'Ceasefire not holding': US and Iran may have to talk 'as guns are firing'

Adding to the complications, some Arab Gulf states appear to resent the two-week ceasefire deal, which Iran said would ensure its control over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran launched dozens of missiles and drones at the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. The attacks appeared to be in response to the strike on Lavan Island. A western official in the region told Middle East Eye that US President Donald Trump likely fanned concerns that Washington could negotiate away the waterway's future without consulting Gulf states when he told ABC News he was considering “a joint venture” with Iran, in which both countries could collect tolls from ships. “It’s a beautiful thing,” Trump was quoted as saying to ABC News. The UAE, which has positioned itself closely to Israel amid the war and backed a failed United Nations Security Council resolution that would have supported member states taking back control of the strait through force, said it wanted “further clarification” about the ceasefire. The UAE also said that any agreement should ensure Iran pays “damages and reparations” to the Gulf. Iran has also asked for reparations along with the lifting of all sanctions. While Saudi Arabia has a pipeline running to the Red Sea that allows it to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, countries like Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE are almost totally dependent on the strait to export their energy. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to walk back Trump’s bid to establish a dual Iran-US toll, saying the US wanted the strait open “without any limitations”. Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz has become its primary source of leverage against the US, and it exercised that power on Wednesday, as the ceasefire appeared to wobble. Iran said it had closed the waterway to vessels in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanon and a strike on its oil refinery on Lavan Island. Leavitt denied on Wednesday that the waterway was closed and said there had been an “uptick of traffic in the strait”, despite vessel-tracking data refuting this claim. 'Legitimate misunderstanding?' The mismatch between the White House’s statements and developments on the ground in the Middle East summed up much of the day. In effect, the Trump administration and Iran appeared to be working through what they had agreed to under Pakistani mediation on Tuesday in real time, with comments to reporters and social media posts. 'Iran is not going to ‘go to the mat’ for Hezbollah, the real deal breaker is the ban on uranium enrichment' - Randa Slim, Stimson Center The clearest example of where the two are out of step is Lebanon. The Mediterranean country on Wednesday faced the most punishing air strikes since the start of the conflict, with more than 250 people killed and more than 700 wounded, according to Lebanon’s state-run civil defence service. Iranian speaker of parliament Bagher Ghalibaf released a three-point statement on Wednesday, noting violations of the ceasefire, with Lebanon at the top of the list. US Vice President JD Vance told reporters the flash point was a result of a “legitimate misunderstanding” between the two sides. “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,” Vance said, as he wrapped up a trip to Hungary. He added that Israel had agreed to “check themselves a little bit” in Lebanon to help the negotiations. In reality, the deal announced on Tuesday by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, which tagged Trump and his senior aides in the social media post, explicitly stated Iran and the US “along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere”. Will Iran 'go to the mat' for Hezbollah? While Iran may see value in publicly calling for an end to fighting in Lebanon, where its ally Hezbollah is battling Israel, that flashpoint alone is unlikely to derail talks expected to take place on Saturday in Islamabad between the Iranians and Americans. “Iran is not going to ‘go to the mat’ for Hezbollah, despite paying lip service to this,” Randa Slim, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center’s Middle East programme, told MEE. JD Vance to lead Iran ceasefire negotiations in Pakistan, White House says Read More » “The real deal breaker for Iran is the ban on uranium enrichment. That is a red line,” she said. Iran’s ability to continue enriching uranium was listed as one of the Islamic Republic’s ten points of discussion for a lasting peace deal. No sooner had Trump referenced these ten points in a social media post on Tuesday, saying they provided a “workable basis on which to negotiate”, than he rubbished the idea of enrichment in another social media post. There will be no enrichment of Uranium, and the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried (B-2 Bombers) Nuclear ‘Dust,” he said, referring to the US’s June 2025 strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Ghalibaf included Trump’s refusal to consider enrichment among these three violations, which he said made the ceasefire and negotiations “unreasonable”. “The very ‘workable basis on which to negotiate’ has been openly and clearly violated, even before the negotiations began,” he wrote, referring to Trump’s earlier comments. Vance, who is expected to attend the talks in Islamabad, said that Iran's call for a right to enrichment did not necessarily conflict with US demands. Ghalibaf said, 'We refuse to give up the right to enrichment'. And I thought to myself: 'my wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn't jump out of an aeroplane because she and I have an agreement that she's not going to do that', he told reporters. Slim, at the Stimson Center, told MEE that the key issue now was for Iran and the US to make it to the weekend, when talks begin. She said that using the term ceasefire appeared to be a generous reading of the situation. “The ceasefire is not holding,” Slim said. “The question is whether the meeting between the Iranians and Americans can still talk as the guns are firing. Both sides can come up with a spin on why they should talk”. She said. War on Iran News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0