Iran has pulled out of negotiations to end the war with the United States after Israel ordered troops to push deeper into Lebanon, Iranian media reported on Monday, derailing hopes of an imminent diplomatic end to the three-month conflict.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that the Iran’s negotiating team was stopping exchanging messages through mediators over Israel’s continued clashes with Hezbollah in the parallel conflict to the west.
Oil prices rose by more than $5 a barrel after the report, which claimed that Iran and the Resistance Front - which includes its allies in Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq - had set an agenda to completely block the Strait of Hormuz and activate other fronts, including the Bab El Mandeb Strait, to “punish” Israel and its supporters.
Mohsen Rezaee, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, wrote on social media that the “patience of the armed forces ... has its limits”, threatening that Iran would not tolerate the continued US military blockade or the escalation of tensions in Lebanon.
Iran’s central military command added that residents of northern Israel would have to “leave if they don’t want to be harmed” if Israel does proceed with attacks on Beirut, while Iran’s state TV said that the existing truce between Iran and the United States was very likely to end if the attacks continue.
Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, had urged earlier that the tenuous ceasefire agreement with the US “unequivocally” includes Lebanon, and warned that “the US and Israel are responsible for the consequences of any violation” in a post on social media.
The latest threats to the fragile peace process came as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered fresh attacks on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, and said that Israel was continuing to deepen its ground activity in Lebanon, where Israeli troops have carved out a self-declared security zone in the south.
The Israeli military issued an evacuation order for residents of Beirut’s suburbs and warned that it would strike targets in the area if Hezbollah, an Iran-backed proxy group, continued firing rockets at Israeli cities and towns.
The escalation came despite the speaker of Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, telling the Trump administration that Hezbollah was ready for a full and immediate ceasefire with Israel. Berri’s adviser Ali Hamdan told US outlet Axios that Lebanon had pledged to guarantee its implementation.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio spoke with both Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israel’s Netanyahu on the diplomatic negotiations between Israel and Lebanon and has proposed a plan to allow for "gradual de-escalation," a US official said separately.
Having pounded the southern suburbs of Beirut in the early weeks of the war, Israel has carried out only two strikes on the area since Donald Trump announced a Lebanon ceasefire on April 16, even as hostilities have continued nationwide, forcing more than a million people from their homes.
Trump had earlier reiterated that he believed Tehran still wants to reach a deal to end the wider conflict. But hopes of a breakthrough were tempered by comments from Iranian officials criticising the “constantly changing” US negotiating stance and reports of fresh strikes in the Gulf.
US Central Command reported on Monday that US forces had successfully intercepted two Iranian ballistic missiles targeting American forces based in Kuwait. It said the missiles were “immediately defeated” and that no American personnel were harmed.
Kuwait activated air defences on Monday and denounced Iranian missile and drone attacks, which it said were undermining efforts to reduce tensions in the region.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had targeted an air base used by the US in response to an attack on southern Iran, but did not identify the base.
As the Trump administration faces mounting domestic pressure to end the conflict, the president took aim at “seemingly unpatriotic Republicans” for negative “chirping” about the state of negotiations.
“Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end - It always does!” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.
