By Maya Gebeily, Rami Ayyub and Zohra Bensemra
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM/QLAILIEH, Lebanon, June 18 (Reuters) – Three Saudi-flagged supertankers carrying 6 million barrels of crude sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a deal with Iran to end the war that has disrupted global energy supplies.
But in Lebanon, where more than a million people are displaced by the fighting, Israeli forces launched fresh airstrikes on Thursday morning, raising doubt about how far Trump will go to force his wartime allies to halt an offensive he has now pledged to end.
Trump put his signature on Wednesday on the “memorandum of understanding” to end the war, as did Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, bringing it into effect two days earlier than previously expected. It calls for the immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz and lifting of a U.S. blockade of Iran’s ports.
Though shippers say it will still take time for transit across the strait to reach pre-war levels, with a need yet to ensure safe access and clear mines, there were immediate signs of an impact.
Ships which once might have concealed their positions by switching off their transponders were now broadcasting their locations, poised to transit the strait.
Benchmark Brent crude futures prices fell by another 2% to below $78 a barrel, lowest since the shooting began.
The U.S.-Iranian memorandum starts the clock on a 60-day negotiation period to reach a final settlement to the war, which Trump launched in February alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
MEMORANDUM EXPLICITLY CALLS FOR END OF WAR IN LEBANON
But Israel, which launched an invasion in March and has since seized a large swathe of southern Lebanon in its pursuit of Hezbollah militants who opened fire across the border in support of Iran, was excluded from the negotiations.
Iran has always said any peace deal must also cover Lebanon. In an apparent major concession to Iran, the memorandum signed by Trump explicitly calls for the “permanent termination” of the war in Lebanon and for its “territorial integrity and sovereignty” to be ensured.
With Lebanon among the peace effort’s most delicate issues, Trump in recent days has become openly critical of his ally’s operations there, accusing Israel of unnecessarily destroying entire buildings to hit Hezbollah fighters.
Israel has said it has no intention of withdrawing from Lebanon, whatever Trump negotiates. It released a new map on Thursday showing an expanded southern area occupied by its troops, which it describes as a buffer zone.
Two Israeli officials, including a senior official close to Netanyahu, told Reuters Israel was holding negotiations with the United States to keep Israeli troops in Lebanon.
The senior official described those talks with Washington as “stubborn” and said Israel would not back down. The other official said the outcome would depend on whether Trump “decides to force the issue” by threatening repercussions on Israel.
While fighting in Lebanon tamped down at the start of this week when Trump first announced the deal had been reached, it has ticked up again over the past few days, and continued on Thursday morning after Trump’s signature.
Lebanese State news agency NNA said three people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the southern Lebanese towns of Kfartebnit and Zebdine on Thursday. Reuters reporters heard an Israeli drone flying low over Beirut and its southern suburbs.
‘IN LEBANON IT’S NOT OVER YET’, SAYS DISPLACED LEBANESE MAN
“Iran and the Americans are done. Fine. In Lebanon it’s not over yet,” said Mohammed Doghman, a man displaced from the southern city of Nabatieh to Beirut, who was sitting outside his tent on Thursday, squinting hard at his phone to read the news.
“They should give us a final answer: has the war ended for good, or will we return to it again?”
In Qlailieh, in southern Lebanon near the port of Tyre, a few displaced residents had ventured back to survey the ruins of their homes, flattened into piles of concrete rubble that many compared to Gaza.
Tyre resident Abdelkarim al-Dahi compared Israel and Hezbollah to the feuding cat and mouse in Tom and Jerry cartoons: “They don’t stop.”
Netanyahu has boasted for years of a particularly close relationship with Trump, which yielded major shifts in U.S. policy in Israel’s favour during the Republican president’s first term, and ultimately the joint decision to wage war on Iran this year.
But Trump’s apparent shift over Lebanon has abruptly given rise to one of the biggest rifts in U.S.-Israeli relations in decades. The U.S. memorandum of understanding with Iran has been lamented in Israel across the political spectrum.
“Soon, Israel may be forced to choose: Either keep up the military pressure and lose Trump’s diplomatic support, or stay on his good side — but only by ending, or scaling back, the conflict that many see as the country’s most urgent fight,” the Times of Israel wrote on Thursday.
When Trump launched the war nearly four months ago, he said his aims were to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, end its ability to strike its neighbours, prevent it from supporting allied militants in the region and make it possible for Iranians to topple their hardline leaders.
Though he initially demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender”, Trump ultimately signed the agreement with none of those objectives met.
U.S. officials say the upcoming negotiations could still yield a strong agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme, and that they retain important leverage over Tehran, including threats from Trump to resume bombing if he is unsatisfied.
But Trump’s critics, including some hawks in his own party, say Iran is in a stronger position now than before the war, having withstood a superpower attack, exerted control of the strait and gained valuable waivers to financial sanctions.
(Writing by Peter Graff, Editing by William Maclean)
Comments