With the two-week ceasefire in the Iran war on the brink of collapsing because Israel bombed targets across Lebanon, killing civilians, President Donald Trump contradicted Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s post about whether the deal included Lebanon.
In announcing the deal on X last night, Sharif said it did. Trump did not correct him on Truth Social hours later.
This morning, however, Trump told PBS reporter Liz Landers that the deal did not include Lebanon because of the Hezbollah terror outfit there. Vice President J.D. Vance said the same thing.
Lebanon Bombed
The Israel Defense Forces boasted about the bombing campaign, which, as The New American reported today, upended the ceasefire and provoked Iran into reclosing the Strait of Hormuz.
“In 10 minutes, the IDF completed the largest coordinated strike across Lebanon since the start of Operation Roaring Lion,” the rogue military bragged on X:
The strike targeted 100+ Hezbollah headquarters, military arrays, & command-and-control centers in Beirut, Beqaa and southern Lebanon, including:
• Intelligence command centers and central headquarters used [for] planning terror attacks
• Infrastructure of firepower and naval arrays, responsible for launching missiles
• Assets of the Radwan Force, & the Aerial unit — Hezbollah’s elite unit
Today, multiple news reports averred that Iran, having closed the strait on February 28 when the U.S. and Israel attacked but opened it due to the ceasefire, reclosed it because of those strikes.
“Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday in response [to] one of Israel’s deadliest attacks on Lebanon, Iranian state media reported, suddenly casting doubt over the ceasefire agreement brokered with the U.S. less than a day before, though the White House said reports the strait had been closed were ‘false,’” Forbes reported:
[The Islamic Republic News Agency] reported that the strait was closed “in the wake of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon,” and various reports describe Israel’s attacks Wednesday as one of the deadliest in the war so far, leaving 112 dead and as many as 800 injured.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said … “it has been relayed to [Trump] privately” that the strait remains open “and these reports publicly are false.”
Thus, the question: Did the ceasefire terms include Lebanon?
Lebanon Included, Lebanon Not Included
Last night, after Trump announced the ceasefire on Truth Social, Sharif tagged Trump, Vice President Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an X post. “With the greatest humility, I am pleased to announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY,” he wrote:
I warmly welcome the sagacious gesture and extend deepest gratitude to the leadership of both the countries and invite their delegations to Islamabad on Friday, 10th April 2026, to further negotiate for a conclusive agreement to settle all disputes.
Both parties have displayed remarkable wisdom and understanding and have remained constructively engaged in furthering the cause of peace and stability. We earnestly hope that the “Islamabad Talks” succeed in achieving sustainable peace and wish to share more good news in coming days!
Trump did not correct Sharif in another optimistic post hours later that declared “a big day for World Peace!”
Yet today, speaking with PBS’ Landers, Trump denied that Lebanon was included in the deal.
“They were not included in the deal,” he told her.
Landers asked why not, and whether they should have been.
“Because of Hezbollah,” Trump replied:
They were not included in the deal. That’ll get taken care of, too. It’s all right.
Landers asked if he was OK “with the Israelis continuing to hit them.”
Replied Trump:
It’s part of the deal — everyone knows that. That’s a separate skirmish.
Sharif, who helped broker the ceasefire, apparently didn’t know that.
Israel-first commentator Glenn Beck didn’t know it either.
“Iran has reportedly closed the Strait of Hormuz, claiming that Israel violated the ceasefire agreement by continuing to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon,” he wrote on X:
I don’t remember [Lebanon] being part of the deal. Hopefully, this will be resolved soon.
Replied Israel critic Glenn Greenwald:
How can @GlennBeck and others keep saying they don’t remember Lebanon being part of the cease-fire deal? Did they read the deal as announced by the Pakistani Prime Minister, who mediated and announced it? It says explicitly, without the slightest doubt, that it includes Lebanon.
What’s Next?
What will happen next is unclear.
The White House announced today that Vance will lead a negotiating team to Pakistan for talks that are to begin on Saturday.
Problem: Iran’s mediators have said they will not participate if the deal doesn’t include Lebanon, The Wall Street Journal reported today. Iran had warned that it might indeed reclose Hormuz, and threatened to continue attacking Israel and other nations in the region if Israel continues shelling Lebanon.
Speaking from Budapest, Hungary, Vance also claimed that the ceasefire didn’t include Lebanon.
“The Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn’t,” he said:
We never made that promise. We never indicated that was going to be the case. What we said is that the ceasefire will be focused on Iran and the ceasefire would be focused on America’s allies, both Israel and the Gulf Arab states. … [I]f Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart in a conflict where they were getting hammered over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them, and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that’s ultimately their choice.
Vance claimed that Israel was dialing back its brutal attacks in Lebanon to ensure that the peace talks succeed.
