First tankers cross Hormuz as Lebanon strikes cloud US-Iran deal

The memorandum he ultimately signed left none of those objectives formally met.

Three Saudi-flagged supertankers carrying six million barrels of crude sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, hours after the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to end four months of war, even as fresh Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon cast an immediate shadow over the agreement’s durability.

President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian both signed the document on Wednesday, bringing it into effect two days earlier than expected. The memorandum calls for the immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the lifting of an American naval blockade of Iranian ports. Ships that had previously concealed their positions by switching off transponders began broadcasting their locations, signalling a cautious return of confidence among shippers.

Benchmark Brent crude futures fell a further 2 percent to below 78 dollars a barrel, the lowest level since the conflict began in February.

The agreement starts a 60-day negotiation period to reach a final settlement to the war, which Trump launched alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February.

Lebanon complicates the picture immediately

Within hours of the signing, Israeli forces carried out fresh airstrikes in southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s state news agency reported three people killed in strikes on the towns of Kfartebnit and Zebdine on Thursday morning. Reporters in Beirut heard Israeli drones flying low over the capital and its southern suburbs, and fighting continued despite Trump having announced the deal days earlier.

The memorandum explicitly calls for the permanent termination of the war in Lebanon and for the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty to be ensured, a significant concession to Iran, which had insisted throughout negotiations that any peace deal must cover Lebanon as well. Israel was excluded from the negotiations entirely.

Yet Israel showed no sign of compliance. Its military released a new map on Thursday showing an expanded area of southern Lebanon under occupation, which it describes as a buffer zone. Two Israeli officials told reporters that Israel was holding negotiations with Washington to keep its troops inside Lebanon, with one senior official close to Netanyahu describing those talks as stubborn and saying Israel would not back down. The other official said the outcome would depend on whether Trump decides to force the issue by threatening consequences.

Trump’s shift puts alliance under strain

The Lebanon question has produced what observers describe as one of the sharpest rifts between Washington and Tel Aviv in decades. Trump has grown openly critical of Israeli operations in Lebanon in recent days, accusing his ally of unnecessarily destroying entire buildings to target Hezbollah fighters. Netanyahu, who built his political identity in part on an exceptionally close relationship with Trump that yielded major American policy shifts in Israel’s favour during the Republican president’s first term, now finds that relationship under visible pressure.

The Times of Israel captured the dilemma facing the Israeli government plainly on Thursday, writing that the country may soon face a choice between maintaining military pressure and losing Trump’s diplomatic support, or preserving the relationship by scaling back the conflict many Israelis consider their most urgent national priority.

Displaced Lebanese wait for a final answer

For the more than one million people displaced by the fighting in Lebanon, the diplomatic developments in Washington and Tehran offered little immediate comfort. Mohammed Doghman, displaced from the southern city of Nabatieh to Beirut, sat outside his tent on Thursday reading the news on his phone.

“Iran and the Americans are done. Fine. In Lebanon it’s not over yet,” he said. “They should give us a final answer: has the war ended for good, or will we return to it again?”

In Qlailieh near the port of Tyre, a handful of displaced residents had ventured back to look at what remained of their homes, finding piles of concrete rubble that several compared to the destruction visible in Gaza. Tyre resident Abdelkarim al-Dahi likened Israel and Hezbollah to the feuding characters in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. “They don’t stop,” he said.

Questions about what the war achieved

When Trump launched the military campaign nearly four months ago, he listed ambitious objectives: destroying Iran’s nuclear programme, ending its ability to strike neighbours, cutting off its support for allied militant groups and creating conditions for Iranians to remove their hardline leadership. He initially demanded unconditional surrender from Tehran.

The memorandum he ultimately signed left none of those objectives formally met. American officials argue that the upcoming 60-day negotiations could still produce a strong agreement on nuclear issues and that Washington retains significant leverage, including Trump’s stated willingness to resume bombing if he finds the outcome unsatisfactory.

Critics within his own party, including several prominent hawks, counter that Iran emerges from the conflict in a stronger position than it entered, having withstood a superpower military campaign, maintained control of the Strait of Hormuz for months and secured waivers from financial sanctions as part of the deal.

Whether the Hormuz agreement holds, and whether Trump can bring Israel into a settlement it had no hand in negotiating, will shape not only the region but the assessment of what four months of war actually accomplished.