DIRECT. War in the Middle East: Donald Trump criticizes the vote "unpatriotic" in Congress aimed at ending the war against Iran

Mohsen Rezaï, military advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said in an interview with CNN that negotiations between the United States and Iran are slipping due to Washington’s refusal to release $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets.

He explains that Tehran is asking for the release of half of this sum upon signing an agreement with Washington, then the other half later, as a pledge of confidence on the part of Washington.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health announced that an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon left five dead, including a woman and a rescuer, deploring that “rescuers in operation are being targeted”.

“The Israeli enemy’s strike on the town of Zebdine, in the district of Nabatiyé, killed five people, including a woman and a rescuer from the Risala association, and injured two people, including a rescuer”, indicates a press release from the ministry, referring to an association affiliated with the Amal movement ally of Hezbollah.

The Lebanese President, Joseph Aoun, calls on Iran to no longer “intervene” in his country, in an interview with the CNN channel. “It’s not your country, it’s ours (…) You don’t have to intervene in our country,” he said to Tehran.

Joseph Aoun also assures Hezbollah, supported by Iran, that diplomacy is the only solution to the conflict with Israel. “Hezbollah must understand that there (is) no other solution than to sit down and talk, no other way (…) to save what is left except through negotiation and diplomacy.”

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun gave an interview to the American media CNN in which he said he was prepared to negotiate to end the conflict.

He believes that Benjamin Netanyahu and Hezbollah are waging “a futile war” which will never achieve the “desired result”.

Although he has not ruled out a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, which would be unprecedented, he affirms that it cannot take place before an agreement.

The Iranian army says it fired “warning missiles” against two American ships in the Arabian Sea, after skirmishes in the Gulf this week.

In a press release relayed by the government press agency Irna, it states that “the hostile destroyers DDG-103 and DDG-8 left the Sea of ​​Arabia to head towards the Indian Ocean (…) following firing of warning missiles”, on a date which is not specified.

For its part, the American army denies having been targeted by such shots.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam asks Iran to stop using his country as a “means of pressure” in negotiations.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem yesterday rejected the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon, demanding a total withdrawal of Israeli forces and threatening northern Israel with new attacks.

The drone attack on May 17 against the Barakah nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates “seriously compromised nuclear security,” said IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, adding that attacking a nuclear installation was “an absolute prohibition, a taboo.”

“This attack caused a fire in an electrical generator located outside the site, making it necessary to use emergency generators,” he explained at the opening of a special meeting of the board of governors at headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.

Lebanese justice has sentenced two opponents of Hezbollah in absentia to 15 years in prison each for having “encouraged” attacks by Israel against the pro-Iranian group, a judicial official told AFP.

This is the harshest sentence handed down against activists for alleged support of Israel in Lebanon, officially at war with its neighbor and where any contact with Israel can be punishable by imprisonment.

The military court condemned Joumana Gebara and Ahmed Yassine, both living outside Lebanon, for “collaboration with Israel and for inciting it to continue its military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon”, specifies this official.

The President of the Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri, an ally of pro-Iranian Hezbollah, raises for the first time the possibility that the movement will leave the south if Israel withdraws from Lebanon and a global truce is concluded.

“I accept the withdrawal of Hezbollah from the south of the Litani in parallel with the withdrawal of Israel”, as well as a “global and unconditional” ceasefire, said in a press release Nabih Berri, who plays the role of intermediary with Hezbollah.

The head of Iranian diplomacy Abbas Araghchi rules out any possibility of a meeting, suggested by Donald Trump, between the American president and Iranian supreme guide Mojtaba Khamenei, in a television interview broadcast yesterday.

The day before, Donald Trump had declared that he “would like to meet” Mojtaba Khamenei, in an interview with the New York Post website, at a time when talks between Tehran and Washington to put a lasting end to the war in the Middle East are stalling.

“I saw an article in which he suggested that he (Donald Trump) was ready for a meeting or that he wanted to organize a meeting,” Abbas Araghchi said in an interview on the Lebanese channel Al-Mayadeen.

“But I think we have to be realistic,” Araghchi added, ruling out the possibility.

Oil prices remain on a downward trend this morning, with the market retaining the renewed optimism the day before on negotiations between Tehran and Washington, despite production still at half mast in the Middle East.

Around 11:25 a.m. in Paris, the price of a barrel of Brent from the North Sea, for delivery in August, lost 0.76% to 94.31 dollars.

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As of June 2, more than 2,100 displaced people were registered in the two emergency shelters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA), announced the United Nations agency. This figure represents a “significant increase” compared to the 1,264 people recorded a few weeks ago.

Since UNRWA’s emergency response in Lebanon on March 4, the agency has provided more than 171,000 medical consultations in its health centers and more than 2,600 in its two shelters. But “the humanitarian situation in Lebanon remains fragile and unpredictable”, warns UNRWA.

The scenario of a record worsening of food insecurity in the world in the event of protracted conflict in the Middle East is beginning to materialize, warns the UN.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) warned in March, two weeks after the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran, that nearly 45 million more people could be hit by acute food insecurity. if the conflict does not end by June and if the price of oil remains above 100 dollars per barrel.

These people would add to the nearly 320 million who already suffer from acute food insecurity around the world.

The UN is doubling its appeal for donations for Lebanon, asking for nearly $640 million over six months, as the country is shaken by Israel’s war against Iran-backed Hezbollah.

“The humanitarian crisis in Lebanon is serious and deteriorating,” the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a revised emergency appeal.

The UN requested $308 million in March to support a vast emergency response led by the Lebanese government until the end of May. Today, it estimates that an additional $331.5 million would be needed until the end of August.

Only $185.9 million has been received to date from the initial appeal, specifies Ocha, adding that this amount helped around 680,000 people between March 2 and May 31.

The Israeli army announces that it has “eliminated” Abed Harb, a Hezbollah commander responsible, according to the IDF, for “numerous attacks” against Israeli soldiers.

“His unit was responsible for assembling explosives intended to injure IDF soldiers in South Lebanon,” specifies the Israeli army on X.

The Israeli army announced this morning that it is preparing to carry out strikes targeting, according to it, the Islamist movement Hezbollah in the coastal town of Sarafand, in southern Lebanon, despite the new ceasefire agreement announced by Washington.

Colonel Avichay Adraee, Arabic-speaking spokesperson for the Israeli army, once again calls on the population to evacuate this town between the cities of Tire and Saida.

“One can only understand by coming here, to the border in Galilee.” In the north of Israel, a research center is trying to measure the state of the threat from Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian militia, which engages in daily clashes with the Israeli army.

“When you come here and you talk to the people who live here and who fall asleep to the sounds of artillery, you understand better,” Abraham, a resident of Shtula in Israel, on the border with Lebanon, explains to BFMTV.

In recent years, the number of Hezbollah fighters has fallen from 50,000 to 10,000, according to the ALMA research center. For its founder, these figures justify the war waged by Israel against Hezbollah.

Israeli nighttime strikes on the city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon, killed seven people, Civil Defense said.

A strike near the Jabal Amel hospital left four dead and seven injured, slightly damaging the facility. Another attack killed three people and injured five others, including two children, according to this source.

The commander-in-chief of the Lebanese army, Joseph Aoun, met the United Nations coordinator in Lebanon, Imran Reza, as part of a new “urgent” appeal for humanitarian aid for populations affected by the war.

This aid will aim to “secure emergency aid for the displaced and affected people”, specifies the Lebanese presidency on X.

The Israeli army announces that it will target the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement in three locations in southern Lebanon and calls on the population of these villages north of the Litani River to evacuate.

The call to evacuate concerns the villages of Arqoun, Aarnaya, and Kfar Fila, about forty kilometers south of Beirut, according to the message published on social networks by Colonel Avichay Adraee, Arabic-speaking spokesperson for the Israeli army.

“Anyone found in the vicinity of Hezbollah members, its installations and its means of combat puts their life in danger!”, writes on X Avichay Adraee, Arabic-speaking spokesperson for the Israeli army.

Closed shops, deserted houses… in Tyre, all that remains is debris in the streets of this port city after the Israeli army’s strikes.

“Where you see the yellow cage, that’s my house, just below the sheet metal,” points out Hassan who has come to collect some things. “We can’t stay here, there’s no one left. At any time, the Israeli army could strike here without warning. The building we see here, completely destroyed, we didn’t expect the IDF to bomb it,” he explains to BFMTV.

Despite the ceasefire in force, Israel continues to intensely strike southern Lebanon. “Every time we talk about a ceasefire, nothing changes, we understand nothing,” breathes Mounia, a resident of Tyre.

President Vladimir Putin judged yesterday that the attention of the United States had turned away from the war in Ukraine since the start of the conflict launched by Washington against Iran.

“It is clear that the American administration is forced to shift its attention and deal with this issue before all others,” declared the Russian president to officials from international press agencies, including AFP, in Saint Petersburg (northwest).

Israeli strikes left eight dead and eight injured yesterday in eastern and southern Lebanon, the Health Ministry announced, the day after the announcement in Washington of a new ceasefire with Israel.

Five people were killed in a strike in the east of the country and three others near the city of Tyre, in the south, according to the ministry, which specifies that three children and three women are among the injured.

At the end of two days of talks in Washington, Israel and Lebanon agreed to implement a ceasefire.

The leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, rejected this agreement and demanded a total withdrawal of Israeli forces and threatened northern Israel with new attacks.

Naïm Qassem called on those in power to “stop the charade and humiliation of direct negotiations” with Israel. He stressed that there would be “no security” for northern Israel “without security for the villages” of southern Lebanon.

A peacekeeper was killed and two others injured in southern Lebanon where mortar fire hit their base, the UN peacekeeping force announced yesterday morning.

In a statement, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said the attack occurred late Wednesday evening. A security source told AFP that the shots had hit the UNIFIL base in Ibl al-Saqi.

While traveling in Montenegro, Emmanuel Macron assured that France supported the ceasefire in Lebanon.

“We support the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel and everything that allows us to restore peace, fight against terrorist activities and fully establish the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon,” declared the president.

France “stands ready to move forward on this path,” he added.

Hello and welcome to this broadcast devoted to the evolution of the war in the Middle East.

Donald Trump criticized yesterday the text ordering the withdrawal of American troops in the war against Iran, approved the day before by the deputies, suggesting that this “unpatriotic” initiative was disrupting negotiations with Tehran.

“Who would do something so unpatriotic. They know well where the negotiations are,” the American president wrote on his Truth Social network.

The resolution – adopted with the votes of four Republican deputies – however has a primarily symbolic significance, due to the American president’s right of veto.