Netanyahu says ‘no ceasefire in Lebanon’
“I wish to inform you: There is no ceasefire in Lebanon,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis in a short video address posted on X. He said Israel was “continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force, and we will not stop until we restore your security.”
His comments come shortly after President Trump said he had asked Netanyahu to be “more low-key” in Lebanon, as the US seeks to negotiate with Iran to bring the war to an end.
Netanyahu added that he had instructed his government to “open direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible.” The talks will focus on the disarmament of Hezbollah and the establishment of peaceful relations between Israel and Lebanon, he added.
Key events
Underlining Iran’s continued control of the Strait of Hormuz, a Botswana-flagged liquified natural gas tanker called the Nidi attempted to travel out of the Persian Gulf via a route ordered by the Revolutionary Guard but suddenly turned around and headed back early Friday, ship-tracking data has shown.
On Thursday, four tankers and three bulk carriers crossed through the Strait of Hormuz, bringing the total number of ships passing through since the ceasefire to at least 12, according to the data firm Kpler.
However, other ships not transmitting their locations may have passed through as well. The strait typically saw well over 100 ships passing through it daily in peacetime.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), in a statement carried by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, has denied launching attacks on Gulf states on Thursday, after Kuwait accused Tehran and its proxies of continuing strikes despite the ceasefire.
“If these reports published by the media are true, without a doubt it is the work of the Zionist enemy or America,” the IRGC said.
Australia’s defence minister Richard Marles has rejected former prime minister Tony Abbott’s call for the country’s air force to take an offensive role in the Iran war.
Abbott wrote in a newspaper opinion piece Friday that Australia should have offered the United States air force support including Australian strike fighters.
Marles, who is acting prime minister while Anthony Albanese is overseas, said Australia had sent the United Arab Emirates a surveillance jet but was “not part of this conflict against Iran.”
“We will act in our national interest and we respectfully disagree with the position of Mr. Abbott,” Marles told the ABC.
Trump has repeatedly criticised Australia for not helping the United States since the Iran war began. Australia says it has received no request for help.
The US has reportedly summoned Iraq’s ambassador to complain about Iran-backed militia attacks, including an “ambush” of American diplomats
While acknowledging that Iraqi forces have made efforts to respond to these attacks, deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau said Baghdad had not done enough to prevent them, according to a statement.
He warned Iraq’s envoy that support for militias by “elements associated with the Iraqi government” is harming US-Iraq ties, adding that Washington expects immediate steps to dismantle the groups.
Kuwait accused Iran and its proxies of launching drone attacks targeting it on Thursday, despite the two-week ceasefire in the Iran war.
Kuwait’s foreign ministry said drone attacks “targeted some vital Kuwaiti facilities” Thursday night.
The statement, carried by the state-run KUNA news agency, put new pressure on the ceasefire ahead of planned talks Saturday between the United States and Iran in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.
The White House has warned US government staff against improperly leveraging their positions to place bets in futures markets in an email, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters is reporting, citing sources.
Some of Trump’s major policy decisions have been preceded by well-timed bets, leading some experts to question whether information had somehow leaked ahead of time.
Shortly ahead the ceasefire announcement earlier this week, a new group of accounts on prediction market platform Polymarket made highly specific, well-timed trades betting there’d be an announcement about a halt in fighting for 7 April. Some quickly pocketed awards, which amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits combined.
Exchange data and Reuters calculations also showed an unidentified trader or traders bet $500m on Brent and WTI crude futures in a one-minute period shortly before Trump called a five-day delay on 23 March 23 attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure, after which oil prices fell 15%.
“While he [Trump] seeks a strong and profitable stock market for everyone, members of Congress and other government officials should be prohibited from using nonpublic information for financial benefit,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Reuters in a statement.
The streets of Islamabad are on strict lockdown as Pakistan’s capital prepares to play host to negotiations between Iran and the US that have dangled the promise of an end to war that has devastated the Middle East.
Even as the US-Iran ceasefire looked increasingly precarious, amid Israel’s continued bombardment of Lebanon and disputes over the terms of the talks, Pakistani officials have insisted that the make-or-break peace negotiations will be going ahead.
Here are some of the images coming into the newsroom from Islamabad.
US media is reporting that secretary of state Marco Rubio will convene hastily arranged ceasefire talks between Israel and Lebanon next week aimed at disarming Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants and establishing relations between the neighbours.
CBS News has reported that the three-way talks will be led by US ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, and will include Lebanese ambassador Nada Hamadeh Moawad and Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter.
Benjamin Netanyahu authorised the talks on Thursday, even as he insisted that “there is no ceasefire” in Lebanon and that Israel will “continue to strike Hezbollah with force”.
On Wednesday Israeli airstrikes on Beirut killed more than 250 people, the deadliest day in Lebanon since the war began on 28 February. Both sides continued to exchange attacks throughout Thursday.
Donald Trump has said he has asked the Israeli prime minister to be “more low-key” in Lebanon to help ensure the success of the upcoming US-Iran negotiations in Islamabad. Israel’s continuing assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon has threatened the shaky ceasefire reached earlier this week with Iran.
There has been disagreement over whether the ceasefire deal included a pause in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Trump slams right wing influencers for failing to support him on Iran
Donald Trump has said that right wing influencers Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones are “not ‘MAGA,’ they’re losers”.
The four had been reliable supporters of Trump for most of his presidency, but in recent weeks have spoken out over their opposition to the war in Iran.
In a long post on his Truth Social platform, the president launched highly personal attacks on the four, who are among the most influential voices in the right wing media ecosystem.
As President, I could get them on my side anytime I want to, but when they call, I don’t return their calls because I’m too busy on World and Country Affairs and, after a few times, they go ‘nasty’.”
The war on Iran has widened the cracks in Trump’s already shaky Maga movement, with many commentators and supporters saying that such an operation is a betrayal of Trump’s promise to put America First and extradite the US from messy foreign conflicts.
Carlson on Monday called the president’s rhetoric toward Iran, including an expletive-filled threat on Easter, “vile” on “every level.” Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones asked on his Info Wars show: “How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” Former Fox News host and popular conservative media personality Megyn Kelly said the recent ceasefire with Iran “sounds very much like surrender,” but conceded that she supported it.
Keir Starmer has met with leaders of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates and condemned Iranian attacks on the nations, Downing Street said in separate statements.
The British prime minister made the comments in a conversation with Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and others.
Separately, Starmer, in his conversation with United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan discussed the strait of Hormuz and the need to push to restore the free flow of goods to support global supply chains.
Air raid alerts rang out across Israel early Friday, including in the commercial hub of Tel Aviv and in the southern coastal city of Ashdod following rocket fire from Lebanon.
Continued fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah is testing a fragile truce reached between the US and Iran.
Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire repeatedly on Thursday.
The Israeli army’s Home Front Command issued alerts for several areas following Friday’s rocket fire, including the Tel Aviv area and southern communities far from the Lebanon border.
Hezbollah said it targeted “Israeli military” infrastructure in the northern city of Haifa in the late hours of Thursday.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, but Israeli media reported that air-defence systems had intercepted at least one incoming rocket.
Iran doing a ‘poor job’ of allowing oil through the strait of Hormuz, Trump says
Donald Trump has said Iran is doing a “very poor job” of reopening the strait of Hormuz, in his second comment on the vital waterway in just over an hour.
Accusing Iran of being “dishonorable”, the president goes on to say this is “not the agreement we have!”
Iran has said it has halted shipping traffic in the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply moves through in normal times, in retaliation for Israel’s strikes on Lebanon.
Just over an hour ago Trump warned Iran “better not be” charging fees to tankers travelling through the strait, after hearing “reports” that Tehran was doing so.
A former Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, has died from wounds inflicted in US-Israeli strikes on 1 April, Iranian media are reporting.
Kharazi, 81, had been serving as the head of the Strategic Council for International Relations, which is part of the foreign ministry.
The veteran diplomat, “who was injured in a terrorist attack carried out by the American-Zionist enemy a few days ago, died a martyr tonight”, the Mehr and Isna agencies reported on Telegram.
His wife was killed in the strike on their home in Tehran, media reported.
Kharazi was Iran’s envoy at the United Nations in New York and then became foreign minister from 1997 to 2005, under reformist president Mohammad Khatami.
Trump says Iran ‘better not be’ charging tanker fees in strait of Hormuz
Donald Trump has warned Iran it “better not be” charging fees to tankers travelling through the strait of Hormuz, after hearing “reports” that Tehran was doing so.
“They better not be and, if they are, they better stop now!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Iran has said it has halted shipping traffic in the key waterway in retaliation for Israel’s strikes on Lebanon.
The day so far
Donald Trump said he is “very optimistic” a peace deal with Iran was within reach as a diplomatic delegation led by his vice-president JD Vance prepared to head to Pakistan for high-stakes talks aimed at ending the war this weekend. Iran’s leaders “talk much differently when you’re at a meeting than they do to the press. They’re much more reasonable,” the US president said, in line with his administration’s narrative that there’s a disconnect between what Tehran says publicly and privately. Trump went on: “They’re agreeing to all the things that they have to agree to. Remember, they’ve been conquered. They have no military. If they don’t make a deal, it’s going to be very painful.”
Trump also confirmed that he had asked Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to be “more low-key” in Lebanon to help ensure the success of the upcoming US-Iran negotiations in Islamabad. “I spoke with Bibi and he’s going to low-key it. I just think we have to be sort of a little more low-key,” Trump told NBC News, adding that he believed Israel was “scaling back” its operations in Lebanon (there’s been no evidence of that yet – see the next few points).
Netanyahu said he had instructed his cabinet to begin direct negotiations with Lebanon aimed at disarming Hezbollah – all the while insisting that “there is no ceasefire” in Lebanon and that Israel will “continue to strike Hezbollah with force”.
Israel has since launched a fresh wave of strikes against what it called “Hezbollah launch sites” in Lebanon, after the IDF earlier ordered people to flee Beirut’s densely populated southern suburbs. Later in the day, Hezbollah said it had fired a rocket salvo towards northern Israeli settlements.
While Israel continues to insist that the war will go on and “talks will be held under fire”, Lebanon is demanding a ceasefire before direct negotiations can begin. Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese president, said this was “the only solution”. Lebanon is also insisting that it needs the US as a mediator and guarantor of any agreement. Those talks will reportedly take place next week, hosted by the US state department in Washington.
Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian said Israeli strikes on Lebanon violate the ceasefire agreement and would render negotiations meaningless, adding that Iran would not abandon the Lebanese people.
The speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Lebanon forms “an inseparable part of the ceasefire” deal. In a post on X, he said “there is no room for denial and backtracking”.
Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned Israel’s “ongoing aggression against Lebanon” on Thursday, ahead of the expected US-Iran talks in Islamabad. “The prime minister said that Pakistan was engaged in sincere efforts for regional peace and it was in this spirit that the peace talks between Iran and the US were being convened,” Sharif’s office said in a statement.
Keir Starmer also said that Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon “shouldn’t be happening”. The British prime minister also dismissed an argument put forward by US vice-president JD Vance on Wednesday that there had been “a legitimate misunderstanding”, saying the issue “isn’t a technical one of whether it’s a breach of the agreement or not”. It is “a matter of principles as far as I’m concerned”, Starmer said.
A statement attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said Iran will take management of the strait of Hormuz into a new phase, but did not elaborate on what that would be. In the statement, read out on state tv, he also said Iran remains determined to “take revenge” for his father, who was assassinated on the first day of the war, and all those killed in the war. “We will certainly demand compensation for each and every damage inflicted, and the blood price of the martyrs and the compensation for the wounded of this war,” he said.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi suggested that Netanyahu is resisting a ceasefire because of his corruption trial, and urged Trump not to “crater” the US economy by allowing the Israeli prime minister to jeopardise ongoing diplomatic efforts to stop the war. Araghchi said on X: “Netanyahu’s criminal trial resumes on Sun. A region-wide ceasefire, incl in Lebanon, would hasten his jailing.”
Lebanon held a day of mourning after a punishing wave of Israeli attacks killed more than 300 people and injured more than 1,000 in a single day on Wednesday, prompting worldwide condemnation.
Keir Starmer and Donald Trump have said they’re at the “next stage of finding a resolution” for reopening the strait of Hormuz, Downing Street has said.
In a statement, No 10 said that the British prime minister discussed with Trump the UK’s “efforts to convene partners to agree a viable plan” to reopen the critical shipping lane.
“They agreed that now there is a ceasefire in place and agreement to open the Strait, we are at the next stage of finding a resolution,” the statement said.
“The leaders discussed the need for a practical plan to get shipping moving again as quickly as possible,” it went on, adding Trump and Starmer would speak again soon.
Iran’s foreign minister says Netanyahu delaying ceasefire to avoid corruption trial
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has suggested that Benjamin Netanyahu is resisting a ceasefire because of his corruption trial, and urged Donald Trump not to “crater” the US economy by allowing the Israeli prime minister to jeopardise ongoing diplomatic efforts to stop the war.
Araghchi said on X:
Netanyahu’s criminal trial resumes on Sun. A region-wide ceasefire, incl in Lebanon, would hasten his jailing.
If the US wishes to crater its economy by letting Netanyahu kill diplomacy, that would ultimately be its choice. We think that would be dumb but are prepared for it.
Netanyahu’s long-running trial will resume on Sunday, an Israeli courts’ spokesperson said on Thursday.
The first sitting Israeli prime minister to be charged with a crime, Netanyahu denies charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust brought in 2019 after years of investigations. His trial, which began in 2020 and could lead to prison terms, has been repeatedly delayed due to his official commitments, with no end date in sight.
