Hezbollah Rejects Truce As Israel Refuses Withdrawal, Dimming Iran Peace Prospects
The Iran-backed Hezbollah group rejected a new ceasefire in Lebanon on Thursday, and Israel said it would not withdraw troops from the country, undermining US President Donald Trump's efforts to halt fighting there and forge peace with Tehran.
Recommended For YouIran has made a ceasefire in Lebanon a condition for any peace deal with Washington and has suggested in recent days that it could intervene directly if Israel keeps up attacks there.
However, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem rejected a US-brokered pact between Israel and the Lebanese government to halt the fighting. Hezbollah had not been party to the negotiations.
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There was no immediate response from Israel or Lebanon.
In Washington, Trump told reporters he believed progress was being made in Lebanon and the country deserved to have peace, adding, "It's been going on for a long time, you know."
Israel kept up strikes in southern Lebanon, however, and Defence Minister Israel Katz said its forces would not withdraw or halt operations in the country, which they invaded in March in parallel with the Iran war.
The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, which established Hezbollah in 1982, said Israel must at a minimum withdraw to positions it held before the war began.
Little evidence of diplomatic progress
A fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies go through the strait in normal times, but it has been largely closed since the war began three months ago.
Iranian oil exports have fallen to their lowest in six years, shipping data show, but global oil prices fell about 3% on hopes that the Lebanon ceasefire could help Washington and Iran find a diplomatic off-ramp from their war.
There has been little evidence of diplomatic progress, though Trump has repeatedly declared since late March that a deal is close.
Trump, under pressure at home to bring down fuel prices ahead of November's congressional elections, received a rare rebuke from the House of Representatives on Wednesday, when it voted to block him from continuing the war, a largely symbolic gesture as Trump is unlikely to sign it into law.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said on Thursday that Iran's enemies had already been defeated on the battlefield and were now seeking to sow internal divisions.
Khamenei has not been seen in public since he succeeded his father, who was killed in an airstrike at the start of the war.
Tehran wants access to billions of dollars in oil revenue, waivers on sanctions on crude exports, a lifting of a US blockade on its ports and leverage over the strait.
Trump, who has said his top priority is to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, told reporters Washington did not need a deal with Iran to get enriched uranium from the country.
"I don't think they could stop us if we wanted, but there's no reason to," he said in the Oval Office. "It's entombed."
Iran says its atomic program is for peaceful purposes. The UN nuclear watchdog said on Thursday it found Iran's nuclear program largely unchanged despite three months of war.
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