Lebanon has a ceasefire and that changes everything for Iran.
And for the five days remaining before the Iran US ceasefire
itself expires on April 22nd, Trump announced on Thursday that
Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a 10 day ceasefire effective
5:00 in the afternoon Eastern Time on Thursday.
In a Truth Social post, he wrote that Israel's Prime Minister
Netanyahu and Lebanon's President on had agreed that in
order to achieve peace between their countries, they will begin
a 10 day ceasefire. He then said something that no
one had heard him say about this war in 49 days.
He said he might go to Pakistan himself if there was a peace
deal with Iran to sign. It is Friday April 17th, 2026,
day 49 of Operation Epic Fury. The Lebanon ceasefire is active.
Crowds were celebrating in the streets of Beirut as tracer
rounds from celebratory gunfire lit up the night sky over the
city. The Iran ceasefire has five days
left. The second round of talks is
being arranged. As a direct consequence of what
happened today. Trump said he might go to
Pakistan himself, and the war that began 49 days ago may be
approaching its final diplomatic chapter or the most dangerous
five days it has yet produced. This is episode 49 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. Begin with why the Lebanon
ceasefire matters so profoundly for the Iran negotiation,
because the 2 tracks are officially separate and have
been strategically inseparable since the first day of the
ceasefire. Iran has consistently
conditioned further talks with the United States on a ceasefire
in Lebanon. Tehran's argument, stated
repeatedly by Iraqi, by Galibaf, and by Iranian state media
throughout the ceasefire, is that Israel's continued
bombardment of Lebanon constitutes a violation of the
broader ceasefire framework and that Iran cannot negotiate a
permanent settlement with the United States while its closest
regional ally is being destroyed by the country that the United
States is allied with. The Trump administration in
Israel rejected that linkage publicly at every turn.
The ceasefire with Iran, they said, did not cover Lebanon.
But the urgency with which the White House worked over the past
48 hours to produce a Lebanon ceasefire before his second
round of Iran talks is scheduled tells the real story.
The Lebanon ceasefire is not incidental to the Iran process.
It is its precondition and Trump delivered it.
The mechanics of how the Lebanon ceasefire came together are as
revealing as the outcome itself. Secretary of State Marco Rubio
hosted the rare meeting between Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors
on Tuesday, the 1st direct engagement between the two
countries in decades. At that meeting, Lebanon's
ambassador acknowledged that Hezbollah is a mutual problem
for both Israel and Lebanon. That was a significant statement
from a Lebanese government official on the record.
It gave both sides a shared characterization of the problem
that neither had publicly agreed to before.
After that meeting, Trump got Netanyahu on the phone Wednesday
evening and pressed him to accept a ceasefire under certain
terms. Netanyahu gave his agreement in
principle. Then Rubio reached Lebanon's
president own overnight and secured his commitment.
On Thursday morning, Trump called own directly, the first
time Trump had spoken with a Lebanese president since he took
office, and then called Netanyahu again to finalize.
Shortly after those calls, Trump announced the ceasefire deal on
Truth Social. The speed and manner of the
Lebanon ceasefire announcement is worth examining because it
reveals something important about Trump's negotiating
method. Netanyahu had been refusing a
Lebanon ceasefire for weeks. His position that Lebanon is a
separate conflict, that Hezbollah must be destroyed,
that Israel has the right to continue its campaign regardless
of the Iran ceasefire, was stated so consistently and so
publicly that a reversal seemed politically impossible without
Netanyahu losing face with his own cabinet and his own security
establishment. Trump solved that problem by not
giving Netanyahu time to deliberate.
He called Netanyahu on Wednesday evening and asked him to agree
in principle. Netanyahu agreed on the phone.
Then Rubio called the own. Overnight, Trump called own.
In the morning, Trump called Netanyahu again.
And then Trump announced the ceasefire on Truth Social before
Netanyahu's Security Cabinet had been properly briefed.
By the time Netanyahu's ministers got on an emergency
conference call to discuss the ceasefire, Trump had already
posted it. The Cabinet voted on a fade
accompli. This is Trump's characteristic
approach to difficult allies move faster than they can
object, present the outcome as already agreed, and leave them
to ratify what has already been announced.
It worked with Netanyahu on Thursday the same way it has
worked with other leaders throughout Trump's political
career. Netanyahu's security Cabinet,
which under Israeli law must formally approve military
decisions, was caught off guard. Ministers heard about Trump's
announcement several minutes into an urgent conference call,
before any serious discussion had started, a senior Israeli
official told Axios. Trump pushed the ceasefire
through. That is a telling phrase.
Netanyahu has been the principal obstacle to any Lebanon
ceasefire throughout the war, insisting that Israel's campaign
against Hezbollah is separate from the Iran conflict and
cannot be constrained by diplomatic considerations about
Iran's negotiating comfort. Trump overrode that position.
He used his leverage over Netanyahu, the military and
diplomatic support that Israel depends on, to extract the 10
day ceasefire that his Iran negotiators urgently needed. the
US Israel relationship produced the outcome, but it produced it
by applying pressure that Netanyahu had been resisting for
weeks. The ceasefire terms are precise
and their limitations are significant.
Israel agreed to a 10 day pause and act of operations.
Israel explicitly did not agree to withdraw its troops from
southern Lebanon. Netanyahu stated clearly that
Israel will keep its forces in the Six Mile buffer zone it is
occupied and that he would react if threatened.
The IDF spokesperson emphasized that the military is fully
prepared to attack again in a powerful manner, quickly if
necessary. Trump invited both Netanyahu and
Lebanese President Own to the White House for direct peace
talks, a significant escalation of diplomatic ambition from a
president who just days ago was saying he did not care whether a
deal happened. Municipal leaders in northern
Israel who have lived under Hezbollah rocket fire for
months, expressed outrage at being informed of the ceasefire
from the media rather than from their own government. 1 council
head said residents of the north feel betrayed.
Once again he made a direct appeal to Netanyahu.
Your basic duty as Prime Minister is to provide security
to the citizens of the state. Those are powerful words from
within Netanyahu's own political constituency, a reminder that
the domestic political cost of any Lebanon arrangement that
leaves Hezbollah armed and capable is enormous, regardless
of how the diplomacy is framed. In Washington, Northern Israel
has been absorbing rocket fire since late February.
Its residents are not interested in a 10 day pause.
They want a permanent solution. Whether this 10 day ceasefire is
a first step toward one or another temporary arrangement
that fractures within weeks is what the next 10 days will
determine. Hezbollah did not agree to the
ceasefire. The Lebanese government agreed
on Hezbollah's behalf, as it has done in previous ceasefire
arrangements. The group issued a statement
saying the Lebanese people have the right to resist Israeli
forces in the country, language that is deliberately ambiguous
about whether Hezbollah's military wing considers itself
bound by the Lebanese government's commitments.
That ambiguity is not accidental.
Hezbollah operates as a state within a state in Lebanon.
Its military chain of command does not run through the
Lebanese presidency or the Lebanese army.
When the Lebanese government commits to prevent attacks by
non state armed groups, it is making a commitment it cannot
fully enforce. Both Israel and the United
States know this. They accepted the commitment
anyway because the diplomatic architecture of the Iran process
required it. Israel agreed to a previous
Lebanese ceasefire in late 2024. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon
recorded more than 10,000 violations of that agreement,
the overwhelming majority attributed to Israeli forces.
The pattern of Lebanon ceasefire agreements producing paper
commitments that fragment under the operational pressures on the
ground is not theoretical. It is documented in recent the
question is not whether this ceasefire will hold
indefinitely. The question is whether it will
hold for five days the remaining window of the Iran ceasefire.
Five days of reduced Israeli strikes in Lebanon is long
enough to let Iran's delegation board a flight to Islamabad
without the immediate political pressure of having to publicly
condemn fresh Lebanese casualties on the way there.
It is long enough for the back channel to produce a second
round date is long enough, just barely, to serve as the
diplomatic bridge that connects the Lebanon ceasefire to the
Iran deal is the narrowest bridge in this entire
negotiation, and it will be tested by every rocket, every
drone, and every Israeli strike that occurs in southern Lebanon
over the next 120 hours. Whether Hezbollah fires a rocket
in the next 5 days and whether Israel responds to it is the
operational variable that could collapse the entire diplomatic
sequence. Trump said something
extraordinary at a press conference on Thursday.
He said Iran has agreed to give back the nuclear dust that is
way underground because of the attacks made with the B2
bombers. That is a significant claim, and
it is the most specific statement Trump has made about
the state of the nuclear negotiations since the ceasefire
began. To understand what it means,
consider what the nuclear dust refers to.
B2 Spirit stealth bombers carrying bunker busting
munitions struck Iran's hardened underground nuclear facilities
at for Dow, Natan's and other sites during Operation Epic
Fury. The strikes were designed to
collapse tunnel entrances and trap or destroy the enrichment
cascades and uranium stockpiles inside.
Intelligence assessments have consistently stated that the
strikes degraded but did not fully destroy the facilities,
and that significant quantities of highly enriched uranium,
estimated at over 400 kilograms, sufficient for multiple nuclear
warheads, remain buried underground, either in surviving
chambers or in rubble from collapsed tunnels.
The White House had listed the retrieval of this material as a
non negotiable demand. Iran had previously rejected
that demand. If Trump's statement is accurate
that Iran has now agreed to surrender that material, it
represents the single largest Iranian concession of the entire
negotiating process. It would directly address the
White House score demand and remove the most dangerous
element of Iran's nuclear program from Iranian control.
It is also notably a claim Trump made without supporting
documentation, without an Iranian counter statement and
without verification from any independent source.
Iran's foreign ministry had not confirmed the claim as of
Thursday evening. The statement may reflect
genuine progress from Munir's Tehran visit.
It may also reflect Trump's characteristic tendency to
announce outcomes before they are formally agreed.
The distinction matters enormously.
But the direction of travel, Trump volunteering positive
details about the nuclear talks publicly to the press, is itself
a signal that the back channel is producing something.
A president who said he does not care whether a deal happens, who
said whatever and will reset, is now saying he might personally
fly to Pakistan to sign one. That is one of the sharpest
reversals of posture in the entire 49 days of this conflict.
It places Trump personally in the diplomatic frame in a way
that raises the stakes for both sides.
If Trump flies to Islamabad and there is no deal, it is a
personal presidential failure in a way that sending Vance was
not. That calculus may be why Trump
is saying it because it creates pressure on Iran to produce
something signable knowing that a Trump visit requires a Trump
level outcome. What is confirmed from the
Iranian side is that Iraqi told reporters on Thursday that Iran
received a message from Pakistan following Munir's visit to
Tehran and that Iran is studying the message carefully.
That is the precise language of a government that has received
the concrete proposal and is taking it through its internal
authorization process. It is not a rejection.
It is not an acceptance. It is the specific diplomatic
signal of a process still in motion.
The five days between now and April 22nd are the window inside
which that process must produce a result.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood at a Pentagon press
briefing alongside General Dan Kane, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, on Thursday afternoon and delivered a statement that
sat in direct tension with Trump's optimism.
He said the US naval blockade of Iranian ports will last for as
long as it takes. He said the US military is
prepared to continue attacks in Iran if a long term ceasefire
deal is not reached soon. Those two statements, the
blockade for as long as it takes and prepared to attack again,
are the military pressure track running in parallel with the
diplomatic optimism track. The administration is speaking
in two registers simultaneously into two different audiences.
Trump's register is directed at the markets, at the American
public, at Iran's pragmatists and at the international
community. A deal is coming.
This is almost over. Something amazing is ahead.
Heksetha's register is directed at Iran's hardliners, at the
IRGC, at any Iranian official who might mistake Trump's
optimism for weakness. The military instrument has not
been put away. The blockade is permanent until
a deal is done and the capacity to attack again is intact and
ready. Both messages are factually
true. Both are entirely deliberate.
The administration is managing the end game of a war with the
same dual register strategy used to start it.
Maximum optimism and maximum threat delivered simultaneously,
leaving Iran to decide which register to believe.
House Republicans blocked the latest War Powers Resolution on
Thursday by a margin of 213 to 214, the narrowest margin yet of
the four war powers votes since the war began.
The sole Republican to vote for the measure was Thomas Massie of
Kentucky. The sole Democrat to vote
against it was Jared Golden of Maine.
Representative Warren Davidson of Ohio voted present.
The result was decided by a single vote, and that single
vote tells a story about the political sustainability of this
conflict continuation. The War Powers Resolutions have
consistently failed since February 28th, but each
successive vote has produced a result that requires more
careful arithmetic from the White House's congressional
affairs team. In February, the margins were
comfortable. In March, they tightened.
On Thursday, one vote separated the administration's legal
authority to continue the campaign from a resolution that
would have required it to seek congressional approval for any
further military action. If the ceasefire expires on
April 22nd without a deal and bombing restarts, the
administration will face 1/5 war powers vote with A1 vote cushion
from the 4th. That is an uncomfortable
political position for an administration that needs to
project unambiguous resolve to Iran.
Whether that one vote margin holds under the pressure of
renewed conflict is the congressional question.
The next 5 days will sharpen. The Lebanon ceasefire did not
soften Trump's posture on every front.
Trump escalated his personal dispute with Pope Leo the 14th
on Thursday as well, directly defending the war to the pontiff
in the starkest terms he has yet used, he told reporters.
It is very important that the Pope understands, very, very
important. It would be nice not to say it.
Iran killed 42,000 people who were totally unarmed.
They were protesters. Iran cannot have a nuclear
weapon. If they did, every country,
including Italy, where he is stationed, every single country
in the world would be in trouble, he said.
The blockade is amazing, he said.
We are doing very well with respect to the whole situation
on Iran, that this is a real world problem requiring real
world solutions. The Pope was on a pastoral visit
to Africa on Thursday, a continent whose fuel, security,
food prices and development trajectories are all being
affected by the hormones closure, and did not respond
directly to Trump's comments. The ongoing Pope Trump conflict
is a measure of how this war has broken out of its regional frame
and entered every global discourse simultaneously
geopolitical, moral, theological and diplomatic.
A war that started as AUS Israeli military campaign
against Iran's nuclear program is now a subject of disagreement
between the President of the United States and the leader of
the world's largest religion being conducted on social media.
While the two parties negotiators study a Pakistani
diplomatic message in Tehran. The Lebanon ceasefire transforms
the international landscape of the Iran diplomacy in ways that
go beyond the bilateral US Iran dynamic.
Russia's Lavrov had said repeatedly that Moscow believes
the Iran ceasefire must cover Lebanon.
France's Macron had said Lebanon must be included in a broader
ceasefire framework. The UK had publicly tied its
refusal to support the naval blockade to the need for a
comprehensive regional settlement.
Each of those positions can now be squared with a new reality.
Lebanon has a ceasefire. The Iran ceasefire still has
five days. The second round is being
arranged for the European powers and for Russia.
The Lebanon development removes a major objection to supporting
the diplomatic process for the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, the
UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, all of which have been absorbing
Iranian attacks for 49 days. The Lebanon ceasefire is the
first indication that the regional security framework
being assembled around the Iran deal has actual content.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif is currently in Saudi Arabia,
the first stop of his four day regional tour.
The Lebanon ceasefire announcement delivered by Trump
on the same day, give Sharif a concrete achievement to present
to the Saudis as evidence that the Islamabad process is
producing results. It is diplomatic sequencing of
the most purposeful and deliberate kind.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed
the 10 day ceasefire and called it a step toward broader
stability. The five days between today and
April 22nd are now the most consequential of the entire
conflict. A Lebanon ceasefire is active.
Munir has been to Tehran with Washington's message.
Iran is studying the response. Trump says Iran has agreed to
surrender the nuclear material. Trump says he might fly to
Pakistan. The blockade remains in place.
The IDF is keeping troops in southern Lebanon in common.
A somewhere in Tehran is deciding whether to send the
Iranian delegation back to the Serena Hotel, carrying the
authority to close the remaining gap, the 20% that separated 80%
there from a deal. 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 49 of Epic
Fury, the US Iran war podcast. Day 49 Lebanon has a 10 day
ceasefire. People were celebrating in
Beirut. Iran is studying Pakistan's
message. Trump says Iran agreed to hand
over the nuclear material. Trump says he might go to
Islamabad. Hegseth says the blockade is for
as long as it takes. One vote separated the War
Powers Resolution from passing in the House. 5 days left on the
Iran ceasefire clock. We will be back very soon.