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Iran War Live Updates: Israel and Lebanon Renew Cease-Fire
Hezbollah Rejects Cease-Fire Deal Between Lebanon and Israel
Hezbollah’s leader said the Iran-backed group, which was not included in U.S.-brokered talks, said a truce worked out between Israel and the Lebanese government amounted to surrender for his group.
June 4, 2026Here’s the latest.
Hezbollah on Thursday flatly rejected an American-brokered cease-fire agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government just hours after it was announced, saying that abiding by it would amount to a surrender to Israel.
The agreement had little, if any, effect on the ground in Lebanon. Israel pounded southern Lebanon with strikes and Hezbollah fired rockets at Israeli forces.
Lebanon’s government has little control over Hezbollah, which is a significant political force in Lebanese society and relies largely on Iran for material support. And Israel has been reluctant to stop fighting, but has been pushed to do so by the Trump administration.
The agreement announced Wednesday demanded a unilateral cessation of attacks by Hezbollah but did not explicitly require immediate concessions from Israel, such as a withdrawal of its forces from southern Lebanon.
The apparent failure of the agreement left the region much as it was 24 hours earlier, when fears were growing that the fighting in Lebanon would intensify — and torpedo the broader negotiations to end the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Iran has insisted that Lebanon be included in any peace agreement but under terms that are antithetical to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel’s push to completely disarm Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, called the cease-fire agreement “illusory” and said it amounted to “surrender, defeat and the realization of the enemy’s objectives” because it called for Hezbollah not only to stop firing but to pull out of Southern Lebanon, leaving Israel’s troops fully in control of that area.
Israeli troops have occupied much of southern Lebanon since early March, when Hezbollah began launching missiles into northern Israel in response to the U.S.-Israeli bombardment of its ally Iran.
Mr. Netanyahu has ramped up the offensive against Hezbollah in recent weeks, even as truce talks were taking place.
Mr. Qassem said any cease-fire must end Israel’s offensive and require its military to withdraw from Lebanon.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Peacekeepers attacked: A U.N. peacekeeper from Serbia was killed and two other peacekeepers were wounded when mortar shells struck their base in southern Lebanon overnight, hours before the agreement was reached in Washington. It was not clear where the mortars were fired from, and the United Nations said it was investigating.
U.S.-Iran negotiations: President Trump said on Wednesday that the war in Iran was “not a big thing” for the United States, claiming it was going better than he expected. The United States and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28, more than three months ago.
Gaza strikes: Health authorities in the Gaza Strip said on Thursday that Israeli military strikes had killed 11 people in the past 24 hours and wounded more than 30. Israeli strikes overnight targeted Hamas operatives, an Israeli military spokesman said without providing more details. Read more ›
President Trump, speaking in the Oval Office, said he has been speaking to both the Israeli prime minister and Hezbollah in an effort to end the conflict in Lebanon. “That’s been like a little bit of a different world but it’s interconnected with Iran and it would be really nice if Lebanon could have some peace,” Trump said. “Lebanon’s been under attack for many years and always is like an underdog, and it would be really nice if it could end.” It could not be confirmed whether the president had spoken directly with Hezbollah officials.
It would be highly unsual if he had, since the United States considers the armed group a terrorist organization. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on Wednesday that earlier communications between the United States and Hezbollah were done through Lebanese officials.
Kuwait releases videos showing the moment a drone struck its airport.
Kuwait’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation released footage showing what it said was an Iranian drone striking Kuwait’s international airport in an attack Wednesday that killed one civilian and injured dozens more.
The videos, which were verified by The New York Times, showed a drone that appeared to be a Shahed model, commonly used by Iran, strike the airport close to 7 a.m. on Wednesday.
The United States and Kuwait disagreed with Iran on Wednesday on details of the drone strike. Iran claimed it had not targeted the Kuwaiti airport in its attack. A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps blamed the destruction on a mishap with a U.S. Patriot missile-defense system trying to intercept Iranian missiles.
The U.S. Central Command said on social media that Iran’s accusation was “totally FALSE,” and Kuwait’s military had said that an Iranian drone caused the damage.
After Kuwait released the videos, Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news outlet affiliated with the Guards, cited an Iranian military source claiming that the video was “a fabricated deception by the enemy.” The outlet said the Iranian attack had taken place at night, while the video footage released by Kuwait was of an explosion during the daytime.
The disagreement highlighted the propaganda war running in parallel alongside the armed conflict — and how the very existence of tools that can quickly generate deepfake videos can be used to try to sow doubt about evidence documenting attacks.
The footage was recorded by surveillance cameras in and around the airport. It showed the drone striking the roof of the terminal and exploding in a ball of fire and debris from two different angles. Video from another angle appeared to show a small parking lot surveillance camera that shook at the moment of impact, as well as a car driving away from the funnel of dark smoke emerging from the damaged building.
A third angle, from inside the terminal, shows the bright orange flash of the explosion and what looks like dust and plaster falling down from the ceiling, as a bystander flees while covering his ears.
The video released by the Kuwaiti authorities was consistent with other bystander footage filmed inside the airport immediately after the strike that showed extensive damage and a gaping hole in the roof at the point where the drone hit.
Show moreJune 4, 2026, 2:05 p.m. ETIran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in an interview that he was in the compound of the former supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, on Feb. 28 when Israeli airstrikes killed him. Araghchi told the Lebanese television outlet Al Mayadeen that the building where he was holding a meeting was hit but the wing where he was sitting survived.
“While we were coming out from under the rubble, I kept thinking: Has he been targeted or not?” Araghchi said, referring to Khamenei. In addition to Khamenei, senior military leaders of Iran’s Defense Council were also killed.
June 4, 2026, 12:54 p.m. ETU.N. Secretary General António Guterres condemned the killing overnight in south Lebanon of a Serbian U.N. peacekeeper, who died when a mortar landed on a U.N. outpost. Two other peacekeepers were also injured, the United Nations said.
Since the beginning of March when the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began, seven U.N. peacekeepers have been killed. “All attacks on peacekeepers must be promptly investigated, and those responsible must be effectively prosecuted and held accountable,” Guterres said in the statement.
June 4, 2026, 12:13 p.m. ETLebanon’s latest cease-fire shows little sign of taking hold.
For all the diplomatic fanfare surrounding the newest cease-fire agreement in Lebanon, the reality on the ground on Thursday was grimly familiar: Israeli airstrikes, Hezbollah rockets and little sign that the war had stopped.
The continued fighting exposed the fragility of the latest deal brokered by the Trump administration a day earlier, before it had even taken effect.
That cease-fire is contingent on Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed armed group, first pulling back from the Lebanese region bordering Israel, and on a “complete cessation” of the group’s attacks. But Israel is not required to make any immediate concessions in parallel, and Hezbollah did not take part in the cease-fire negotiations, leaving Lebanon’s government with little power to force it to comply.
Within hours, those limits were on full display.
In a statement on Thursday, Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, rejected the U.S.-brokered agreement, saying it amounted to a demand that his group surrender while Israel continued its offensive.
Mr. Qassem said any cease-fire must be comprehensive and include an end to Israel’s military campaign and its withdrawal from Lebanon, where Israeli forces have occupied broad stretches of territory since invading in March.
“As long as the occupation continues, the resistance will continue,” Mr. Qassem said.
Hezbollah said on Thursday that it had carried out rocket and drone attacks on Israeli troops in the border region, and Israeli airstrikes continued to pummel southern Lebanon on Thursday — underscoring how little the cease-fire deal had shifted either side’s military posture, and how little it has changed life for civilians on the ground.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said on Thursday that Israeli forces would continue operating in Lebanon “at this stage,” adding that the hundreds of thousands of people displaced from southern Lebanon would not yet be allowed to return.
Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said the agreement announced on Wednesday was another “performative cease-fire” — one with “all the packaging for a great declaration, but no commitment.”
“This is a one-sided cease-fire,” he said.
The new agreement follows an earlier U.S.-brokered cease-fire that took effect in April but did little to stem the fighting. Under that deal, Israel said it retained the right to act in self-defense but would not carry out “offensive operations” against Lebanese targets by land, air or sea.
Since then, Israeli ground forces have pushed deeper into Lebanon, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel ordered the military to escalate the offensive against Hezbollah, even as truce talks continued.
Before Mr. Qassem’s speech, President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon had signaled that the cease-fire was not yet in effect, telling reporters on Thursday that the Lebanese government was still waiting for a response from Hezbollah before informing Washington of Lebanon’s position. Mr. Aoun said the cease-fire could begin within 24 hours of Washington being notified that all sides had agreed, adding that it was “the final opportunity” to reach a comprehensive cease-fire.
But Mr. Qassem’s rejection of the agreement made that timeline look increasingly unlikely.
Without naming Hezbollah, Lebanon’s prime minister, Nawaf Salam, warned on Thursday that anyone who rejected or delayed the process would bear responsibility for what followed.
“Every hour that passes without implementation is an hour paid for by the south and its people,” he said.
Show moreJune 4, 2026, 10:19 a.m. ETDespite Israel and Hezbollah launching attacks against each other on Thursday, there were some signs that the new cease-fire agreement was beginning to move toward being carried out.
The Lebanese military said Israeli forces had withdrawn from the Debbine area in southern Lebanon, allowing Lebanese army units to begin deploying there in coordination with a U.S.-led cease-fire monitoring committee formed after a 2024 cease-fire, and with UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon. The army added that it had reopened a road and was surveying the area for unexploded ordnance.
June 4, 2026, 9:46 a.m. ETOil prices fell on Thursday, clinging to the announcement of a new cease-fire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, despite Hezbollah and Israel’s continued exchange of strikes. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, fell roughly 2.5 percent to around $95 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, fell over 3 percent to around $93 a barrel.
June 4, 2026, 9:38 a.m. ETIsraeli airstrikes battered southern Lebanon on Thursday despite the announcement of a new cease-fire agreement between Israel and Lebanon. Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported deaths and injuries in several strikes and described heavy bombardment across the country’s south. There was no immediate casualty toll from Lebanon’s health ministry.
Hezbollah said earlier on Thursday that it had fired rockets at Israeli targets in southern Lebanon.
Euan Ward and Dayana Iwaza
Reporting from Beirut, LebanonThe leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, rejected the U.S.-brokered cease-fire agreement between Israel and Lebanon on Thursday, saying it amounted to a demand that the Iranian-backed armed group surrender while Israel continued to launch military attacks.
Qassem said that any cease-fire must be comprehensive and include an end to Israel’s offensive and its military to withdraw from Lebanon, where troops have pushed deep into the south of the country. “As long as the occupation continues, the resistance will continue,” he said, adding that Hezbollah had made no commitment to stop resisting or responding to Israeli attacks.
June 4, 2026, 8:44 a.m. ETThe health authorities in the Gaza Strip said on Thursday that Israeli military strikes had killed 11 people in the past 24 hours and wounded more than 30. A spokesman for the Israeli military said that it had carried out multiple strikes overnight targeting Hamas operatives, the Iran-backed armed group that controls a part of Gaza, without providing further details.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 900 people in Gaza since a U.S.-brokered cease-fire took effect there in October, according to enclave’s health ministry.
June 4, 2026, 7:52 a.m. ETHwaida Saad and Dayana Iwaza
As Israel and Hezbollah continued to attack each other on Thursday, President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon signaled that the U.S.-brokered cease-fire had not yet taken effect and Beirut was waiting for a response from Hezbollah before informing Washington of his country’s position. A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Iranian-backed group rejected the U.S.-brokered deal, saying it did not meet the group’s conditions.
Aoun told reporters on Thursday that the agreement represented the “final opportunity” to reach a comprehensive cease-fire and warned that “each party will bear responsibility” if they failed to respond positively. He added that the truce could begin within 24 hours of Washington being notified that all sides had agreed.
June 4, 2026, 5:48 a.m. ETReporting from Nabatieh, LebanonFighting across southern Lebanon has intensified this week, even after President Trump on Monday announced that Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed armed group, had renewed their truce. Nearly all of the remaining residents in Nabatieh, a major city in southern Lebanon, fled in recent days after the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning for the entire city.
On Thursday morning, Nabatieh was eerily quiet except for the buzz of Israeli drones overhead, the roar of warplanes and the thuds of artillery from Israeli positions just a few miles south.
June 4, 2026, 5:48 a.m. ETHezbollah has not commented on the new cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, which is contingent on the Iran-backed group pulling back from southern Lebanon and a “complete cessation” of their attacks. But Hezbollah said on Thursday that it had fired two rocket salvos at Israeli troops in the border region, posing a test for the U.S.-brokered agreement just hours after it was announced. The attack, and the fact that Hezbollah was not involved in the U.S.-brokered talks between Israel and Lebanon, added to uncertainity over whether the group would accept a unilateral cessation of fighting while Israel continues to carry out strikes.
June 4, 2026, 5:48 a.m. ETA United Nations peacekeeper in Lebanon died after a mortar shell hit his position in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, the peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, said on Thursday. UNIFIL did not indicate whether Israel, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Iran-backed armed group, or other militant groups were behind the attack, and said that it had launched an investigation.
More than 7,000 peacekeepers were stationed in southern Lebanon as of early May, and six have been killed this year, according to the U.N. UNIFIL has accused both Israel and Hezbollah of attacking its positions throughout the more than two years of fighting between the parties.
June 4, 2026, 5:48 a.m. ETThe Israeli military told Lebanese civilians on Thursday not to return to the country’s south, saying it was continuing to target Hezbollah a day after Israel and Lebanon announced a conditional cease-fire. The warning underscored just how little has changed on the ground despite the talks and President Trump’s claim this week that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to stop fighting each other.
The U.S.-brokered agreement is contingent on Hezbollah first halting its attacks and withdrawing from the border region, while Israel has signalled it will continue operations in southern Lebanon. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said Thursday that the hundreds of thousands of people displaced from the south would not yet be allowed to return, and Israeli strikes continued in several towns and villages, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency.
June 3, 2026, 7:41 p.m. ETTrump says the war in Iran is ‘not a big thing’ for the U.S.
President Trump said on Wednesday that the war in Iran was “not a big thing” for the United States in his latest attempt to play down the effects of the war by pointing to the economy.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump asserted that the conflict, which has killed at least 13 U.S. service members and an estimated 1,700 Iranian civilians, drained military stockpiles, and inflicted financial pain on working-class Americans, was going better than expected. He maintained he was “very proud” of what he called a “detour” to Iran.
“We have the highest stock market in history with a military conflict going on, or a war — some people call it war, some people call it a military — it’s not a big thing for us,” Mr. Trump said. “We have a great military. It’s not a big thing for us.”
Mr. Trump went on to falsely claim that “costs were coming down” for consumers, and cited “great financial people” who he said had assured him that because 401(k)s were rising, “everybody’s making a lot of money.”
It was the latest attempt by Mr. Trump to flip the narrative on a conflict that he said would lead to a quick and decisive victory after the U.S. joined a bombing campaign with Israel on Feb. 28.But the war has instead dragged on for more than three months, with no end in sight.
As its goals have grown more elusive, Mr. Trump has become more dismissive of the conflict’s unpopularity, and the economic pains that it is causing Americans at gas pumps and grocery stores.
Last month, Mr. Trump said he did not think about Americans’ financial situations when considering whether to end the conflict. Then this week, in a 1 a.m. social media post, Mr. Trump chastised politicians who were “chirping” about the war.
“Just sit back and relax,” he wrote, “it will all work out well in the end — It always does!”
In the last few weeks, the president has signaled that the United States and Iran were close to signing a framework for peace. Last week, he even announced he was heading into the Situation Room to “to make a final determination” on a deal.
No such determination was made.
Then on Monday, he acknowledged that he found the negotiations with Iranian leaders “very boring.”
Mr. Trump has given the Iranians numerous deadlines to sign a peace deal, insisting that any agreement must assure that they never have a nuclear weapon. But he has given conflicting statements about where negotiations stand.
Asked about his announcement last week that the U.S. and Iran would go in and remove Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, which can be used to make nuclear weapons, Mr. Trump also asserted that Iran had agreed to the condition, but called the operation “very overrated.”
“I’m the one that overrated it,” he said. “To me it was important, to other people it’s not important.”
In another instance, Mr. Trump said in the same breath that Iran had agreed to several conditions, including not to develop a nuclear weapon, before backtracking.
“We’re going to have to stop them from having a nuclear weapon — that’s what we’ve done — and they’ve agreed to it, by the way,” he said.
He then said he meant “if they sign the agreement, they will have agreed to ‘we will not have a nuclear weapon or bomb, we will not develop one, we will not buy one.’”
He added that recent negotiations had been about whether they would buy a nuclear weapon, rather than develop one, and declared that we “in the end we got that,” before adding “if they sign the paper.”
“In theory they’re pretty close to signing a paper,” he added. “We’ve actually gotten along with them very well.”
When it came to discussing next steps, Mr. Trump, who has vacillated between threatening annihilation if the Iranians do not meet his demands and waiting them out, was vague. He signaled that the military was ready for a long haul.
“We could go another two, three weeks and just wipe everybody out,” he said. “I’d rather not do that. Very easy to do. They’re ready to do it. They want to do it. They want to do it. But if we can get something down in writing, which will accomplish the same thing without killing everybody, I’d like to do that.”
Show moreJune 3, 2026, 11:08 a.m. ETTrump confirms he called Netanyahu ‘crazy’ in a phone call.
President Trump offered a glimpse into his private conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, suggesting that the two men had a broadly positive rapport but that recent disagreements had prompted the president to call the Israeli leader “crazy.”
“We’ve worked very well together,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with The New York Post, summarizing their working relationship as close and constructive.
But Mr. Trump confirmed that he had repeatedly used expletives to convey his frustration on a recent phone call with Mr. Netanyahu over Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon when asked about an Axios report on the conversation between the two men.
“I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon,” he said, referring to the war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon.
Mr. Trump made his comments after reports of a growing split between the two leaders as the war with Iran, which began with joint U.S.-Israeli attacks, drags on. The Trump administration has excluded Israel from negotiations to end the conflict and the president has publicly urged Israel to stop fighting with Hezbollah.
In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday published after Mr. Trump made his remarks, Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged what he described as “tactical disagreements” with the president but declined to share details. “We always find a way to work them out,” he said.
In the New York Post interview, Mr. Trump also said that he hoped to eventually meet with Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. “We probably will meet at some point,” he said.
The Iranian authorities did not comment, and it was unclear whether Ayatollah Khamenei, who is believed to have been injured in the U.S.-Israeli strikes that began the war, would be willing to meet with Mr. Trump.
The president said that he did not know the extent of the injuries sustained by the supreme leader, who has not been seen in public for months. “If you believe the stories, he’s missing a lot of different parts,” said Mr. Trump.
Speaking more broadly about the state of negotiations to end the war, Mr. Trump suggested that he was not in a rush to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route for oil and gas that has remained largely choked by Iran since the beginning of the war.
When asked whether the strait would still be blocked by Labor Day on Sept. 7., Mr. Trump replied: “I don’t know.”
Jonathan Wolfe contributed reporting.
Show moreEuan WardEphrat Livni and Max Bearak
White House reporterReporting from Beirut, LebanonFinancial markets reporterReporting from Tel Aviv