TEL AVIV, April 9: On Lebanon not being included in the ceasefire agreement, US Vice President JD Vance called the non-inclusion a “reasonable misunderstanding” among the concerned parties, adding the Iran-US ceasefire never made a promise to address the parallel conflict going on between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon.
“First of all, I actually think, and there’s a lot of bad faith negotiation and a lot of bad faith, you know, propaganda going on,” Vance told media on Air Force Two.
“I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn’t. We never made that promise.
“We never indicated that was going to be the case. What we said is that the ceasefire would be focused on Iran, and the ceasefire would be focused on America’s allies, both Israel and the Gulf Arab states,” Vance said.
“Look, if Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart in a conflict where they were getting hammered over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them, and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that’s ultimately their choice,” he added. “We think that would be dumb, but that’s their choice.”
In the meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Tel Aviv and Washington had “achieved tremendous accomplishments” in Iran, including inflicting massive damage on Iran’s missile production capabilities, putting the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons development programme to a halt, and making new alliances in the region.
“These are achievements that, until recently, seemed imaginary: Iran is weaker than ever; Israel is stronger than ever,” Netanyahu said in his first address since the ceasefire was enacted.
“We still have objectives to complete, and we will achieve them, either through agreement or by renewing the fighting because we are prepared to return to combat any moment; our finger is on the trigger.”
Clarifying that the two-week ceasefire reached is only a small respite and “not the end of the campaign,” calling it but a “station on the way to achieving all of our goals.”
Noting that if it were not for this war, Iran “would have long ago possessed nuclear weapons and many thousands of missiles,” and justifying the aggression, said that the joint US-Israel assault had removed a long-standing “existential threat” against Israel.
Netanyahu also reiterated that Israel will continue its campaign against Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, noting that the IDF had targeted and struck over 100 targets associated with the Iran-backed Islamist group.
(UNI)
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