Just hours after the United States and Iran announced a ceasefire in their war, dominating headlines around the world and pushing oil prices to new highs, Israel shelled Lebanon on Wednesday, killing hundreds and wounding thousands, prompting Iran to reimpose the Strait of Hormuz blockade.
At issue is whether Israel’s relentless attacks on Lebanon are included in the ceasefire at all. Pakistan, which brokered the deal, said so. Israel insisted otherwise.
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Late Wednesday, President Donald Trump called the violence in Lebanon “another skirmish” and the United States sided with Israel, even as Hezbollah entered the war to defend Iran.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been under intense political pressure since the United States and Iran signed a cease-fire agreement, which involved little or no active Israeli involvement.
None of Israel’s war objectives, which Netanyahu pledged would be the basis of an existential battle with Iran, have been achieved, angering war supporters.
Additionally, under the terms of the cease-fire announced yesterday, a 10-point peace plan presented by Iran was accepted as a starting point for negotiations scheduled to begin in Islamabad this weekend.
Early accounts of Iran’s plans suggest that Iran could retain its nuclear arsenal and benefit economically from a levy on shipping passage through the Strait of Hormuz, as well as tariffs and sanctions relief promised by US President Donald Trump, an ally of Israel, on his Truth social account.
This is a far cry from the 15-point list of demands the United States previously presented to Iran, which promised to fully reopen the strait without conditions, give up its enriched uranium stockpile, end its ballistic missile program and end arms deliveries to regional proxies, including Yemen’s Houthis, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraq’s spate of militant groups.
Claiming that Lebanon is exempt from the cease-fire agreement, Israel on Wednesday launched its heaviest artillery barrage against its neighbor in months. In about 10 minutes, Israeli forces carried out more than 100 airstrikes against what they said were Hezbollah targets, striking Beirut, southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, killing at least 254 people, 91 of them in the capital Beirut alone.
The attack has been condemned by a number of countries and international organizations, including Spain, France, the United Kingdom, the United Nations, and Pakistan, which brokered the ceasefire agreement and explicitly included Lebanon.
Following the airstrike, Iranian state media announced that the country’s government is now considering withdrawing from the ceasefire agreement and has already announced that restrictions on the economically vital Strait of Hormuz would be reimposed.
Israel, on the other hand, insists it is not trying to destroy the ceasefire by launching an attack on Lebanon. Charles Freilich, Israel’s former vice-presidential national security adviser, told Al Jazeera that the motivation for the airstrike arose solely from “the opportunity to attack a large number of medium- and high-level Hezbollah fighters without undermining the ceasefire.” Both the United States and Israel insist that the ceasefire does not include Lebanon.
“Provocateur Commander-in-Chief”
But some analysts are skeptical.
“Israeli officials will argue that this was a very sophisticated operation against necessary security objectives, perhaps embellishing those arguments with claims of deep intelligence and technological infiltration and sophistication, and the usual Western mainstream media will probably parrot the Israeli line in a despicable way,” former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy told Al Jazeera, explaining that such operations typically combine two key characteristics.
“The first is, sadly, Israel’s dedication to death and destruction, primarily an end in itself, aimed at spreading terrorism and upending state capacity and upending the lives of civilians in various parts of the region,” he said. “And secondly, it is a very clear attempt to prolong the broader war against Iran, undermine prospects for a ceasefire, and act as a mastermind of the provocateur.”
Politically, however, support for the war within Israel may have weakened. Many of those who initially supported the war against Iran have been relentless in their criticism of the possibility of a pause in conflicts negotiated by other countries, clearly at Israel’s expense.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid, posting on X, argued: prime minister “Prime Minister Netanyahu has turned our country into a protectorate that receives instructions by phone on matters that touch the core of our national security.”
Democratic leader Yair Golan was equally scathing. “Prime Minister Netanyahu lied. Prime Minister Netanyahu promised a ‘historic victory’ and security for generations, when in reality he suffered the most serious strategic failure Israel has ever known,” he wrote in X.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu is really in a corner and thinks he has to destroy the ceasefire to get out of it, just like he did in Gaza before,” Aida Touma Slimane, a lawmaker from the left-wing Hadash party, which has opposed the war from the beginning, told Al Jazeera. “The ceasefire has cost him a lot of support, even among those who supported the war. None of his war objectives have been achieved and he appears to be losing control of the Trump administration,” she said.
“Remember, we are heading into an election,” she added, referring to the vote currently scheduled for October, “and Prime Minister Netanyahu is falling in the polls. He needs something to claim victory.”
“That’s why he did what he did,” she said of Wednesday’s barrage of gunfire on downtown Lebanon, which killed hundreds of people, including women, children and health workers, according to emergency workers at the scene. “He committed genocide in Lebanon.”
