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports, and on Thursday the Pentagon announced that US forces had “carried out a maritime interdiction and right-of-visit boarding of the sanctioned stateless vessel M/T Majestic X transporting oil from Iran, in the Indian Ocean.”
Trump told the New York Post on Wednesday that talks could resume in Pakistan within two to three days, though no delegations were presently headed to Islamabad.
European leaders, meanwhile, will be joined on Friday by counterparts from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan for what a senior EU official described as “intensive dialogue” as Europe grapples with the strait’s closure.
