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Iranian president: Continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon would render ceasefire talks ‘meaningless’

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by Max Rego - 04/09/26 8:49 AM ET

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by Max Rego - 04/09/26 8:49 AM ET

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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Thursday that Israeli strikes on Lebanon are violations of the two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran and “render negotiations meaningless.”

“The repeated aggression by the Zionist entity against Lebanon is a flagrant violation of the initial ceasefire agreement and a dangerous indicator of deceit and lack of commitment to potential accords,” Pezeshkian wrote on social platform X, in a post translated from Arabic. “The continuation of these aggressions will render negotiations meaningless; our hands will remain on the trigger, and Iran will never abandon its Lebanese brothers and sisters.”

His comments come ahead of talks between Iranian and U.S. officials — including Vice President Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner — set for the weekend in Islamabad.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who mediated the ceasefire talks, wrote in a post online that “allies” of both countries agreed to the pause in hostilities, including with respect to Lebanon.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the opposite on Tuesday and wrote on X, “The two-weeks ceasefire does not include Lebanon.”

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have carried out strikes against Hezbollah in the region since early March.

On Wednesday, the IDF struck 100 Hezbollah military targets across Lebanon in just one minute, according to Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesperson. Those attacks killed at least 254 people and injured at least 1,165, the Lebanese General Dicterorate of Civil Defense wrote on Facebook.

Heba Morayef, the regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said that marked the most casualties in a single day since Israel began striking Lebanon last month.

“Even before today’s attack, which the Israeli military referred to as operation ‘Eternal Darkness,’ more than 1,500 people had been killed and over a million people displaced from their homes across the country,” Morayef added.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, wrote Thursday on X that Lebanon “and the entire Resistance Axis, as Iran’s allies” are part of the ceasefire.

Ghalibaf cited an Iranian 10-point peace plan, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that Tehran submitted a different 10-point plan to the Trump administration after the U.S. “discarded” that initial Iranian proposal.

Vance also suggested Wednesday that the administration “never indicated” that the temporary and fragile truce applied to Israeli operations in Lebanon.

“I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding,” he told reporters in Budapest. “I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon and it just didn’t. We never made that promise.”

The agreement did include allowing ships to pass in the Strait of Hormuz — a channel responsible for the transportation of roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil. The strikes in Lebanon, however, have led officials in Tehran to take pause on lifting restrictions.

Just six ships, meanwhile, have crossed through the strait in the last 24 hours, down significantly from the typical daily average of 60 vessels, according to hormuzstraitmonitor.com. Trump said on Tuesday that the ceasefire was contingent on Iran fully reopening the strait.

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