Iranian officials insisted that Lebanon was part of the ceasefire deal that was announced by Pakistan, and denounced the Israeli bombing of Lebanon on April 8 as a provocation. In fact, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif stated on Tuesday, April 7, in announcing the ceasefire deal, that the ceasefire would apply “everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere.")
As of this writing, Iran has not launched any retaliatory strikes. “What happened yesterday was grave violation,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh told BBC Radio. “It was a catastrophe, could actually end in more catastrophe, and this is the nature of this rogue behavior that we are seeing from Israel in the whole Middle East.” “You cannot ask for a ceasefire and then accept terms and conditions, accept all the areas that a ceasefire is applied to, and name Lebanon, exactly Lebanon in that, and then your ally just starts a massacre,” he said.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was also clear in a posting on X, reported Axios. “The Iran–U.S. Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both. The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”
Parliament Speaker Mohamed Bager Ghalibaf, who will head Iran’s negotiating delegation to Pakistan, issued a statement on April 8, in which he said: “From the very beginning, we have been following the current process with distrust, and as expected, the United States of America has once again violated its commitments before the negotiations even began.”
Ghalibaf added: “As the President of the United States has clearly stated, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ten-point plan is the basis and framework for these talks. However, three points of this proposal have been violated so far:
“1- Failure to adhere to the first point … declaring ‘an immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and other regions, effective immediately’...
“2- The entry of an intruding drone into Iranian skies…
“3- Refusal to accept Iran’s right to enrich uranium, which was the sixth point of this framework.
“Now, even before the talks began, three key clauses of the ‘Basic Framework for Negotiations’ have been openly and blatantly violated. In such circumstances, neither a bilateral ceasefire nor negotiations make sense.”
