Negotiators from Iran and the United States are preparing for high-level talks as the ceasefire remained fragile on Friday, with Israel and Hizbullah trading fire and Tehran maintaining its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
There remain many issues that could derail the truce, as well as negotiations for a broader deal to permanently end the war.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, close to the Revolutionary Guard, said talks set for Saturday would not happen unless Israel stopped its attacks in Lebanon.
US president Donald Trump said Iran was “doing a very poor job” by not allowing the free flow of ships through the strait, through which 20 per cent of the world’s traded oil once passed.
Kuwait, meanwhile, said it faced a drone attack on Thursday night that it blamed on Iran and its militia allies in the region.
Though Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard denied launching any assault, it has carried out attacks across the Middle East that it did not claim responsibility for.
And yet, preparations for the talks between Iran and the US appeared to be moving forward, with US vice-president JD Vance making his way to Pakistan from Washington.
Negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, meanwhile, are expected to begin next week in Washington, according to a US official and a person familiar with the plans.
Boarding Air Force Two on his way to Pakistan, Vance said he believes negotiations with Iran will be “positive”.
“We’re looking forward to the negotiation. I think it’s gonna be positive. We’ll of course see,” Vance said.
[ Day of pain in Lebanon: ‘They’re doing the same thing they did to Gaza’Opens in new window ]
He cited Trump in saying: “If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend the open hand.”
But he said: “If they’re gonna try and play us, then they’re gonna find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
Israel’s insistence that the ceasefire in Iran does not include a pause in its fighting with Hizbullah, which joined the war in support of its backer, Iran, has threatened to scupper the deal.
The day the truce was announced, Israel pounded Beirut with air strikes, killing more than 300 people, Lebanon’s health ministry reported. It was the deadliest day in the country since the war began on February 28th.
Trump said on Thursday that he has asked Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to dial back the strikes.
Early on Friday Israel’s military said it hit approximately 10 launchers in Lebanon that had fired rockets towards northern Israel a day earlier.
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, warned on Thursday that continued Israeli attacks on Hizbullah would bring “explicit costs and strong responses”.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, said he authorised the negotiations with Lebanon “as soon as possible” aimed at disarming Hizbullah militants and establishing relations between the neighbours, which have technically been at war since Israel was established in 1948.
In a first statement since Israel announced direct negotiations with Lebanon, Hizbullah chief Naim Kassem urged Lebanese officials to stop offering “free concessions” but did not take a clear stance on the talks.
Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent oil prices skyrocketing, driven stocks down and impacted the world economy. Tehran’s control over the waterway has proved its biggest strategic advantage in the war.
The spot price of Brent crude, the international standard, was about $97 on Friday, up more than 30 per cent since the war started.
Before the conflict more than 100 ships passed through the strait each day, many carrying oil to Asia. With the ceasefire in place, only 12 have been recorded passing through.
Underscoring the precarious situation, a Botswana-flagged liquefied natural gas tanker attempted to travel out of the Gulf via a route ordered by the Revolutionary Guard, but suddenly turned around early on Friday, ship-tracking data showed.
The head of the United Arab Emirates’ major oil company, Sultan al-Jaber, said some 230 ships loaded with oil were waiting to get through the strait and must be allowed “to navigate this corridor without condition”.
Donald wrote on his social media platform: “Iran is doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz.
“That is not the agreement we have!”
Questions also remain over the fate of Iran’s missile and nuclear programmes, which the US and Israel sought to eliminate in going to war.
The US says Iran must never be able to build nuclear weapons and wants to remove Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which could be used to make them. Iran says its programme is peaceful.
Trump has said the US would work with Iran to remove the uranium, though Tehran has not confirmed that.
The chief of Iran’s nuclear agency, Mohammad Eslami, said on Thursday that protecting Tehran’s right to enrich uranium is “necessary” for any ceasefire talks.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in Iran, a top Iranian medical official has said. Iran’s government has not provided any definitive death toll from the war.
In Lebanon more than 1,888 people have been killed and one million have been displaced.
More than a dozen people have died in Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, while 23 civilians were killed in Israel. Thirteen US service members have also been killed.
