[Source: Reuters]

Israel kept up strikes on southern Lebanon on ​Tuesday, pressing its campaign against Hezbollah a day after U.S. President Donald Trump asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Beirut to avert further escalation in the ‌three-month-old war.

Following Trump’s intervention, Lebanon’s government said Israel would refrain from carrying out threatened strikes on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, while the group would halt attacks against Israel.

But the announcement has failed to reassure many Lebanese or halt the broader war in south Lebanon, which Netanyahu has vowed would continue.

The din of an Israeli drone over Beirut kept residents on edge on Tuesday.

Lebanon’s government has said it would seek a full ceasefire in a new round of talks ​with Israeli officials in Washington that began Tuesday, the latest in a series of face-to-face meetings Beirut has attended despite Hezbollah objections.

Iran has demanded a Lebanon ceasefire as part of any ​wider deal with the U.S. to end the three-month-old war that began with U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran at the end of February.

More than 1.2 million people ​in Lebanon have been uprooted by the war, which began when Hezbollah fired on Israel in support of Tehran on March 2.
Israel pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as Dahiyeh, early in the war but has carried out only two ‌strikes there since ⁠Trump declared a Lebanon ceasefire in April.

Tensions spiked on Monday after Netanyahu said he ordered strikes on Dahiyeh. Iranian state media reported Tehran had stopped indirect talks with Washington due to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Iran’s military warned residents of northern Israel they should flee if Israel attacked Beirut.

In a post on X, Iran’s top negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said he told Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri that if Israel continued strikes on Lebanon, “we won’t just stop the negotiation track, but we will be in a direct confrontation with the enemy”.

A flurry of calls appeared to defuse the escalation: Trump said ​he asked Netanyahu not to conduct a major raid ​on Beirut and that Hezbollah, through intermediaries, ⁠had pledged not to attack Israel.

No U.S. president has ever spoken with Hezbollah, with or without intermediaries. Washington has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday that Lebanese officials had passed on messages on behalf of Hezbollah that ​the group would halt firing on Israel if Beirut was spared.