US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Israel was "prohibited" from bombing Lebanon.
His comments follow the start of a 10-day ceasefire that took hold at midnight local time, although Hezbollah and Israel exchanged strikes in the hours leading up to the truce.
"Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer," Mr Trump said in a post on Truth Social. "They are prohibited from doing so by the USA. Enough is enough."
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said earlier that the Strait of Hormuz had been reopened to ships, but Mr Trump insisted the deal "is not tied, in any way, to Lebanon".
"But we will make Lebanon great again," he added.
The US-brokered ceasefire aimed at halting the “idiotic war” will stop “senseless killing”, US special envoy Tom Barrack said earlier. The ceasefire agreed to late on Thursday was a first step towards a longer-term end to the conflict, he said in response to a question from The National at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey.
“This is just the beginning of the road,” he added. “Ceasefires are so delicate because everyone has been equally untrustworthy.”
He described Mr Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “stepping in strongly” to put pressure on Israel to pause the war with Iran-backed Hezbollah, a conflict that has destroyed large areas of Lebanon and killed thousands.
“I think the brilliance of what happened yesterday is it stopped the senseless killing, and President Trump and Secretary Rubio stepping in strongly with Israel, saying, ‘We need a timeout,’ not the definition of what all the architecture around that timeout could be, because there are two people missing from that table – Hezbollah and Iran,” Mr Barrack said.
US envoy
Strikes on Lebanon have killed more than 2,000 people and displaced in excess of one million since February 28. The ceasefire declaration followed US-brokered talks between Israel and Lebanon in Washington this week.
Mr Barrack described Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri as “the best set of leaders we have”. The US envoy said there must be a “path with Hezbollah. And the path has to not be killing Hezbollah”.
As US special envoy for Syria and ambassador to Turkey, Mr Barrack has played a central role in Washington's backchannel diplomacy between Israel and Lebanon.
Securing a longer-term agreement was now key, he said, using a mechanism set up as part of a previous ceasefire in 2024 to relay messages between Israel and Lebanon.
“Everyone is in atrophy over this idiotic war. So will the ceasefire stick? What will we do? It’s baby steps,” he said. “Everybody's rushing to fill in those pieces and see what didn't work in that 2024 [ceasefire] – we have a whole organisation … that responds to requests for action from either side. It's trust-building, and it's the first step of trust building.”
