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Iran is halting indirect negotiations with the U.S. after Israel ordered troops to push deeper into Lebanon to battle Tehran-backed Hezbollah, the Iranian news agency Tasnim said on Monday, complicating diplomatic efforts to end three months of war.
Tasnim said the Islamic Republic’s negotiating team was stopping exchanging messages with Washington through mediators over attacks on Lebanon, where the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has reignited Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah.
The move poses a further obstacle to hopes of a swift end to the crisis, after Iran said it had attacked a U.S. airbase following weekend U.S. strikes on Iranian military targets that put further strain on a fragile ceasefire.
Oil prices rose more than $5 US a barrel after the Tasnim report.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi also raised Lebanon as a stumbling block.
“Violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts. The U.S. and Israel are responsible for the consequences of any violation,” he said on X.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday ordered the military to attack targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. His office accused Hezbollah of repeated violations of a ceasefire agreed in late April.
People began fleeing Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, in response to the Israeli warning — the latest wave of displacement in a conflict that has uprooted more than one million people in Lebanon, according to the UN Refugee Agency.
U.S. says downed drones targeted Kuwait base
The war launched by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28 has killed thousands of people, mainly in Iran and Lebanon, and caused global economic pain by pushing up energy prices due to Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Tasnim said Iran and the Resistance Front, which includes its Shia allies in Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq, had set an agenda to completely block the strait and activate other fronts, including the Bab El Mandeb Strait, to “punish” Israel and its supporters.
Iran and the U.S. have sporadically traded blows despite their ceasefire, which has been in place since early April, while Pakistan has been trying to mediate a durable peace agreement.
CBC’s David Common, sitting in for chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton, speaks with retired vice-admiral Mark Norman about the proposed framework for a deal to end hostilities between the U.S. and Iran.
The U.S. military said that on the weekend it struck Iranian air defences, a ground control station and two drones that were threatening ships after “aggressive Iranian actions,” including shooting down a U.S. drone over international waters.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Monday it had targeted an airbase used by the U.S. in response to the attack on southern Iran, without identifying which base.
Kuwait activated air defences on Monday and denounced Iranian missile and drone attacks, which it said were undermining efforts to reduce tensions in the region.
U.S. forces intercepted two Iranian ballistic missiles targeting American forces based in Kuwait late Sunday, the U.S. military said Monday, adding that no American personnel were harmed.
Trump confident ‘it will all work out’
In a late-night social media post, U.S. President Donald Trump did not mention the exchange of hostilities, repeating his as yet unproven claim that Iran “really wants to make a deal.”
He berated critics, including what he described as “seemingly unpatriotic Republicans,” for negative “chirping” about negotiations to end the conflict.
“Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end — It always does!” he said.
Despite Trump’s remarks, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei accused Washington on Monday of constantly shifting its negotiating stance and condemned what he called U.S. aggressive action.
He said sending contradictory messages wouldn’t work as a negotiating tactic, and urged Washington to reach a clear and definitive position as soon as possible.
“Negotiations have started amid severe suspicion and mistrust, and the exchange of messages is taking place in this atmosphere,” Baghaei said.
“The other party is constantly changing its views and putting forward new or contradictory demands … it is natural that this situation will prolong negotiations,” he said, adding that Tehran viewed Israeli actions in the region, including in Lebanon, as inseparable from those of the U.S.
Trump is under pressure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and get U.S. gasoline prices down ahead of the November congressional elections, as voters show increasing frustration over rising prices. At the same time, he faces a potential backlash from Iran hawks in his own party over any concessions to Tehran.
Trump has said his key aim in the war is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon with its highly enriched uranium. Tehran has consistently denied it has plans to do that.
The two sides remain at odds on several other issues, such as Tehran’s demands for the lifting of sanctions and the release of tens of billions of dollars of Iranian oil revenues frozen in foreign banks.
Day 610:11How we can bring down the high price of gasoline in Canada
The price of gas across Canada remained high this week. Although prices at the pumps have dipped slightly here and there since the start of the war in Iran, these high prices are expected to continue for some time. The mantra from government, industry and financial analysts is that high prices are inevitable because of geopolitical instability. Canadian economist Jim Stanford disagrees. Earlier this month, he authored the report, A Sequel We Don’t Want: What the 2026 Oil Price Shock Will Cost Canadians. Jim Stanford joins Day 6 host Brent Bambury to talk about how high gas prices in Canada have little to do with war, supply and demand, or market forces — and what can be done to bring those prices down.