Washington (United States) (AFP) – US President Donald Trump insisted on Sunday that a deal to end the Middle East war was just “hours” away, angrily blaming Israel for delaying its signing with an airstrike on Beirut that drew threats of retaliation from Iran. Trump has pledged that the agreement will be signed Sunday — his 80th birthday — while Tehran has declined to offer a clear timeline, though both sides have signalled that diplomatic channels remained open.
Tehran has long demanded that any agreement to halt the war must include the parallel conflict in Lebanon, where Israel has been pursuing a campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah. But after days of momentum building towards a deal, Israel’s strike on Sunday in Beirut’s southern suburbs — a Hezbollah stronghold — prompted Iran’s chief negotiator to question the point of continuing peace talks. The attack “showed that the United States either lacks the will to implement its commitments or lacks the ability to do so,” Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on X. “If you do not have the will or the ability to fulfil your commitments, then there is no point in talking about continuing down this path,” he added.
Trump — who over weeks of negotiations has repeatedly declared an accord with Iran was all but concluded — told the US news outlet Axios that the strike “delayed the signing.” “It was supposed to be now. Now it is scheduled for a few hours from now,” Trump said in a phone call, while fuming at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Why did Bibi have to do a fucking attack?” he told Axios. “I was so pissed off. I let him know. He has no fucking judgement.”
In an earlier social media post, Trump decried the strike, saying the Iran deal would “bring peace to the region, including to Lebanon, and all sides should stand down.” The Iranian Fars news agency quoted “a source close to Iran’s negotiating team” as saying just before the Israeli strike that even if Tehran’s position was incorporated into the deal, “no agreement will be signed within the timeframe announced by Trump.” The last time Israel hit the Beirut suburbs, it sparked one of the strongest jolts yet to a ceasefire that has largely held since April, with Iran firing off a retaliatory missile barrage and Israel responding with strikes. Following Sunday’s attack, Iran’s highest security body, the Supreme National Security Council, announced that the “response of the fighters of Islam is imminent.”
“Lebanon is our life and violation of the red lines of the Islamic Republic will not be tolerated,” its secretary said on X. Israel’s military said it was “preparing for potential fire toward the territory of the state of Israel in the coming hours.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticised the Israeli attack, pointing to its inopportune timing and urging “all parties to show maximum restraint at this crucial moment.” US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had said earlier he did not expect the Israeli attack to “disrupt” the progress towards a deal. “From all I know, we are on track,” he said. “It is not a matter of if. It is a matter of when.”
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian had said that the Supreme National Security Council supported negotiations despite criticism from hardliners, pointedly adding that the body was in charge of “decisions regarding war and negotiations.” A delegation from mediator Qatar was in Tehran on Sunday “to help facilitate the finalisation of the agreement,” a diplomat with knowledge of the situation told AFP. The warring parties have released conflicting information about the contents of the deal, as each seeks to show it emerged from the war with the upper hand.
Tehran has insisted it will maintain control over the vital Strait of Hormuz — which it has blockaded since early in the war — but the US has repeatedly said this would be unacceptable, and has responded with its own blockade of Iranian ports. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that the deal on the table called for lifting the US blockade, while stressing the strait would not return to its pre-war status quo. Another key sticking point in the talks has been the fate of Iran’s nuclear programme, particularly its stockpile of highly enriched uranium — believed to have been buried by US strikes last year.
Araghchi on Friday said the only way to deal with Iran’s enriched uranium “is to dilute it inside Iran.” Trump has justified the war as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons — an ambition it has long denied — and had previously said the US would remove and destroy the uranium. On Saturday, he said: “When all is calm, we will go in and get the Nuclear Dust…and downblend and destroy it, whether in Iran or the United States.”
© 2024 AFP
