The cease-fire is less than 24 hours old, and it is already
fracturing. Israel launched its largest
coordinated strike on Lebanon since this war began, killing at
least 182 people and wounding hundreds more.
Iran's IRGC responded by claiming it had halted oil
tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
The White House denied the Strait was closed and JD Vance
called the ceasefire A fragile truce from Budapest, where he
was briefing allies before flying to Islamabad.
It is Wednesday, April 9th, 2026, day 41 of operation in
epic Fury. The ceasefire is in place.
The guns have largely paused over Iran.
All markets are recovering. Iranians who celebrated in the
streets of Tehran on Tuesday night woke on Wednesday to news
of Lebanon burning and the straight contested again.
The most important diplomatic process of this war is about to
begin in Pakistan. But every element of the
agreement is already being contested, reinterpreted or
challenged, depending on who you ask.
And the ceasefire is less than a day old.
This is episode 41 of Epic Fury, the US Iran War podcast.
Follow on Spotify and Apple Podcast to stay with this story
as it develops. Let's get into it.
Start with Lebanon. Because it is the fault line
that could collapse the ceasefire before Islamabad even
begins. And because what happened on
Wednesday morning was not a minor irritant or a
misunderstanding. It was the single most serious
test the ceasefire has faced, and it arrived within hours of
the agreement being signed. Israel launched what the IDF
described as its largest coordinated strike on Lebanon
since the war began overnight on Wednesday local time.
The Lebanese Health Ministry confirmed at least 182 killed
and hundreds wounded, adding to a Lebanon death toll that had
already exceeded 1500 before the ceasefire was announced.
The IDF said it struck Hezbollah targets including
infrastructure, weapon storage and command facilities in
southern Lebanon and the Beirut suburbs.
The strikes represent Israel exercising the freedom of action
it had explicitly reserved when Netanyahu said Lebanon was not
included in the ceasefire. Israel is not wrong, legally or
militarily, to argue that Hezbollah remains a threat and
that the ceasefire with Iran does not obligate Israel to stop
defending itself in Lebanon. But the moral and strategic
weight of launching the conflicts deadliest Lebanon
strikes in the immediate hours after a ceasefire announcement,
while the world's attention was focused on the relief in the
diplomacy is a choice that will be scrutinized.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volcker Turk
condemned the strikes, saying such carnage defies belief.
He said the scale the killing and destruction in Lebanon today
is nothing sure of horrific. He added that the strikes,
coming within hours of a ceasefire agreement with Iran,
place enormous pressure on a fragile peace which is so
desperately needed by civilians. Iran's IRGC responded swiftly.
It announced that oil tanker traffic through the Strait of
Hormuz had been stopped, citing the Israeli strikes on Lebanon
as a ceasefire violation. Iran's ambassador to Pakistan,
Reza Miri Mogadam, said parts of Iran's proposal had been
violated before the Islamabad talks had even begun.
The speaker of Iran's parliament made a similar allegation.
The IRGC statement was a direct invocation of Iran's 10 point
proposal, which includes a necessity of ending the war
against all components of the resistance axis, meaning
Hezbollah. The White House immediately
pushed back. Press Secretary Caroline Levitt
said the reports of Iran closing the Strait were completely
unacceptable and call them false.
Defense Secretary Hegseth told a press briefing the Strait is
open, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Kane said.
I believe so, based on the diplomatic negotiation.
Levitt added that Trump wants to straight open immediately
without limitation, including tolls, a direct rebuttal of
Iran's plan to charge transit fees during the ceasefire.
The problem is that both sides are correct about the factual
situation and both sides are wrong about the legal situation.
Israel did strike Lebanon. The UN confirmed it.
The death toll is real. Iran's 10 point proposal does
include Lebanon, but the Trump administration explicitly told
Israel before the ceasefire was announced that Lebanon was not
included. Netanyahu's office confirmed
that explicitly. Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif
said Lebanon was included. He announced the ceasefire.
All four of those statements are simultaneously on the record.
The Lebanon question was not resolved before the ceasefire
was announced. It was papered over senior U.S.
officials, speaking privately, acknowledged to multiple news
organizations that the Lebanon carve out was a deliberate
ambiguity, a concession to Israel's insistence that it
retain freedom of action against Hezbollah dressed in language
that was vague enough for Pakistan to present to Iran as a
comprehensive ceasefire. That is the architecture of a
diplomatic fudge, not a diplomatic resolution.
Fudges of this kind can hold when the underlying parties have
a shared interest in pretending they don't see the
contradiction. They collapse when one party
like the IRGC decides to act on what was actually written rather
than what was diplomatically implied.
And on Day 41, the IRGC is acted.
And on Day 41, that paper has already torn.
VP Vance, speaking to reporters in Budapest on his way to
Islamabad, said if 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 is
ultimately their choice. He added that fundamentally, we
are in a good spot. They are reopening the straits,
we have a ceasefire, and frankly, if they break their end
of the bargain, they're going to see some serious consequences.
That framing that Lebanon has nothing to do with Iran is not a
position that any Iranian government of any political
stripe could accept publicly. Iran created Hezbollah in 1982.
It has funded, armed, trained and directed Hezbollah for four
decades. It has described Hezbollah as
part of the axis of resistance that constitutes Iran's primary
strategic deterrent against Israel.
Telling Tehran that Hezbollah's fate has nothing to do with Iran
is not a negotiating position. It is a declaration of the gap
between the two sides that the Islamabad talks will need to
bridge. The question is whether Vance,
Witkoff and Kushner understand that the path to a durable
nuclear settlement runs through a Lebanon arrangement and
whether they have the authority from Trump to negotiate. 1
Despite the Irgc's halt announcement, ship tracking data
told a more complex story. Marine Traffic confirmed that
two vessels the Greek owned in Jay Earth and the Liberia flag
Daytona Beach, had transited the Strait of Hormuz overnight since
the ceasefire was announced. Both were bulk carriers carrying
dry cargo, not oil tankers. Overall, traffic through the
waterway had not picked up beyond the slow trickle scene
throughout the war. Before the war, between 100 and
120 commercial vessels transited the straight daily shipping.
Executives were blunt, 1 executive with boats currently
stuck in the Persian Gulf told CNBC.
We have no information about how we could transit the Strait of
Hormuz during the ceasefire. We are not in contact with
Iranian authorities. The most important thing for us
is the safety of our crew members.
If we were deciding to transit, we need absolute guarantees
about the safety of our crew members.
That statement captures the practical reality of the
ceasefire's most immediate economic test.
The oil market fell 13% on Tuesday night on the news of the
ceasefire. If the straight does not begin
flowing with oil within days, that relief will partially
reverse. Roberto Janetta, chairman of the
Hong Kong Liner Shipping Association, was also blunt.
If he were a ship owner or operator stuck in the Persian
Gulf, he would wait a few days to see how the US, Israel and
Iran respond to the ceasefire. If it looks likely to be
sticking, he said he might try moving vessels in the second
week or in a cluster or convoy with other ships.
Tim Huxley, chairman of Mandarin Shipping, said it is too early
to tell. He noted that for sure, some
ships will now exit the area, but it remains tense.
Underwriters describe the truce as a positive development
overall, but one that carries a number of risks, including a
lack of clarity over which Iranian authority is in charge
of approving transit. That last point, which Iranian
authority is the ceasefire's entire practical problem in
microcosm. Vance said Wednesday that the
administration saw an uptick in traffic, adding they think
they're seeing signs the Straight is starting to reopen.
Hours later, Iran announced it had stopped tanker traffic again
over Lebanon. The market, watching all of this
in real time, is trying to price in a ceasefire that is
simultaneously being announced as open and closed by different
authorities in different capitals.
The Islamabad talks are where the answers must come from.
Trump confirmed Wednesday that the US negotiating team will be
led by Vice President JD Vance with special envoy Steve Witkoff
and Jared Kushner. The talks are scheduled to begin
Saturday morning Islamabad local time, not Friday as originally
announced. That one day delay is worth
noting. In the context of a fragile
ceasefire already under strain from the Lebanon strikes and the
Hormones disagreement, a 24 hour delay in getting the delegations
to the table is not reassuring. The composition of the American
delegation is itself a statement about what Washington is
prioritizing. JD Vance leading the delegation
is an extraordinary deployment of the Vice President of the
United States on a bilateral diplomatic mission.
It signals that Trump regards this as potentially the most
consequential diplomatic process of his second term.
Steve Witkoff has been involved in every major Middle East
negotiation of the Trump administration.
Jared Kushner's presence as a direct family link to Trump that
no other envoy can provide. His word carries presidential
authority in a way that career diplomats words do not.
Whether this team can navigate the nuclear question, the
sanctions question, the reparations demand and the
Lebanon dispute in the time available is the defining
question of the next 10 days. Whether the delay reflects
logistical scheduling or a diplomatic complication relating
to the Hormuz and Lebanon disputes is not confirmed.
But the timing is uncomfortable. Trump added his own commentary
on Wednesday with a characteristically optimistic
social media post. He said big money will be made.
Iran can start the reconstruction process.
He called the ceasefire a big day for World Peace.
He finished with this could be the golden age of the Middle
East. Those statements sit in unusual
tension with what is actually happening on the ground.
Lebanon burning, the straight status contested and Vance
describing the ceasefire as fragile.
The gap between Trump's social media framing and the
operational reality of the first day of the ceasefire is not
merely rhetorical. It reflects A genuine divergent
within the American position itself between the maximalist
optimism of the president and the more cautious assessment of
his own vice president. At a Wednesday press conference,
Trump was asked about uranium enrichment.
His answer was the clearest public statement he has made on
the nuclear question since the war began.
There will be no enrichment of uranium and the United States
will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply
buried nuclear dust. He was referencing the hardened
underground facilities for Dow Natan's Others that USB-2
bombers had struck with bunker busting munitions during the
campaign. Trump's framing was that those
sites must not merely be closed, but physically emptied of
nuclear material with American involvement in the process.
That is a significantly more specific and more demanding
position than anything Trump has said publicly on a nuclear
question during the 41 days of this war. 0 Enrichment, full
removal of nuclear material, working with Iran on the removal
process. That formula will be the
centerpiece of whatever the Islamabad talks produce or fail
to produce. Iran's 10 point proposal
includes a formal endorsement of Iran's nuclear rights under the
Non Proliferation Treaty, which explicitly gives NPT member
states the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
Iran has been an NPT member since 1970. 0 Enrichment versus
the NPT right to enrich is not a bridgeable gap through creative
language. It is a binary disagreement
about whether Iran retains any nuclear program at all.
How Vance, Witkoff and Kushner navigate that specific binary in
Islamabad on Saturday will be the most consequential
diplomatic moment of this entire conflict.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer used Wednesday to
deliver one of the most comprehensive Democratic
critiques of the war yet. He said the conflict was one of
the very worst military and foreign policy actions that the
United States has ever taken. He argued the war left the US
worse off in global credibility, left Iran's nuclear ambitions
unchecked, increased gas prices, and handed Iran leverage over
the Strait of Hormuz that it did not have before February 28th.
His argument is pointed and politically significant that the
40 Day War achieved the opposite of its stated objectives on
several key dimensions. Iran's nuclear program was
damaged but not destroyed. Iran's leverage over global oil
markets was demonstrated rather than eliminated.
The world now knows that Iran's control over Hormuz translates
directly into a global energy crisis. 13 Americans are dead.
373 more were wounded. The US spent 10s of billions of
dollars and the United States is now negotiating an Islamabad on
the basis of a 10 point Iranian proposal, which is to say on
Iran's terms as a starting point, not its own 15 point
framework. Iran expert try to Parsi offered
a measured assessment. Trump's failed use of force has
blunted the credibility of American military threats.
The terrain has shifted, he said, but he added that the
Islamabad talks could still fail.
Schumer announced that Senate Democrats will force another war
powers vote when Congress returns.
The war powers fight did not produce a result before the
ceasefire. Whether it produces 1 during the
ceasefire window or whether the Islamabad process renders it
moot is one of several domestic political questions that date 41
leaves unresolved. China's involvement in the
ceasefire negotiations was confirmed by the White House on
Wednesday. Press Secretary Levitt confirmed
Chinese participation in the truce negotiations with Iran.
This is the first official American acknowledgement that
Beijing played a role in producing the ceasefire, a
significant admission given that China had publicly condemned the
war throughout its 40 days. China's position throughout this
conflict has been to condemn the military operations while
maintaining its economic relationships with Iran and
continuing to import Iranian oil through the Strait of Hormuz at
concessional rates. China receives roughly 1/3 of
its oil through the Strait and peacetime.
The Strait's closure has cost Beijing billions of dollars and
disrupted supply chains that its economy depends on.
Its emergence as a backstage facilitator of the ceasefire,
alongside Pakistan's frontline mediation, reflects the reality
that the countries with the most economic exposure to the war's
continuation, China and Pakistan, ultimately had more
leverage over Iran's decision to accept the ceasefire than the
countries doing the bombing. That is a diplomatic observation
that will shape how the world's major powers interpret their
role in Islamabad process and the broader regional settlement
that must follow the IDF Strikes on Lebanon and the Hormuz
dispute were not the only complications on Day 41.
Kuwait and the UAE both reported fresh Iranian drone attacks
involving dozens of drones on Wednesday.
The IRGC appear to be operating on a different instruction set
than Iran's Supreme National Security Council, which have
confirmed the ceasefire. This is the command and control
problem that analysts had warned about since the ceasefire was
first announced. The IRGC, which has run the
military campaign autonomously throughout the war, does not
automatically stand down because a political body in Tehran
issues a ceasefire statement. The IRGC has its own operational
timelines, its own targeting logic and, as the Posseski and
Vahidi Exchange made clear weeks ago, its own relationship with
the civilian government that has been characterized more by
exclusion and coordination. Whether the Irgc's continued
attacks on Gulf states represent a deliberate message to the
Supreme National Security Council about the limits of its
authority, a test of whether the ceasefire will hold under
provocation or simply residual operations already in flight, is
not confirmed. The practical effect is that
Gulf states that have been hoping Wednesday morning would
bring the first quiet night in six weeks instead spin and
activating air defense systems again.
For Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, none
of them combatants, all of them damaged, the ceasefire has not
yet produced a single quiet hour.
The ceasefire's fundamental architecture is this a two week
pause and bombing contingent on Hormuz reopening with
negotiations in Islamabad. Everything else, the Lebanon
question, the nuclear question, the sanctions question, the
reparations question, the US military presence in the Gulf is
unresolved. The two sides are heading to
Islamabad to resolve all of it in two weeks.
The gap between those objectives and the reality of what is
actually happening on the ground on Day 41 is the widest it has
been since the ceasefire was announced less than 24 hours
ago. For the Islamabad talks to
produce anything durable, they need to achieve, at minimum, the
following a shared understanding between the US and Iran about
what Lebanon status is during the ceasefire period.
A concrete, verifiable mechanism for Hormuz to reopen and for oil
to flow without Iranian imposed transit fees and without Iranian
military coordination requirements that shipping
companies cannot accept. And a framework for nuclear
talks that gives Iran something it can describe to its domestic
audience as acknowledgement of its status as a sovereign state,
while giving the United States something it can describe as a
verifiable constraint on Iran's nuclear program.
None of those three things is easy.
All three are necessary conditions for a ceasefire that
lasts beyond two weeks. For Iran, the Islamabad talks
represent the first time in 41 days that its civilian
leadership, Karachi and the Foreign Ministry will help
platform. Whether the IRGC will allow the
civilian government to negotiate substantively or whether it will
undercut the talks from the military side the same way it
undercut possession throughout the war is the governance
question that Pakistan's mediators cannot answer.
For Tehran, there is an additional dimension that the
ceasefire has not yet addressed. Iran's Supreme National Security
Council claimed in its ceasefire statement that nearly all of the
war's objectives have been achieved.
That framing served a domestic political purpose.
It allowed Common A to present the ceasefire as victory rather
than surrender. But it also creates a problem
for the Islamabad process. If the Iranian public has been
told the war's objectives have been achieved, then any
concession made in Islamabad on the nuclear question, the
sanctions question or Hormuz governance will be presented
domestically as a betrayal of that victory.
Iran's negotiating position in Islamabad is constrained not
only by the IRGC, but by the political narrative its own
leadership created when it announced the ceasefire.
The internal Iranian decision making structure that produced
the ceasefire, apparently driven by Common A himself through the
Supreme National Security Council, will need to remain
coherent throughout the Islamabad process.
History and the events of the past 41 days suggest that
coherence is not guaranteed. The gap between Trump's social
media framing of Day 41. Big money will be made.
This could be the golden age of the Middle East and the ground
reality of Lebanon under its heaviest strikes of the war.
The IRGC continuing drone operations against Gulf states,
the straight contested and Vance describing the ceasefire as
fragile is not a minor rhetorical discrepancy.
It is a substantive divergent about the state of the world
that will create problems in Islamabad when Iran's delegation
arrives on Saturday and is presented with an American
counterpart whose president is publicly describing the golden
age of the Middle East while 182 Lebanese are dead from Israeli
strikes that began hours after the ceasefire was announced.
The emotional and political distance between the two
delegations will be considerable.
Diplomacy can bridge distance. It cannot pretend the distance
does not exist. If this podcast is helping you
make sense of what is happening, please take 30 seconds to leave
a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
It makes an enormous difference to how many people find the
show. This has been episode 41 of Epic
Fury, the US Iran war podcast Day 41.
The ceasefire is fragile. Lebanon is burning.
The Strait is contested. The IRGC is still flying drones
over Gulf states. Vance is flying to Islamabad.
The nuclear question is starkly framed.
And the two week clock that will determine whether this pause
becomes peace or resumes as war began ticking less than 24 hours
ago. We will be back very soon.