The fragile peace agreement between the United States and Iran remains hanging as Israel ramps up its military operations in southern Lebanon, raising concerns that it could fall apart before formal negotiations are complete.
The deal, signed by the United States and Iran earlier this week, triggered a 60-day negotiation period before the two countries reached a formal peace agreement, with talks scheduled to begin in Switzerland on Friday.
But after an Israeli bombing in southern Lebanon that killed at least 18 people led U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance to cancel a flight to Switzerland at the last minute on Thursday night, Iran later said negotiators were not ready to start talks until the deal that included Lebanon in the cease-fire showed signs of implementation.
Analysts say continued Israeli shelling of southern Lebanon could derail hopes of ending the war in the Middle East. Israel currently occupies a fifth of Lebanon and has been under near-daily attacks since early March. More than 3,000 people have been killed and more than 1 million people have been forced to flee their homes.
The US-Iran deal stipulates that both sides will seek to ensure “the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon,” but Israeli officials said this week that their forces would not withdraw from the territory. An Israeli minister said: “We must burn all of Lebanon.”
So can this agreement survive in the face of Israeli bombing? And can President Donald Trump rein in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
Why did Iranian and US negotiators cancel the trip to Switzerland?
Neither side gave an official reason for canceling the trip to begin the long-awaited talks, which was scheduled to be held at the Burgenstock resort in Stansstadt, near Lucerne in central Switzerland.
“Plans for further technical consultations have not yet been finalized,” a White House statement said, adding that the Vance-led delegation “stands ready to depart at the first available opportunity.”
But, he added, “the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable. As of now, the vice president is not scheduled to depart tonight.”
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that there was no certainty that Iranian negotiators would travel for the talks, as they first wanted to see signs that an interim agreement between the US and Iran that included Lebanon would be implemented.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry subsequently issued a statement saying that talks to implement a preliminary agreement between Tehran and Washington to end the war had been “postponed”.
No new date has yet been set for the start of negotiations, even though it will take 60 days to reach an agreement starting this Thursday.
What is happening in Lebanon?
On Thursday night, just after midnight local time (21:00 Japan time), hours before talks between the United States and Iran were scheduled to begin in Switzerland, residents of southern Lebanon woke up to heavy Israeli shelling of villages and cities.
The attack has so far killed at least 18 people and injured dozens, with the largest number of bodies pulled from a blasted residential building in the village of Harouf.
Israel continues its deadliest offensive against southern Lebanon since the US ally agreed with Iran to cease hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon.
Israel began near-daily attacks on Lebanon in early March, when the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel in response to the U.S. and Israeli attack on Tehran that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials.
Despite a US-brokered “ceasefire” in April, Israeli attacks continue. Currently, they continue despite the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
The Israeli military said in a statement Friday that overnight attacks on southern Lebanon continued into the morning and were a response to Hezbollah’s “repeated ceasefire violations.”
Hezbollah has admitted to attacking Israeli military positions in Lebanon. Shortly afterward, the Israeli military announced that four soldiers had been killed during fighting in Lebanon.
“All of Lebanon must be burned down,” said Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a political ally of Netanyahu.
“With all due respect to the American people, Israel must make it clear to the whole world that the blood of our sons and the security of our people will not be lost,” Ben Gvir wrote in a post on X, adding that the region needed to “go wild. Destroy. Terrorism quelled.”
What does the peace deal say about Lebanon?
The first section of the memorandum of understanding signed by the United States and Iran this Wednesday deals with the issue of Lebanon.
The US and Iran have agreed to “an immediate and permanent suspension of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” the newspaper said.
Furthermore, both sides say they are committed to ensuring “Lebanon’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
However, there is no mention of Israel in the memorandum, and experts say the clause leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
Given that the agreement is only between the United States and Iran (Israel and Hezbollah have not signed), it is unclear how the ceasefire in Lebanon will be implemented or whether it means Iran will have to stop funding Hezbollah.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghai noted that Tehran “has not separated the United States and the Israeli regime,” adding that it is the United States’ responsibility to ensure that Israel abides by its commitments under the memorandum.
How did Israel respond to the US-Iran deal?
The deal has sparked outrage in Israel, with political allies and opposition parties alike surrounding Prime Minister Netanyahu over the deal.
Additionally, Israel was reportedly not involved in the negotiations and was not allowed to review the document until it was signed by US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday.
“The battle is not over yet,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, adding that “Israel still faces further challenges,” noting that troops would not withdraw from occupied Lebanese land.
Israel will “restore security in the north,” but doing so will require “maintaining the security belt in southern Lebanon,” from which Israel will not withdraw “as long as Israel’s security needs require it,” Netanyahu said.
On Monday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement: “Prime Minister Netanyahu and I are pursuing a clear policy that (the military) will remain in safe zones in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza indefinitely to protect our borders and the Israeli communities there from jihadist elements.”
These statements come against the backdrop of rising tensions between the United States and Israel.
At the G7 summit in France, President Trump criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bombing tactics in Lebanon, which resulted in numerous civilian casualties.
He told reporters from the sidelines of the summit that Israel had been fighting Hezbollah for “too long and too many people have been killed.”
“You don’t have to tear down an apartment complex every time you look for someone, because there are a lot of people living in apartment complexes, and not all of them are Hezbollah,” he said.
Vice President Vance also on Thursday slammed Israeli ministers who spoke out against the deal. “What is your exact proposal? You are a country of 9 million people. You cannot solve all the national security problems you have by sacrificing your methods,” he told Israeli leaders.
Can Israel break the peace deal?
Ali Baez, director of the International Crisis Group’s Iran project, told Al Jazeera that US President Donald Trump is now responsible for “deciding whether he wants a memorandum of understanding or not.”
“If we want the deal to survive, we must not only rebuke Prime Minister Netanyahu, but use our influence to stop the Lebanon war,” he said.
From Tehran’s perspective, Baez said, “If[Trump]is unwilling or unable to rein in Prime Minister Netanyahu, then any deal with the United States is worthless on paper.”
Tahani Mustafa, visiting fellow for the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that in addition to domestic pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu ahead of national elections by October, “the memorandum does not necessarily guarantee that Israel will act or that it will not try to disrupt the process, especially given the tensions between the United States and Israel.”
“There is a good chance that it (Israel) will try to break this (agreement). We have seen in the past that Israel is recalcitrant, even though the US has tried to promote it many times,” she told Al Jazeera.
The only thing that can guarantee further negotiations to secure an agreement is “serious, tough pressure on Israel, but this shows that the US doesn’t really have the political will to do so,” she added.
It is therefore up to Iran to get the peace talks back on track, “even if it means that Israel continues to bomb Lebanon,” Mustafa said.
But Crisis Group’s Baez said negotiations would quickly collapse if killings continued in Lebanon.
He concluded that “Iran may be able to afford to delink with Lebanon at some point in the future, but not if a memorandum of understanding agreement is not completely dry.”
