On Tuesday morning (US East Coast time, late afternoon Middle East time), Lebanese and Israeli delegations held direct talks to discuss what could eventually be the beginning of a rather long path towards a deal of normalization.
The Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the US will be heading the two negotiating delegations.
The Washington meeting is taking place while Israel has increased strikes on Lebanon despite US commitments made to Iran to push Israel to reduce hostilities on the Lebanese front.
At the start of the ceasefire between the US and Iran on 8 April, diplomatic sources said that the United States, either directly or indirectly, informed Pakistani mediators of the 40-day US–Israeli war on Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon that Washington is going to accommodate the Tehran demand to have the cessation of hostilities applied simultaneously on Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen.
However, since the ceasefire went into effect, Israel had hardly restrained its strikes on Lebanon. It actually committed a shocking massacre in the first 24 hours of the ceasefire. This week, it conducted an aggressive military attack on Bint Jubail in the south of Lebanon. The Israeli assault was escalating hours before the talks opened in the US capital.
A diplomatic source informed on the upcoming talks said this assault will not prohibit the start of the negotiations, especially in view of the fact that this is essentially negotiations between the Lebanese government and the Israeli government, “away from the consent or approval of Hezbollah.”
In press statements on Monday evening (Middle East time), Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem called on the Lebanese government not to send its delegation to the talks.
Qassem said that the militant resistance group “will not surrender and will stand the course [of the battle].” He added that “whoever wants to surrender will have to walk this path on his own.”
“This is clearly a message from Hezbollah to the government,” said a former Arab diplomat informed on the internal Lebanese dynamics. “It is not just a message, actually, but it is a loaded message,” he added.
He explained that when Qassem says “we will stand the course of the battle,” it means that the secretary general of Hezbollah is actually walking back on all the tentative understandings that he has had with the government of Lebanon about constraining his militant capacity, especially in the area south of the Litani River, where Israel has been occupying territories beyond the November 2024 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, the source informed on the upcoming Washington talks said that the core of the scheduled negotiations is related to two points: disarming Hezbollah and agreeing on security arrangements for the border area between Lebanon and Israel.
“I am not sure how the representatives of the Lebanese government will be able to talk with any sense of certainty on this matter now that Hezbollah has been put on alert as it engaged in a war with Israel parallel to that of the US/Israel war on Iran,” he added.
Whatever the internal dynamics in Lebanon over the Washington talks, both sources agree that much will depend on the Pakistani-mediated US-Iran negotiations.
Following the largely inconclusive outcome of the first round that took place in the Pakistani capital over the weekend, a diplomatic effort has been put into motion to secure a second round of negotiations. The talks will most probably convene in Islamabad on Friday, 17 April.
According to Pakistani sources, the fact that US President Donald Trump decided to go ahead with his threat to impose a maritime embargo on Iran, effective late Monday afternoon (Middle East time), does not mean that the anticipated second round of US-Iran negotiations is automatically cancelled.
Speaking from Islamabad, one hour after the US started imposing its blockade, a Pakistani official said, “We are still working very hard.” He added that the key point to crack is to find a compromise language on the management of the Iranian nuclear programme that would be satisfactory both to the Iranians and Americans, “at least as a base.”
Three well-informed diplomatic sources who spoke from Islamabad, Cairo, and Ankara said that the weekend negotiations were not actually going into an impasse, despite the complexity of the issues that also include Iran’s frozen assets, missile capacities, and regional influence.
While none of these sources said that a deal was exactly in the making, they agreed that some initial understandings on some economic and military issues were being made and that there was something to build on.
According to the Ankara-based source, however, the issue is now how to resume negotiations when Trump has imposed a maritime blockade on Iran. “We will see the strategy that the Pakistanis will produce, but the fact that so far Trump has decided to honour the ceasefire is a very good sign,” he said.
Meanwhile, the sources informed on the Lebanese front said the outcome of the Iran-US talks could influence the Lebanon-Israel talks much more than the military developments on the ground in Lebanon, because if the US and Iran reach a deal then most likely Netanyahu would feel that the time has come for him to work with the Lebanese on a set of security parameters to be observed by both Hezbollah, with the support and surveillance of the Lebanese government, and Israel.
“This does not mean that Trump will get Netanyahu’s hands completely off the Lebanese front for good, but it means that things could de-escalate significantly,” he said.
Another front that is likely to be highly influenced by the Iran-US talks is that of Gaza. Since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, the Israeli government has closed all crossings to the strip for most of the time, turning Gaza, devastated as it is by the two-year genocidal war, into an open-air jail.
A UN humanitarian source said that the supplies entering Gaza, upon the agreement of Israel, had dropped significantly since the US-Israel war on Iran started.
Moreover, an informed Egyptian official said there has also been a decline in the level of political attention Gaza has been receiving, given the intense impact of the US-Israel war on Iran. “Nothing has happened on the front of Gaza at all,” said the official. He explained that in addition to suffering a considerable loss of already highly insufficient food and aid supplies, Gazans have also been subject to Israeli military strikes at steady intervals.
“The question today is how Gaza would survive this layer upon layer of hunger and illness,” he said. He added that this week’s visit by a Hamas delegation was unlikely to secure any significant progress for the Palestinians in Gaza, who are suffering considerably due to the failure to remove and collect the wreckage that is spreading all over the Strip, or to have free exit from and re-entry into Gaza.
The source said that with the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, Israel has been most determined that Hamas has to disarm for further humanitarian and political progress to take place.
According to the ceasefire signed on 10 October 2025 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Israel had committed to moving faster with humanitarian and political progress. Sources close to Hamas tell Ahram Online that Hamas has been calling on the ceasefire mediators, the US, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, to bring Israel to honour its commitments.
Hamas, the Egyptian source said, had made it clear during a previous visit earlier this month that it has no intention to give up its arms, “even though it had agreed to put its arms under close surveillance by Egypt and Turkey.”
“It is Iran that is particularly supportive of Hamas and Jihad in Gaza, and if the talks between Iran and the US collapse, then it should be fairly expected that Iran would encourage these groups to act more aggressively,” he said.
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