What’s happened: A publicly undeclared ceasefire appears to have taken hold in southern Lebanon over the past day after a particularly deadly weekend for the IDF in combat with Hezbollah.

• Over the weekend, five Israeli soldiers were killed in two incidents, with a further thirteen injured. Since the formal ceasefire went into effect in on  17th April, 24 IDF soldiers have been killed in combat with Hezbollah.
• Foreign Minister  Gideon Saar said that Israel will respect the ceasefire as long as Hezbollah does as well. “We don’t have territorial ambitions in Lebanon,” he posted in a summary of a call with his New Zealand counterpart, “but we will not withdraw from the security zone and expose our citizens to Hezbollah’s attacks and possible invasion. Lebanon’s sovereignty has been breached for decades to this very day by Iran’s indirect occupation by Hezbollah. It’s the interest of both Lebanon and Israel that Hezbollah’s terror state will be dismantled.”
• Tensions in Lebanon occur against the backdrop of talks in Switzerland that began yesterday between Iran and the US, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan.
• The talks were attended by US Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The US delegation also included Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, while the Iranian one had parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was there too, as were both the Prime Minister and top military officer of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif and Asim Munir.
• After 18 hours of talks, the sides agreed to establishment of a “de-confliction cell” to end the fighting in Lebanon and reportedly agreed on a “roadmap” framework for negotiations to reach an agreement within the sixty days stipulated by the Memorandum of Understanding.

Context: Hezbollah violations of the ceasefire are intended to leave Israel in a strategic bind. Either it responds, and risks the ire of the Trump administration, as well as blame for scuttling talks to end the war in Iran, or it does nothing, allowing Hezbollah to attack it at will and formalising a linkage between Tehran’s priorities and the vulnerability of Israel’s northern towns and villages.

• The focus of Israel’s paused, but essentially ongoing, military effort in Lebanon is on Nabatiyeh and the Ali Taher ridge, especially around the Beaufort Castle. Both sites are beyond the so-called Yellow Line, and both bring with them historical resonances from Israel’s previous wars in Lebanon.
• Nabatiyeh is remembered in Israel as the place where Israel irrecoverably lost support from Lebanon’s Shias in an incident in October 1983. The bitter experience is widely studied as an example of what to avoid in any counterinsurgency situation.
• The Beaufort Castle is remembered for the pitched battle to conquer it from the PLO early in the 1982 war and the triumphant but politically tone deaf appearance of senior politicians there the next day. It was also the most well documented site of Israel’s hasty withdrawal in May 2000, memorialised in a best-selling novel and popular film.
• In the Ali Taher ridge itself, the IDF has located a massive underground complex of Hezbollah terrorists. Here is where the IDF has located the Badr’s unit’s nerve centre, including at least one tunnel that is one kilometre among an extensive system of tunnels, parts of which are inside the Yellow Line area of southern Lebanon. These are the tunnels Hezbollah would use in an October 7-style raid on northern Israel.
• Since the weekend, the IDF has surrounded the facility and believes it is now in control of all the tunnel compound’s access points. It is estimated that there at least 30 Hezbollah fighters besieged in the complex. In line with US demands, the IDF is not opening fire for now.
• Israeli officials quoted in the media believe that once the operation around the tunnel complex is ended, the IDF can begin staged withdrawals of territory in Lebanon, particularly territory north of the Yellow Line.
• For Israel, it is important that any withdrawal be seen as an Israeli initiative or the outcome of Israel-Lebanese negotiations, and not as something dictated to Israel by the needs of US-Iran diplomacy.
• Despite pressure from the political echelon (responding to pressure from the Trump Administration), senior IDF officials are unanimous that Israeli border communities cannot be protected right now from Hezbollah attack, whether that is in antitank missiles being fired at homes, as was the case from late 2023 until November 2024, or in an October 7-like raid into a civilian community, without an IDF presence close to the border in southern Lebanon.

Looking ahead: The political leaders who attended the talks in Switzerland are due to fly home today, but the technical teams will continue the talks on site and in person.

• Talks between Israel and Lebanon are expected to be renewed today. Israel is interested in reaching an agreement with Lebanon that would see its forces leave small pockets of territory and hand them over directly to the Lebanese Armed Forces. These would serves as “pilot zones” where the LAF would prove that it could keep Hezbollah out and take responsibility for territory vacated by Israel.

What’s happened: Four IDF soldiers were killed Thursday night when a Hezbollah drone exploded on troops near the village of Kfartebnit in southern Lebanon.

• Among those killed was Lt. Col. Dor Gedalia Ben Simhon, 32, of Kibbutz Beit Hashita, commander of the 52nd Battalion of the 401st Armoured Brigade.
• In response to Hezbollah’s ongoing  violations of the ceasefire, the IDF struck more than 80 command centres, terrorists, launch positions, and additional terrorist infrastructure sites in the area of Nabatieh and additional areas in southern Lebanon.
• Meanwhile, Iran’s negotiating delegation has suspended its trip to Switzerland due to continued Israeli operations against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, despite the recent signing of the MOU between the US and Iran.
• US Vice President Vance delivered a speech featuring unusually harsh criticisms of Israel. Vance warned that Israel should not “attack” the only powerful ally they have in the world, and that Trump was “the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.”
• Furthermore, Vance stated that Israel was built with American money, in reference to the defensive ammunition used in Israel which is made in the US. Vance did, however, make clear that Israel has the right to defend itself in reference to the ceasefire with Lebanon. Vance also called out critics of the MOU, stating that the deal that was signed forces Iran to change its behaviour before receiving any benefits.
• The Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament also stated that Lebanon is committed to the ceasefire in place with Israel, and Hezbollah will adhere to it as long as Israel does as well. This comes as Hezbollah attacks continued on Thursday, in which another IDF soldier Master Sergeant (res.) Alexander Filin was killed along with 6 more injured.

Context: Israel has stated that they reject the provision in the agreement requiring an immediate and permanent end to hostilities in Lebanon. Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed to President Trump that Israel does not consider itself bound by the MOU.

• An IDF official has clarified that IDF forces will remain in the buffer zone 10km into southern Lebanon as long as the security situation warrants it. Israel won’t want to directly contradict and certainly not antagonise the US government, but as any self-respecting sovereign country – they will do all they need to do to protect their civilians and defend their national interests.
• Israelis remain puzzled by the agreement that appears to consolidate the linkage and influence that Iran has over Lebanon. It has been a long-standing US foreign policy objective to decouple Iran’s stranglehold over Lebanon and its support for Hezbollah, a proscribed terrorist organisation.
• Tensions between Israel and the US are likely to remain heightened, as the prevailing thought is that the US administration has moved from touting regime change, to now promising hundreds of billions to prop up a fundamentalist regime that has murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens.
• The Lebanese president has blamed Hezbollah for beginning the latest round of fighting, and for importing a foreign conflict at Iran’s behest, which is against the interests of the Lebanese people.

Looking ahead: Efforts to reach a separate deal Israel and Lebanon are expected to continue, parallel to any agreement with Iran and the US.

• There is heavy scepticism that the allotted 60-day period is a realistic timeframe to reach full agreement based on the MOU, and even if extended, if it can be implemented at all.

What’s happened: Yesterday in Versailles, President Trump signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) negotiated with Iran which will reopen the Strait of Hormuz and launch a sixty-day period of negotiations for a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme and the lifting of US sanctions on Iran.

• The MOU comprises 14 points in total.
• The first point declares “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” Lebanon, in fact, is mentioned three times in the first point, which includes a clause committing the US and Iran to “ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon,” which presumably applies both to America’s ally Israel and to Iran’s proxy force Hezbollah.
• The MOU establishes a sixty-day period for the two sides to negotiate a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme, extendable by mutual agreement. At the outset, the Iranians commit not to “procure or develop nuclear weapons.” Also, the US commits itself to terminating all sanctions on Iran when a final deal is agreed upon. When a final deal is agreed upon, it shall be endorsed by a binding resolution of the UN Security Council.
• The US will end its blockade of Iran within 30 days, but otherwise maintains its status quo posture for the duration of the negotiation period. Once a final deal is reached, it will make a substantial withdrawal of its forces within 30 days after the comprehensive deal is signed.
• Iran will reopen the Straits of Hormuz for commercial shipping traffic immediately, though it is given 30 days to complete the removal of mines and other obstacles. The MOU commits Iran to keep the Strait open and toll-free for sixty days, the same period as the negotiation period for the final deal, but curiously does not link the two, leaving it open to interpretation what the status of this aspect of the agreement would be if, as expected, the negotiations taking longer than sixty days and the period is extended by mutual consent.
• A clause in the MOU committing both sides not to interfere in each other’s internal affairs would seem to be an official American abandonment of regime change in Iran as a political goal.
• The White House also released the full text of the MOU, something it had refused to do in recent days after it had already agreed to it but before the President signed it.
• The official text resembled the purported versions circulated by Iranian officials in the media over the past few days in most aspects, but with a few differences. The agreed text does not explicitly call for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and does not allow (for now) Iran to charge tolls for the passage of commercial vessels through the Strait, despite rumours and Iranian claims to the contrary over the past week.
• Trump’s speech last night at the G7 was full of criticisms of Israel, its war in Lebanon, and Prime Minister Netanyahu. In this it continued a theme Trump has warmed to repeatedly in recent days.
• The President once more criticised Israel’s use of force in Lebanon, saying, “You don’t have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that’s from Hezbollah.”
• He unsubtly referred to Israel as “a very small partner,” though in this he was quoting something Prime Minister Netanyahu said to him.
• He also dug up an incident from the distant past, when, according to him, the US and Israel endeavoured to eliminate Qassem Soleimani in a joint operation in 2020, but at the last minute Prime Minister Netanyahu opted out of any Israeli involvement. Ultimately, the US successfully eliminated Soleimani on its own. Few in Israel regretted the elimiation and few regretted that Israel wasn’t directly involved.
• Though the diplomatic drama has put the war in Lebanon mostly on pause, it has not stopped it entirely. IDF soldiers moving on foot near the Litani River were hit by a Hezbollah IED yesterday. The device killed Master Sgt. Alexander Filin, a 29-year-old reservist from Haifa, and injured six others, including a female soldier and a deputy commander. Filin made aliyah from Ukraine as a teenager. In 2018, on the occasion of Israel’s 70th Independence Day, he was the recipient of the President’s Citation for Outstanding Soldiers for his courage in an incident where he successfully stopped a terrorist trying to carry out a stabbing attack.

Context: The agreement has almost universally been seen in Israel as a diplomatic and military catastrophe.

• Israel media commentary was scathing in its assessment of the agreement and of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s management of the war effort.
• Writing on the online news site Walla, Idan Kweller calls the agreement a “formative moment” in US-Israel relations. “This wasn’t Israel’s abandonment, but it definitely was a stern warning to Netanyahu. American support exists under the Trump administration, as long as Israel doesn’t stand in the way of clinching the larger deal.”
• In Haaretz, Amos Harel argues that “The Iran affair is emerging as the second worst fiasco in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s long history, following Hamas’ massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.”
• Avner Vilan, in a posted commentary on N12, wrote, “At best, we’ve bought ourselves an insanely expensive nuclear agreement, without missiles and without proxies [being included] and with endless Iranian immunity. At worst, we’ve given Iran a lifeline, while it has barely given anything at all in return. In both cases, the same question remains: Why did we start this to begin with?”
• Most Israeli analysts doubt that Iran and the US can actually come to a final agreement within 60 days — or at all, even with the deadline being extended. In such a scenario, Iran would not be able to enjoy significant sanctions relief and would probably not be able to see the promised relief fund of some $300 billion get off the ground, but it would begin recovering frozen assets and it would start selling oil, even if only to countries outside the direct US orbit. This would allow it to rapidly rebuild the defence facilities that it lost in the war and to reflate its economy, removing the main source of domestic pressure on the regime.
• Even if negotiations did seem to be making serious progress, Iran could presumably threaten to close the Straits once more or attempt to reach an arrangement with the Omanis about “service fees,” as long as that was after 60 days — a deadline no one believes can be met anyway.

Looking ahead: US-led efforts to reach an agreement between Lebanon and Israel continue apace.

• President Trump’s remarks earlier this week about having Syria, under its post-Assad regime, take responsibility for fighting Hezbollah rattled Israelis, Lebanese, and for that matter, Syrians too. Israeli media reported that the new Mossad head Roman Gofman suggested to the Cabinet taking the proposal seriously, but was overruled by Prime Minister Netanyahu.
• Meanwhile, a quiet effort is underway to arrange a public meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in Washington, possibly with the participation of President Trump too.

What’s happened: Iran fired ten missiles at northern Israel yesterday evening, acting on its threat to retaliate for an Israeli strike on Beirut.

• Early this morning, the Israeli Air Force struck military and infrastructure targets across western and central Iran, including radars and anti-aircraft batteries, which will help facilitate operational freedom moving forward.
• A single ballistic missile was fired by the Houthis in Yemen at central Israel at around 6:00 local time this morning. Iran then fired a number of missiles at central Israel roughly an hour later. All of the incoming projectiles were intercepted by IDF air-defence systems.
• Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump spoke yesterday in the aftermath of Iran’s first missile barrage on northern Israel. According to Israeli media reports Trump said that he believes that Israel had “retaliated enough and should not retaliate further.”
• Earlier Trump said in an interview to the Financial Times that Netanyahu would have no choice but to accept a deal with Iran. He stressed that he is the one who makes the decisions, not Netanyahu.
• IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Defrin said, “The regime is trying to create a new equation, when it directly fires at our territory in response to IDF attacks on the Dahiya Quarter. We will not allow this. We attacked the Dahiya Quarter following Hezbollah’s endless fire on communities in northern Israel. The IDF will continue to operate throughout Lebanon and will intensify its strikes on the Hezbollah terrorist organisation. We will not allow fire to continue at the citizens of the State of Israel.”
• Earlier on Sunday morning, Hezbollah fired rockets at northern Israeli communities for the first time in four days. Two rockets that were fired at Ramot Naftali and Yiftah were intercepted.

Reactions: Domestically the Israeli government faced more criticism.

• Leader of the Together Party Bennett said, “This is a test moment: is Israel a sovereign country that is capable of defending itself? Countenancing or a token response will signal to the enemy that our citizens’ blood has been made forfeit. That is why Israel must act powerfully and effectively. On this issue, all of us, all citizens of Israel, stand together.”
• Yisrael Beiteinu leader Liberman also called for powerful Israeli retaliation: “Enough with the containment. We have to respond immediately and to strike Iran’s strategic infrastructure.”
• The Democrats leader Golan said, “Our enemies see what everyone sees: Netanyahu is weak. Despite the military achievements, our enemies see that Netanyahu is a weak and failed leader. They see the string of failures, the political indecision and the personal politics that have been running the war—and they have concluded that Netanyahu is weak and that we can be attacked.”
• Blue and White leader Gantz said, “The fighting in Lebanon should never have been stopped as part of the ceasefire with Iran. That strategic mistake needs to be corrected with powerful retaliation in Iran, but equally important, with ongoing attacks on the Dahiya.”

Context: There is a consensus in Israel that Iran cannot be allowed to create a new equation that Israeli action in Lebanon elicits an attack from Iran.

• This explicit linkage did not exist before the war that began three months ago, and despite forty days of bombardment, Israel is concerned that at the current juncture Iran appears to be emboldened. This is partly explained by Trump’s apparent eagerness to do a deal that has allowed Iran to exert further demands.
• Israel is well disposed to reach a ceasefire with Lebanon and even an eventual peace agreement, but the stranglehold that Iran maintains through Hezbollah has to be broken first. At the end of last week the US government announced an agreed ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese government however shortly afterwards Hezbollah rejected the agreement.                  
• For weeks Israel had restrained itself from striking Hezbollah assets in Beirut – at Trump’s request. However after the latest barrage of rockets and drones on northern Israel over the weekend and two more IDF fatalities in southern Lebanon, Israel did respond by targeting a Hezbollah command centre in Beirut.
• In the Israeli assessment there remain over 2,000 Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon. Until they are removed Israel will feel compelled to continue its operations in the area.
• Israeli attention also remains focused on the ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran, despite not being part of the process. While Israel will be sensitive to US demands, it is perturbed by the non-responses from Gulf states have had to absorb ongoing strikes from Iran. That is an unacceptable situation from Israel’s perspective.
• Iran was possibly working on the assumption that as Trump wants a deal, he will therefore restrain Israel from resuming attacks. Israel for its part needs to mark out space from the US position, as it has a duty to defend its citizens from attack.

Looking ahead: Israel’s security cabinet will meet shortly and discuss the next operational steps.

• The IDF remains on high alert and preparing for several days of clashes. As part of the preparation it is planning to mobilise a large number of reservists and to deploy reinforcements along all the borders.
• A Houthi spokesperson has threatened to stop Israeli maritime traffic in the Red Sea.