JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military said it launched strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut on Sunday, potentially complicating efforts to finalize a deal to end the U.S.-Iran war. Smoke rose over the Lebanese capital, and the Civil Defense said it retrieved three bodies and six wounded people from the rubble.
Iran threatened a military response.
The deal in its current form is a deep disappointment to Israel's government. The last time Israel struck
the Beirut suburbs a week ago, it set off the most serious escalation of fighting between Iran and Israel since the tenuous ceasefire took hold April 7.
There was no immediate White House comment on Israel’s strikes. U.S. President Donald Trump, who had said the deal could be signed Sunday, has pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop hitting Lebanon hard while a deal is near, but the prime minister has defied him.
Netanyahu's office said the strikes were in response to Hezbollah attacks on the north of the country. There was no immediate comment from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
Israel’s military earlier said Hezbollah had launched three projectiles into northern Israel, releasing footage where an audible boom was followed by smoke rising above the tree line.
An Associated Press photographer at the scene said the building struck was a five-story apartment building with shops on the ground floor. The two lowest floors were the most heavily damaged. Residents of the southern suburbs, many of whom had returned home after relative calm in recent weeks, could be seen fleeing the area.
Hezbollah fired missiles into Israel on March 2, two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, sparking war in the Middle East. Israeli troops have since pushed their invasion of Lebanon deeper than at any point in over a quarter century.
Iran wants a ceasefire deal to include the fighting in Lebanon. Israel has been sidelined in negotiations led by Pakistan and others.
“Israel will not tolerate firing into its territory,” Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.
Iran’s parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a lead negotiator for Tehran, warned on X that Israel's strikes on Beirut's suburbs show that “America either lacks the will to fulfill its commitments or the ability to do so.” He warned that the strikes could imperil the final stage of negotiations.
“Without a doubt, these crimes will not go unanswered,” said Gen. Mohammad Jafar Asadi, deputy commander of Iran’s Joint Command Headquarters, the official Mizan news agency reported.
Qatari mediators traveled to Tehran on Sunday to finalize the agreement, according to two regional officials.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, expressed cautious optimism that the U.S. and Iran were finally approaching a deal that could halt hostilities that have killed thousands of people and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure has thrown world markets into disarray.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Saturday the deal would be signed Sunday, while Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said it could happen in the coming days. Trump said the Strait of Hormuz would open immediately after the signing.
The deal is expected to be signed electronically, without an in-person ceremony, though it’s unclear when or how the signing will take place.
The deal does not solve the thorniest issues between the U.S. and Iran, including Iran’s nuclear program or its billions of dollars in frozen funds, but offers a 60-day framework for technical discussions on those issues, according to Pakistani and regional officials familiar with the ongoing negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The officials described Pakistan’s effort leading the negotiations, struggling for months to keep both sides from walking out and a total collapse of the negotiations on multiple occasions.
Under the deal being discussed, U.S. and Israel appear to have fallen short of their original goals of destroying Iran’s missile and nuclear programs and ending its support for proxies. It is not clear how the deal will address these issues, or if they will be part of the final agreement.
Iran’s nuclear program and highly enriched uranium have long been at the center of tensions with the U.S. and Israel and an international source of concern. Trump on social media asserted that “when all is calm,” the U.S. would go in and “downblend and destroy” the enriched uranium in Iran or in the U.S.
Iran has 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is peaceful and has not publicly committed to giving up the enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under three nuclear sites that were badly damaged by U.S. strikes last year.
Critics in Trump’s own Republican Party, struggling with an unpopular war ahead of the midterm elections, have criticized the emerging deal. Some said it did not improve on the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew the U.S. from during his first term and which he still describes as “bad.”
Meanwhile, Trump was expected to discuss demining the Strait of Hormuz during the Group of Seven summit that starts Monday. The waterway is crucial to significant shipments of oil, natural gas and related products like fertilizer, and its effective closure rocked the global economy.
___
Frankel reported from Jerusalem, Ahmed from Islamabad, Magdy from Cairo and Sewell from Beirut. Associated Press writer Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed.
