'Huge setback' threatens to 'torpedo' Trump's coveted peace deal: report

A peace deal between Washington and Tehran – one that President Donald Trump has shown a “strange insistence” on being finalized Sunday, his 80th birthday – is at risk of collapse after a key Iranian demand was violated Sunday morning, Al Jazeera reported.

Iran has demanded that Israel halt its bombardment of Lebanon as a non-negotiable condition to ending the war, a demand that Israel has largely ignored, despite Trump’s insistence that Israel halts its attacks on its northern neighbor. And on Sunday, Israel launched airstrikes on suburbs in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital and largest city, killing at least two and wounding four.

The attack, warned Sami Nader of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, could blow up the U.S.-Iran peace deal Trump had hoped would be finalized Sunday.

“This event is quite significant and it has the potential to torpedo the deal between the US and Iran,” Nader told Al Jazeera. “The thing is now how Iran will retaliate?”

Iran launched strikes against Israel for striking Lebanon as recently as last week, setting a new precedent in the war by launching attacks against Israel on behalf of another country. Whether Iran repeats last week’s attack remains to be seen, though Al Jazeera’s Almigdad Alruhaid argued that Israel’s Sunday morning strikes were, at the least, a potential “huge setback” for a brokered deal between Washington and Tehran.

“This is a serious development as far as Iran is concerned. We’ve seen that the situation in Lebanon is an integral and central part of the potential peace deal,” Alruhaid wrote.

“The latest broader ceasefire, on April 8, was linked to the situation in Lebanon, and Iranian officials have repeatedly said that the situation in Lebanon will not be separated from this deal. So it could be a huge setback.”