The Israeli military said it launched attacks on Hezbollah targets in Beirut on Sunday, despite ongoing efforts to negotiate an end to the war between the US and Iran. Smoke could be seen rising over the Lebanese capital.
The strikes threatened to hamper negotiations on an agreement, which in its current form represents a deep disappointment Israel Government. When Israel attacked Beirut’s suburbs for the last time a week ago, it triggered the worst escalation in fighting between them Iran and Israel since the weak ceasefire came into force on April 7th.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the attacks were in response to Hezbollah attacks in the north of the country. The Israeli military said earlier in the day that Hezbollah fired three projectiles into northern Israel and released footage showing an audible bang and a column of smoke rising above the tree line.
An Associated Press photographer on the scene in Beirut said the building hit was a five-story apartment building with shops on the ground floor. The two lower floors suffered the most damage from the strikes. There was no information about losses. Residents of the southern suburbs, many of whom had returned to their homes after a period of relative calm in recent weeks, were seen fleeing.
Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on March 2, two days after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, sparking a war in the Middle East. Israeli troops have pushed their invasion of Lebanon deeper than ever before in over a quarter century.
The strike comes as mediators bring Iran and the United States closer to an agreement
Iran wants a ceasefire agreement that includes fighting in Lebanon and is seeking the release of billions of dollars in frozen funds. But as the talks continued, Israel found itself sidelined in negotiations led by Pakistan and others.
“Israel will not tolerate firing into its territory,” Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Sunday. Trump has urged Netanyahu to stop harsh attacks on Lebanon while a deal is near, but the prime minister has defied him.
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Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned that the strikes could jeopardize the final phase of negotiations.
There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.
Qatari mediators traveled to Tehran on Sunday to finalize the deal, according to two regional officials.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, expressed cautious optimism that the U.S. and Iran are finally nearing an agreement that could halt hostilities that have killed thousands of people and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure has thrown global markets into disarray.
US President Donald Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Saturday that the deal would be signed on Sunday, while Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said it could happen in the coming days. Trump said the Strait of Hormuz would open immediately after the signing.
The deal is expected to be signed electronically and without an in-person ceremony. However, it is unclear when and how the signing will take place.
Nuclear and other issues still need to be resolved
The deal does not resolve the most sensitive issues between the U.S. and Iran, including Iran’s nuclear program or its frozen assets, but provides a 60-day framework for technical discussions on those issues, according to Pakistani and regional officials familiar with the ongoing negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The officials described Pakistan’s months-long efforts to lead the negotiations, the effort to keep both sides from leaving the room and the multiple outright failures of the negotiations.
Under the deal currently being discussed, the US and Israel appear to have failed to achieve their original goals of destroying Iran’s missile and nuclear programs and ending its support for proxies. It’s not clear how the deal will resolve these issues or whether they will be part of the final agreement.
Critics in Trump’s own Republican Party, which is grappling with an unpopular war ahead of the midterm elections, criticized the deal. Some said it was no improvement over the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which Trump withdrew the U.S. from during his first term and which he still describes as “bad.”
Meanwhile, Trump was expected to discuss demining the Strait of Hormuz during the Group of Seven summit that begins Monday. The waterway is crucial for significant shipments of oil, natural gas and related products such as fertilizer, and its effective closure rocked the global economy.
Iran’s nuclear program and highly enriched uranium have long been at the center of tensions with the United States and Israel and are a cause for international concern.
Trump claimed on social media that the US would move forward “when everything is calm” and “mix down and destroy” the enriched uranium in Iran or the US
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium enriched to up to 60% purity, a small technical advance from a weapons-grade level of 90%.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful and has not publicly committed to handing over the enriched uranium that is believed to be buried beneath three nuclear facilities that were badly damaged by U.S. strikes last year.
—Frankel from Jerusalem, Ahmed from Islamabad, Magdy from Cairo and Sewell from Beirut. Associated Press writer Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
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