Trump says don’t need peace deal to seize Iranian uranium as Hezbollah rejects Israel-Lebanon ceasefire

New Delhi: US president Donald Trump has said he wouldn’t need a peace deal with Tehran to seize the Iranian enriched uranium. He also claimed the West Asian nation couldn’t stop him if he wanted to do so.

However, he quickly added that he had no reason to seize the enriched uranium from Iran, as it had been “entombed”. His reference was to the US claim that most of Tehran’s enriched uranium was now under rubble after the American airstrikes in March had destroyed the nuclear storage facilities.

“We could get it right now. I don’t think they could stop us ⁠if ⁠we wanted, but ⁠there’s no reason to. It’s entombed,” he told ⁠reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. Trump also noted he was not interested in meeting Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. If the US and Iran reached a deal, the meeting was possible, he added. “If it happened, I’d be respectful,” the US president said about the possible meeting and the peace deal.

Hezbollah rejects Israel-Lebanon ceasefire

Meanwhile, Hezbollah rejected the latest ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon and demanded a total withdrawal of the Israeli forces for it to stop its attacks. However, more fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah inside Lebanon was hampering the efforts to end the war in West Asia.

Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem, in a written statement read on TV, called the negotiations “absurd, humiliating, and insulting”. He said the agreement’s demand that Hezbollah fighters leave southern Lebanon under fire would mean “surrender, defeat, and achieving the enemy’s goals.”

“What we are concerned about is an end to the aggression, ceasefire, and Israel’s withdrawal,” he said, underscoring that Hezbollah has not made any commitment to stop fighting. “So long as our villages are not safe and are being bombed and destroyed and our people are killed,” he said, “northern Israel will not be safe.”

Siren sound in northern Israel

The Hezbollah announcement came as Israeli strikes killed at least four people, according to local authorities, and a UN peacekeeper was killed in the crossfire. An Israeli soldier was also killed in combat in southern Lebanon. Following Kassem’s statement, drone alert sirens sounded in several border communities in northern Israel, including Shlomi, where prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers were meeting local officials. Netanyahu left the town shortly before the sirens sounded, Israeli media reported.

The Israeli military later said the sirens were triggered by attempts to intercept several drones that hit near soldiers in southern Lebanon. No injuries were reported. Israeli military’s chief of staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir acknowledged that the ongoing war was straining northern Israeli towns living under the threat of Hezbollah fire. He said Israel’s operations in Iran and Lebanon had “created a new security reality,” by weakening Iran and Hezbollah “to an unprecedented degree”.

Israeli, Lebanese troops withdraw

As their ceasefire agreement took effect, Israeli and Lebanese troops began withdrawing from their respective positions in coordination with the US peacekeepers. After Israeli forces left the Dibbine village in southern Lebanon, their Lebanese counterparts too began moving away. The area had witnessed intense military clashes in recent days. This was the first time the Israeli troops withdrew from southern Lebanon since their latest conflict with Hezbollah began three months ago. The fighting in Lebanon, where Israeli troops had captured a large part of the southern region, had threatened peace efforts to end the West Asian war and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which has been under Iran’s control since the conflict began on February 28. Iran had demanded that any lasting peace should include Lebanon, while Netanyahu, who faces elections later this year, wanted to continue the military campaign against Hezbollah inside Lebanon till the armed group posed no threat to Israeli territory