The US and Iran prepared for direct talks in Pakistan with the Strait of Hormuz still effectively shut and Israel and Hezbollah exchanging fire, complicating efforts to turn a fragile truce into lasting peace.
The ceasefire announced by President Donald Trump earlier this week was broadly holding across the Middle East on Friday, with Kuwait’s report of attacks overnight the most recent evidence of hostilities. The exception was in Lebanon, where questions remain over whether Israel’s parallel campaign against Tehran-backed Hezbollah is part of the ceasefire agreement.
Israel continued to strike towns in southern Lebanon, albeit on a smaller scale than the major operation that killed more than 200 people on Wednesday. Hezbollah said it launched drones and rocket salvos toward Israel, where medics reported treating several injured people in central and southern Israel.
US and Iranian delegations are set to meet in Islamabad on Saturday, with shipping through Hormuz – which handled about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas before the war – also a central sticking point.
Vice President JD Vance, who is leading the US delegation, told reporters as he left for Pakistan that Trump had given “clear guidelines” for the talks and urged Iran to take the negotiations seriously.
“As the president of the United States said, if the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend the open hand,” Vance said. “If they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
The broader Middle East war has killed thousands of people and damaged energy infrastructure across the oil-rich Persian Gulf in the past six weeks, while Iran’s ongoing shuttering of Hormuz has choked global fuel supplies.
“Iran is doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the agreement we have!” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday. “You’ll see Oil start flowing, with or without the help of Iran and, to me, it makes no difference, either way.”
The US president also warned Iran against charging fees on tankers going through Hormuz.
Traffic through the strategic waterway has shown little sign of a meaningful pickup since the truce began, as shipowners await clarification of its status. A Russian-flagged supertanker passed through the strait late Thursday, ship-tracking data show, but this was a rare example.
The ongoing blockage has maintained pressure on oil prices, which traded at about $95 a barrel in London on Friday. US stocks fluctuated after a seven-day rally as investors await news from the peace talks.
Despite the challenges, Trump has said he was “optimistic” about a deal with Iran. The US president described Iran’s leaders as “much more reasonable” than their public comments would suggest in a phone interview with NBC News.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father was killed on the first day of the war, said in a statement on Telegram that Iran “will definitely bring the management of the Strait of Hormuz to a new stage,” though it was unclear whether he was referring to previous Iranian demands to retain control of the waterway that the US has rejected.
Khamenei reiterated that Iran wants war reparations – a likely nonstarter for US negotiators.
Trump told NBC that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “going to low-key it” with airstrikes on Lebanon, after the two leaders spoke by phone on Wednesday.
Even so, Lebanon remains a major flashpoint. Iran has said the US bears responsibility for halting fighting in the country, which has killed more than 1,700 people, while American officials insist the country wasn’t part of the ceasefire accord.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said the Israeli strikes in Lebanon are a “clear violation” of the ceasefire and will render the planned peace talks “meaningless.”
Netanyahu said he would open direct talks with Lebanon to discuss disarming Hezbollah and ending the conflict, and the US agreed to host a meeting next week, according to a State Department official.
But the Israeli leader also reiterated his position that the ongoing attacks in Lebanon aren’t part of the US-Iran ceasefire deal.
The Israel Defense Forces “is in a state of war; we are not in a ceasefire on the northern front,” the IDF’s chief of the general staff, Eyal Zamir, said on Thursday. “We continue to operate here on this front. This is our primary operational focus.”
Hezbollah’s “resistance will continue until its last breath,” Secretary-General Naim Qasem said, according to Al-Manar TV. the Lebanese government to stop giving “free concessions” to Israel, he added.
The Lebanese government pledged to disarm the militant group after a 2024 ceasefire, but hasn’t succeeded – with the powerful militia refusing.
The Lebanese group – founded in 1982 as a reaction to Israel’s occupation of the country’s south – was inspired by a revolution in Shiite-majority Iran three years earlier. It evolved into Iran’s most powerful proxy, helping it deter enemies and expand its influence across the Middle East.
It’s Iran’s most important ally in a network of affiliated groups that includes Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Hamas in Gaza.
The US and Iran appeared to pause most strikes after fighting continued in the region on Wednesday.
After the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry said fresh strikes were carried out by Iran and its proxies, Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the country’s armed forces haven’t launched drones or missiles at any country since the ceasefire began, according to Press TV.
Saudi Arabia, where a key oil pipeline was attacked a day earlier, has lost more than half-a-million barrels a day of oil output capacity because of Iranian strikes, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency.
Strikes on a pumping station serving the vital East-West Pipeline this week crimped daily throughput by 700,000 barrels, the agency said.
The war in the Middle East has claimed more than 5,500 lives, according to governments and non-governmental agencies. More than 3,600 people have been killed in Iran, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency estimates, while more than 1,700 people have died in Lebanon, the government says.
Israel said it’s killed more than 1,400 Hezbollah militants, including 200 on Wednesday.
Israel has reported about three dozen deaths, and a similar number have been killed across Gulf Arab nations, government reports show. There have also been several dozen casualties in Iraq. Thirteen American troops have been killed, according to US Central Command.
