By Nkiruka Nnorom with agency report
UNITED States of America President, Donald Trump, yesterday threatened to restart war with Iran if it fails to stop its proxies in Lebanon from causing trouble.
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The fresh threat came as Vice President JD Vance met Iranian officials for the first talks under an interim peace deal, overshadowed by Teheran’s announcement it had again closed the Strait of Hormuz.
The talks in the Qatari-owned mountaintop resort of Buergenstock in Switzerland were the first to be held under the terms of a memorandum of understanding, MoU, agreed a week ago.
The MoU calls for the strait to be reopened and a halt to all hostilities, including in Lebanon, which U.S ally Israel invaded in March.
But Iran, arguing that Washington had failed to meet its commitment to halt fighting in Lebanon, said it had shut the strait again and that yesterday’s talks would not cover substantive issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme.
“Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!” Trump said, apparently referring to Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.
Fox News reported that Trump had gone further in an interview, saying he had told Iranian officials if they closed the strait “you won’t have a country”, and threatening to take over the waterway.
At the talks in Switzerland, where U.S and Iranian officials met in the presence of Qatari mediators, Vance played down the impact of violence in Lebanon, saying progress had been made towards ending hostilities there.
“These things are always a little bit messy,” he said.
Even as Trump was threatening Iran, Vance told reporters the U.S. president had “asked us to turn over a new leaf to transform our relationship with the people of Iran.”
Despite the announcement of a new ceasefire in Lebanon on Friday, there had been no sign of an end to fighting there.
Iran said on Saturday that as a result, it had again shut the Strait, which closure for nearly four months caused the biggest disruption of global energy supplies in history.
Iran’s Fars news agency cited a military source as saying yesterday that no new permits were being issued for ships to cross the strait until further notice.
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