DUBAI/WASHINGTON, April 24 (Reuters) – Israel and Lebanon extended their ceasefire for three weeks at a meeting at the White House brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he was prepared to wait for “the best deal” to end his conflict with Iran.
Fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon has been one of a number of sticking points to resolving the wider eight-week regional conflict, along with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and control of the crucial Strait of Hormuz.
Trump said he was in no rush to reach a peace agreement and wanted it to be “everlasting,” while continuing to assert that the U.S. had a clear upper hand in the naval standoff in the strait.
CHOKEHOLD ON STRAIT OF HORMUZ
A day after Iran flaunted its tight grip over the strait, a key shipping corridor through which around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas usually transits, Trump dismissed the threat posed by Iran’s “little wise-guy ships”.
He said he believed Tehran was hamstrung from making a deal because its leadership was in turmoil, after several senior political and military figures were killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes that began on February 28.
On Thursday, he said the U.S. could knock out in a day any refurbishing of weapons that Iran may have made during a ceasefire in place since April 8.
But navigation in the passage remained effectively blocked, and the Iranian capture of two huge cargo ships was a reminder that Tehran can still cause trouble for oil markets and pose major strains to the global economy.
The Philippine government said 15 Filipinos were on the two vessels and believed to be safe and that it expected the ships to be cleared soon.
Container shipping group Hapag-Lloyd said on Friday that one of its ships had made it through the strait, but did not have any information on the circumstances or timing. Before the war, around 130 vessels crossed the strait each day.
Oil prices resumed their rise on Friday with the blockade of the strait unresolved and the fate of a lapsed ceasefire unclear since Trump announced a unilateral extension at the 11th hour. [O/R]
IRANIAN ‘UNITY’, NATO DISCORD
Though Trump has said that U.S. forces have destroyed Iran’s naval threat, the use of a swarm of small, fast boats to seize the container ships underscored Tehran’s evolving tactics in the strait as it countered U.S. interception of Iran-linked oil tankers and other vessels.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei on Thursday rejected Trump’s claim of disarray in the leadership, describing it as “the enemy’s media operations” to maliciously undermine Iranian unity and security.
“Unity will become stronger and more solid, and enemies will become weaker and more humiliated,” he said in a post on X, as he remained out of the public eye since taking over from his father who was killed in an airstrike on the war’s first day.
The prolonged conflict has deepened the fissure between the U.S. and the rest of NATO, with Trump repeatedly criticising allies for failing to support U.S. operations.
Washington was now weighing punishing countries it saw as unhelpful, with an internal Pentagon email outlining options including suspending Spain from the alliance and reviewing the U.S. position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands, a U.S. official told Reuters.
The options are detailed in a note expressing frustration at some allies’ perceived reluctance or refusal to grant the U.S. access, basing and overflight rights for operations against Iran.
Trump said this week he would indefinitely extend what had been a two-week ceasefire with Iran to allow for further peace talks, which have yet to be scheduled.
“Don’t rush me,” he said when asked how long he was willing to wait for a long-term peace deal. “I want to make the best deal … I want to have it everlasting.”
He ruled out the use of nuclear weapons, telling reporters they were unnecessary because the U.S. had “decimated” Iran with conventional arms.
“No, I wouldn’t use it. A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody,” Trump said when asked by a reporter at the White House.
Peace talks that had been tentatively scheduled for Pakistan collapsed earlier this week, with neither side showing up. The Pakistani capital remained in lockdown on Friday, but there were no indications the talks would be revived soon.
DEADLY WEEK IN LEBANON
The war in Lebanon, which Israel invaded last month to root out Iran’s Hezbollah allies after the militant group fired across the border, has run in parallel with the wider Iran war, and Tehran says a ceasefire there is a precondition for talks.
The extension of the ceasefire in Lebanon followed some of the deadliest days there since an earlier deal on April 16 to halt fighting. Israeli forces pounded Hezbollah targets on Thursday in southern Lebanon, after they said militants had attacked troops with rockets and a drone and fired rockets towards northern Israel.
Israel has sought to make common cause with Lebanon’s government over Hezbollah, which was founded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and which Beirut has been seeking to disarm peacefully for the past year.
The group was not present at the ceasefire talks in Washington.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus, Writing by Jack Kim and Alex Richardson; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
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