Dubai: Kuwait briefly shut its main airport on Wednesday after Iranian drones heavily damaged a terminal building, killed one person and wounded dozens – the latest in back-and-forth attacks by Tehran and Washington that have tested a fragile ceasefire.
Semiofficial Iranian news agencies have said Tehran had stopped communicating with mediators about extending the ceasefire in the war with the US and Israel. A regional official said Iran wanted a separate ceasefire in Lebanon enforced before returning to talks. US President Donald Trump asserted that negotiations continued.
The talks have dragged on for weeks, and exchanges of strikes in the Gulf region and Israel’s broadening war with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon are further strains.
Iran maintains its hold on the Strait of Hormuz – a crucial waterway for the world’s oil and natural gas and related products like fertilizer – and the US continues its blockade of Iranian ports. Global fuel prices remain high, and the effects of the conflict are felt well beyond the region.
Iran’s Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both believed to be close to the Guard, on Tuesday reported that Iran’s negotiators have stopped communicating with ceasefire mediators as tensions flare in Israel’s separate but related fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
A regional official involved in the mediation, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, told The Associated Press that Iran had not communicated on Tuesday after saying a ceasefire needed to be enforced in Lebanon for negotiations to continue.
Trump called reports of a cessation in talks “false and erroneous.”
“The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago and today,” Trump said in a social media post Tuesday.
Israeli forces have moved deeper into Lebanon than at any time in over a quarter-century, while Hezbollah has launched rocket and drone attacks. The declared ceasefire in Lebanon is officially in place and no side has formally withdrawn or declared it over even as attacks continue.
Lebanon has emerged as a sticking point in Trump’s efforts to sign a ceasefire deal with Iran. Tehran insists that any larger potential truce must quell the fighting in Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to keep the issues separate and is under domestic pressure to strike Hezbollah as he prepares for elections this fall.
The fighting has exposed a rift between close allies Israel and the US, with the US pushing for restraint.
In a podcast interview released Wednesday, Trump confirmed a report that he had called Netanyahu “crazy” Monday in a phone call peppered with an expletive. Trump told The New York Post’s “Pod Force One” that he was “a little bit perturbed” that Israel’s fight with Hezbollah was holding back talks with Iran.
Still, Trump said his relationship with Netanyahu was solid, and “we’ve worked very well together.”
