Lebanon Cease-Fire Helps Save Shaky US-Iran Peace Deal

A cease-fire in Lebanon helped keep a fragile peace deal between the United States and Iran alive on Friday. Earlier in the day, Iran pulled out of peace talks after Israel launched airstrikes in Lebanon, which is home to Iran's ally, the armed group Hezbollah. The sudden move put the new US-Iran agreement at risk just days after it was signed. But by the end of the day, the truce appeared to be holding, at least for now.

The cease-fire in Lebanon was set to begin at 4 p.m. local time. Officials from several countries said it was brokered by Qatar and the United States. The night before, Israeli bombing in Lebanon killed 47 people and wounded 97 more, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. The Lebanese cease-fire gave the wider US-Iran peace deal a needed boost.

President Trump signed an agreement with Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, earlier this week. The deal gives both sides 60 days to work out a longer-lasting peace agreement. Key topics include limiting Iran's nuclear program and lifting Western financial penalties, called sanctions, that have hurt Iran's economy. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, said he went along with the deal but did not fully support it.

Talks for that longer deal were supposed to start Friday at a resort in Switzerland near Lake Lucerne. But Iran's leaders pulled out of the meeting after Israeli strikes hit Lebanon. Vice President JD Vance, who was supposed to attend the talks, suddenly canceled his trip late Thursday. No one has announced when the talks will be rescheduled.

The peace deal has 14 points. The very first one calls for the United States, Iran, and their allies to stop all military operations right away, including in Lebanon. However, neither Israel nor Hezbollah signed onto the agreement. That has made the deal harder to enforce from the start.

Israel's ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, said his country was firmly committed to an immediate cease-fire. Trump told NBC News he had asked Israeli leaders to agree to the Lebanon cease-fire, calling it a little icing on the cake. But Hezbollah's leader, Naim Kassem, vowed in a speech to expel Israeli forces from Lebanon. Leiter, meanwhile, said Israeli troops would stay in southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah out of the area.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the latest round of bombing after a strike on an Israeli tank killed four soldiers. He said Israel would make Hezbollah pay a very heavy price for those attacks. Netanyahu is under strong pressure from people inside Israel to keep fighting until Hezbollah is removed from southern Lebanon. This puts him at odds with Trump, who has publicly criticized Israel for using too much force.

Iran insists that any peace deal must include Lebanon. Dana Stroul, a former top Pentagon official who worked on Middle East issues, said the delay in talks shows that American officials may not fully understand what Iran's leaders care about most. She warned that Iran may be trying to take advantage of the growing tension between Washington and Israel, pushing the two allies further apart.

The conflict in Lebanon has involved many rounds of attacks and counterattacks over a long time. The latest chapter began on February 28, when the United States and Israel started bombing Iran. Hezbollah then fired rockets and drones into Israel, and Israel responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for global trade, slowly increased in number after the truce was announced, though traffic remained much lower than before the war.