Escalating violence in the Middle East is threatening to derail stalled peace talks between Iran and the United States as negotiators struggle to extend a shaky ceasefire and end the war.
Iran suspended talks with the U.S. on Monday after Israel intensified attacks in Lebanon, according to state media reports and an Iranian official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press.
But Israel appeared to be holding off Tuesday on what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had described as imminent strikes on Beirut. Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israel Defense Forces continued to operate in an expanding “security zone” in southern Lebanon but had refrained from powerful strikes in the capital, “except for targeted assassinations,” following a U.S. request. He warned, however, that it would strike Dahiyeh, a Beirut suburb where the militant group Hezbollah holds sway, if Israel’s northern communities are targeted.
“There will no longer be a situation where there is quiet in Beirut while Israeli communities are under attack,” he said, adding that Netanyahu had conveyed this message to President Donald Trump. “The Americans validated the principle and notified the Lebanese government and all relevant parties: Israeli communities versus Beirut,” Katz said.
Trump on Monday insisted that negotiations were ongoing. “Talks are continuing, at a rapid pace, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump wrote in a social media post.
Trump also said Monday that Hezbollah and Israel pledged to hold off on expanded military operations, before Netanyahu said that his forces “will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”
Netanyahu had previously announced imminent strikes on Beirut, orders that sent large numbers of civilians fleeing from southern parts of the Lebanese capital. Over the weekend, Israeli ground forces made their deepest incursion into Lebanese territory in decades.
Trump said he spoke by phone with Netanyahu and with Hezbollah “through highly placed representatives.”
Hezbollah “agreed that all shooting will stop — That Israel will not attack them, and they will not attack Israel,” Trump wrote on social media.
Lebanon’s Embassy in Washington said Hezbollah had accepted the U.S. proposal, and under the proposed arrangement Israel would not launch a broad offensive on Beirut in exchange for Hezbollah stopping attacks on Israel. Further negotiations Tuesday and Wednesday would expand on the progress made, it said in the statement Monday evening.
Overnight, Israel said it intercepted two projectiles from Lebanese territory, while Hezbollah said it targeted Israeli forces with rocket barrages in retaliation for attacks on villages in southern Lebanon.
The expanded Israeli military operations are complicating peace talks between Iran and the U.S. because Iranian officials insist that a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon was included under the ceasefire announced in April. Hezbollah was funded and trained by Iran over decades and remains a key ally.
“The ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts including in Lebanon,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted Monday on X. “Violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts.”
U.S. and Iranian negotiators have been engaged in talks for weeks, but have failed to resolve key differences on the future of Iran’s nuclear program and control of the Strait of Hormuz. Now, the ceasefire is increasingly coming under strain, with the two sides trading tit-for-tat attacks in recent days.
The U.S. military said it struck Iranian radar and drone sites near the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, prompting Iran to retaliate Monday with missile fire into Kuwait.
Iranian and U.S. negotiators had signaled progress on finalizing a memorandum of understanding last week, but the Iranian official said Monday that he was less hopeful of an imminent deal.
In addition to Israeli operations in Lebanon, the official said last-minute changes to the deals’ terms by U.S. negotiators over the weekend also frustrated progress. The official said U.S. negotiators had not informed their Iranian counterparts of the new deal terms.
Tehran’s decision to pull back from the talks highlights the difficulty Trump is facing in bringing an end to an unpopular war that has caused worldwide economic disruption, including spiking energy prices.
U.S. military planners across several continents were on heightened alert for the potential expansion of hostilities, according to people familiar with the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.
The people familiar emphasized that preparations alone do not indicate strikes are imminent. U.S. military officials in Europe and Africa raised their force protection measures as a proactive step in case fighting resumes in earnest, the people said.
Trump has insisted that the U.S. dealt Iran a resounding military defeat and that he would be able to impose his top demands, including an end to Iran’s nuclear program and the containment of its stockpile of enriched uranium.
Iran, however, has countered with its own steep demands, including its refusal to fully dismantle its nuclear program, demands for the release of billions in frozen funds and extensive sanctions relief.
U.S. Central Command said its most recent strikes, carried out in the coastal city of Goruk and on Qeshm Island, targeted Iranian air defenses, a ground control station and two attack drones that it said posed clear threats to ships in regional waters. Its strikes came after Iran shot down a U.S. drone operating over international waters.
Both Goruk and Qeshm Island are strategic sites overlooking the strait, where Iran has sought to blockade most international shipping and the U.S. has been escorting commercial vessels through in defiance of Tehran’s closure.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had launched missiles from Khuzestan province in retaliation for what it said was a U.S. strike on a telecommunications tower on Sirik Island. The IRGC said that its targets “were destroyed” and warned that any repeated strike would draw a “completely different” response.
Kuwait’s military, posting Monday on X, said that it was “responding to hostile missile and drone threats” and that any sounds of explosions were the result of air defense systems intercepting Iranian attacks.
No casualties or damage were reported, according to local media, although civil aviation was disrupted, with diversions and holding patterns over parts of the Persian Gulf region.
Iran said it had targeted a U.S.-linked air base.
In Lebanon, Israel has intensified its attacks in recent weeks, killing dozens of people and issuing forced-displacement orders for two of the largest cities in the south. Hezbollah has stepped up strikes against Israeli forces, including with new-generation fiber-optic drones.
The Iran-U.S. talks are aimed at negotiating a memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire by 60 days and open a new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
Vice President JD Vance said last week that the two sides continued to go “back and forth on a couple of language points” and that it was “hard to say exactly when, or if, the president’s going to sign the MOU.”
Among the core sticking points, officials said, are Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump has stepped in to review and tweak the latest proposals. He has played down the significance of the back-and-forth attacks, telling critics to “just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end.”
France has requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council over the expanding violence in Lebanon.
Alex Horton, Dan Lamothe, Lior Soroka and Victoria Craw contributed to this report.
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