Despite talk of an Iran peace deal, Lebanon's war grinds on

EDITORS NOTE: EDS: ADDS 4 grafs starting “Israel’s defense minister...”; minor edits.); (With: MIDEAST-CONFLICT, OIL-RESERVES, MIDEAST-ECON-RDP, MIDEAST-STALEMATE-ASSESS, STRANDED-SHIPS

Israel continued to pound southern Lebanon with airstrikes Friday, as the enduring conflict with Hezbollah showed few signs of letting up despite President Donald Trump’s claim of diplomatic progress with Tehran.

Lebanon’s latest war, the second in two years, erupted in March after Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, fired rockets into Israel in response to the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran.

Despite repeated U.S.-brokered efforts to halt the fighting, the conflict has become a critical stumbling block for Trump as he tries to negotiate a broader deal with Tehran to end a wider regional war that has rattled the global economy.

For weeks, Iran has insisted that any deal must include an end to Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah, while Israel has resisted efforts to link the two.

That impasse has left Lebanon in limbo.

As Trump signaled diplomatic traction with Iran on Friday, Lebanon once again appeared to be out of sync with the cautious optimism taking hold elsewhere in the region. Israeli drones whirred over Beirut, the Lebanese capital, and missiles continued to rain down on southern towns amid a flurry of new Israeli evacuation warnings.

“What have we done as civilians to deserve this?” asked Ali Shmaysena, 60, who runs a small roadside coffee shop in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, which is usually home to around 100,000 people.

After the Israeli military ordered the entire city to be evacuated this week, many streets were left deserted, turning neighborhoods into ghost towns. The destruction was stark: downed electrical wires, mangled cars and the carcasses of cats and dogs lay scattered among the rubble.

Along the beach, rows of makeshift tents had sprung up, many occupied by people carrying little more than the essentials.

The Israeli military said Friday that in the last week, it had carried out more than 300 strikes against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where it has also occupied broad tracts of territory. For its part, Hezbollah has kept up attacks on Israeli troops in southern Lebanon and has continued to fire rockets into northern Israel.

Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, underscored the limits of any potential Iran deal for Lebanon on Friday, saying that Israeli forces would not withdraw from the country.

Paul Salem, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said any U.S.-Iran agreement might include language calling for a full ceasefire in Lebanon and still fail to halt Israel’s military campaign there. The concern reflects a pattern in Washington’s handling of Lebanon: describing the country as being under a ceasefire while leaving Israel room to continue strikes it deems necessary under a broad interpretation of self-defense.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it did say in wording that this is a ceasefire on all fronts,” said Salem, referring to possible agreement between Washington and Tehran. “But I don’t think that is very meaningful.

“I expect military operations to continue” in Lebanon, he said.

The violence has persisted despite a new U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement announced last week between Israel and the Lebanese government. Hezbollah, which is not under the government’s control and was not a party to the negotiations, rejected the agreement because it required the group to stop firing without any immediate concessions from Israel. And since the Lebanese government cannot compel Hezbollah to abide by a truce, the latest ceasefire announcement has yet to take effect.

“We are civilians, and we love our land,” said Shmaysena, who had taken to sleeping on the beach after the building behind his home was hit by an Israeli strike days earlier. “We don’t want to go anywhere.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company