Iran said on Wednesday it is blocking shipping through the Strait of Hormuz because of Israel’s escalating bombardment. Lebanonactions that threaten to unravel the tenuous ceasefire agreed less than a day ago.
Fars, an Iranian state media, reported that “simultaneously with Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz have stopped”, while Reuters said that there were “more than 180 tankers believed to be inside (the strait), with hundreds more waiting” for entry.
The developments came after two tankers were allowed to pass through the vital waterway – through which around 20% of the world’s oil is transported – on Tuesday. the ceasefire agreement between United StatesIsrael and Iran.
While Israel accepted the two-week ceasefire, it insist that the agreement does not apply to its ongoing war Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran disputes that the ban on attacks on Lebanon is one of the 10 points in the mediated by Pakistan agreement, which Israel is violating.
Over the past 24 hours, Israeli forces have ramped up their already intense bombing of Lebanon DESCRIBED as “apocalyptic”. Ministry of Health of Lebanon said at least 254 people have been killed and another 1,165 injured by Israel Defense Forces Shelling (IDF) across the country, with some official sources telling the media that up to 300 people have been killed.
More than 100 locations across Lebanon were reportedly bombed within a period of just a few minutes, including densely populated urban areas. In southern Lebanon, the dead include 12 doctors, according to officials quoted by Reuters.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Wednesday begged sympathetic nations to pressure Israel to stop the bombing.
“All friends of Lebanon are called upon to help us stop these attacks by all available means,” he said.
Iranian Press TV reported Wednesday that Iranian leaders are considering resuming full-scale counterstrikes in response to Israel’s escalation. According to the newspaper, a senior Iranian official said the time has come to “put this aggressive regime in its place”.
Iranian and international media also reported On Wednesday, Iran may withdraw from the ceasefire altogether if Israel continues to bomb Lebanon.
“The conditions for a cease-fire between Iran and the United States are clear and unambiguous: America must choose either a cease-fire or the continuation of the war through Israel; the two cannot coexist,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on Telegram. “The world is witnessing the killings in Lebanon. Now the ball is in America’s court and global public opinion is watching whether this country will fulfill its commitments or not.”
On a Wednesday interview with Al Jazeera, Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg described Israel’s intensified attacks on Lebanon as “a pyrotechnic display intended to demonstrate Israel’s effectiveness while ultimately demonstrating its desperation.”
“The only entity that can stop it is the international community that will protect Lebanon’s sovereign rights, which have been violated for decades but are now almost non-existent,” he said.
Goldberg added that the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “Bet on everything” for the US President Donald Trump and “lost”.
Some Israeli leaders, especially on the far right, are said to be furious for their exclusion from Trump’s decision to suspend attacks on Iran.
“He thought he could keep Trump on a short leash,” Goldberg said of Netanyahu. “He messed it up. So now what he has is Lebanon, which has been Israel’s favorite ground in terms of violation of sovereignty and aggression in general.”
Since the 1980s, Israeli forces have killed more than 20,000 people, many of them civilians, in Lebanon. Israeli forces have occupied parts of Lebanon several times, including in the last 18 years of the 20th century. some the right Israelis want their country to occupy part or even all of Lebanon, which they consider part of a “Great Israel”, he promised them from their divine figure.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz – who, like Netanyahu, stands accused in one International Court of Justice the case of incitement genocide in Gaza – said on Wednesday that “the IDF carried out a surprise attack on hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists in command centers across Lebanon.
It was, he said, “the biggest concentrated blow Hezbollah has suffered since Operation Beepers,” when dozens of people including children were killed by explosive jammed communications equipment.
Netanyahu and Yoav GallantKatz’s predecessor, are wanted BY International Criminal Court for suspected crimes against humanity and war crimes IN Gazawhere 29 months of Israeli war and siege have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed or missing and Gaza Strip to rubble. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since a cease-fire took effect there six months ago.
Regional and international observers condemned Israel’s escalation in Lebanon, which Iraqi government spokesman Bassem al-Awadi CALLED “Evidence of her hostile plan to sabotage the ceasefire” and “perpetuate the conflict”.
Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the international community “to fulfill its responsibilities by forcing the occupying Israeli authorities to stop their barbaric massacres and repeated attacks in Lebanon and hold them accountable for respecting international agreements and laws.”
Alerting support groups
Humanitarian aid Organizations warned on Wednesday that the Iran ceasefire is claimed by the US President Donald Trump as a monumental step towards peace is in danger of collapsing completely if it does not stop Israel’s bombing of Lebanonwhich reached its most intense phase yet in the hours after the announcement of the two-week ceasefire.
David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, said TRUCE proclamation Late Tuesday it was a “welcome step” but warned it was “partial, fragile and incomplete,” pointing to Trump and Israel’s claim that Lebanon was not included in the terms of the deal. Pakistanthe main mediator of the ceasefire, ka said Lebanon was part of the agreed ceasefire, and a halt to Israeli attacks on the country was included in a widely circulated 10-point Iranian plan, which Trump characterized as “a viable basis for negotiating.”
Miliband said on Wednesday that leaving “a front of the conflict raging risks prolonging the crisis, not solving it”.
Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children regional director for the Middle East, North Africaand Eastern Europe, similarly warned that the current ceasefire agreement, as implemented, “is not enough”.
“We are urgently calling for a final ceasefire for the wider region, which includes Lebanon, to protect the children from further harm,” Alhendawi said. “An entire generation of children is bearing the brunt of this conflict. A final ceasefire for the entire regional conflict, including Lebanon, is the only way to truly protect the lives and future of children and end the suffering. The violence must end before more children are irreparably harmed.”
of Wall Street diary reported On Wednesday, Iran informed regional mediators that its participation in the planned in-person talks in Pakistan’s capital “is conditional on a ceasefire in Lebanon” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “keep hitting” the country.
“It looks like somebody needs to rein in Israel as quickly as possible,” Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group. has written IN social media.
“The American people want this war to end and the center of the city to be bombed Beirut it is not a path to peace.”
Trump insisted to a PBS reporter on Wednesday that Lebanon was “not involved in the deal,” claiming that the Israeli attack on the country is “a separate conflict.”
But senior Iranian officials, aid organizations and US lawmakers who support a lasting peace deal see conflicts across the region as interconnected.
“Aggression against Lebanon is aggression against Iran,” General Seyed Majid Mousavi, the aerospace commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said on Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) MOVED The Trump administration “must make clear to Israel immediately that the cease-fire agreement is not and cannot be operational without a cease-fire in Lebanon.”
“The American people want this war to end,” Beyer added, “and bombing downtown Beirut is not a path to peace.”
Amitabh Behar, executive director of Oxfam International, it is said in a STATEMENT that “until there is an end to all hostilities, throughout the region, no one will feel truly safe.”
“Israel’s continued invasion of Lebanon, its destructive occupation of Palestinian territory, its ground incursion and airstrikes in SYRIAher constant attacks on Gazaand violent attacks and territorial expansion in West Coast are still continuing despite the temporary cessation of violence with Iran,” Behar said. “This death toll across the Middle East is intolerable and must be stopped.”
