Trump announces ceasefire in Lebanon
Baku, April 16, AZERTAC
President Donald Trump announced a pause in fighting in Lebanon on Thursday. Lebanon and Israel have “agreed that in order to achieve peace between their Countries, they will formally begin a 10 Day ceasefire,” Trump said in a social media post, according to the Washington Post.
The announcement came amid a wider push in the region to end the war in Iran, as U.S. and Iranian negotiators continue to exchange messages, without yet agreeing to a second round of talks.
Trump’s announcement followed a call he had with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Thursday, in which he expressed “his commitment to fulfilling the Lebanese request for a ceasefire as soon as possible,” according to a statement from Aoun’s office.
The Trump administration has ramped up pressure on Israel and Lebanon to agree to a truce. Since Trump announced the ceasefire with Iran last week, Israel has insisted that Lebanon and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group backed by Iran, were not covered by the pause in fighting.
However, it is unclear how successful the ceasefire will be as Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed group that is fighting Israel and the target of Israeli strikes across Lebanon, has said it is opposed to Lebanese-Israeli talks.
Lebanon’s presidential office said that Aoun also spoke to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday, who “affirmed his continuation of the ongoing efforts to achieve a ceasefire as a prelude to establishing peace.”
Pakistan, which elped mediate the U.S.-Iran ceasefire and hosted a through-the-night negotiating session last weekend, has said Lebanon was part of the deal and has described halting Israel’s attacks in that country as an intrinsic part of the agreement. Israel emphatically disputes that.
Despite that disagreement and Trump’s imposition of a military blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, the ceasefire has held — an indication that Washington and Tehran remain keen for an off-ramp from the war.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking at the Pentagon on Thursday morning, sent a message directly to Iran, warning that while the Iranian military is digging out from earlier U.S. and Israeli strikes, the U.S. is “reloading with more power than ever before” and is “locked and loaded” for more strikes on “dual-use infrastructure,” targets such as power plants that have both military and civilian uses, should a deal fail to materialize and the fighting resumes.
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