U.S.-Iran Latest: Peace deal efforts inch along, mired by Israel's fight with Hezbollah

U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner – the president's son-in-law – met Tuesday with Qatari mediators trying to broker a permanent peace deal with Iran, the Gulf state's foreign ministry spokesman said.

"Mr. Steve Witkoff and Mr. Jared Kushner are here in Doha to meet with mediators, with Qatari officials, and the talks will be around all regional issues," foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said.

The talks were expected to include discussions on Iran and Lebanon, the spokesman said, adding: "They are not here for their negotiations with the Iranians."

Both the U.S. and Iran had said they would send officials for meetings in Qatar to discuss the memorandum of understanding signed by President Trump and his Iranian counterpart. Mr. Trump first announced the meeting, claiming Iran had requested it in a social media post on Monday.

"To the best of my knowledge, there are no direct meetings scheduled between the two parties in the coming days," Al Ansari said Tuesday. 

He added that an Iranian "technical delegation travels to and from Doha based on the progress of negotiations," and "there is currently no high-level delegation present."

Qatar initially refused to mediate after Tehran launched unprecedented aerial attacks on Gulf states in retaliation for the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes launched on Feb. 28, but the Gulf emirate has played an active role in negotiations in recent weeks after an initial April ceasefire was brokered by Pakistan.

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An agreement signed four days ago between the Israeli and Lebanese governments, which links Israel pulling its forces out of southern Lebanon with Hezbollah being disarmed, could effectively keep Israeli troops in the neighboring nation indefinitely, analysts say, and that could make a final peace deal between the U.S. and Iran harder to achieve.

Hezbollah has thus far refused to lay down its weapons, and the Lebanese government has proven unable to make the well-armed Iranian-backed group do so. 

"This is ‌not an agreement, it is an imposed settlement," a senior Lebanese politician, who declined to be named, told the Reuters news agency. The lawmaker was quoted as saying Lebanon's army is simply incapable of forcing Hezbollah to disarm. 

"This agreement has put all the burden on Lebanon," Michael Young, a Beirut-based analyst, told Reuters. It "creates a structure that allows the Israelis to remain [in southern Lebanon] indefinitely."

Fawaz Gerges, a Lebanese scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said the deal was "born dead." 

Gerges told Reuters the agreement was a "gift" to Israel as it could effectively give Israeli officials a pretext to further consolidate and even extend the occupied "security zone" that extends six miles into southern Lebanon.

The deal "won't lead us anywhere except ‌to civil conflict, and ⁠maybe an insurrection by the Shiite [Muslim] community," said Young.

Regional analyst and former Israeli military intelligence officer Danny Citrinowicz told Reuters the dismantling of Hezbollah is "something that would ‌never happen," ⁠and the deal ultimately legitimizes an indefinite Israeli military presence in Lebanon.

He said any Israeli prime minister is unlikely to halt the fight against Hezbollah while the group still poses a threat, so "nothing will happen. Israel won't withdraw, and Hezbollah won't dismantle."

Iran and Hezbollah have both insisted repeatedly that Israel must withdraw its forces from Lebanon as part of any full peace deal between Washington and Tehran.

Attackers shot dead two members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards at their home in the western city of Paveh, near the border with Iraq's Kurdistan region, state media reported Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the shooting but Tehran has frequently blamed Kurdish separatist groups in the area for previous violence, accusing them of links to the United States and Israel.

The two IRGC members were killed in "a terrorist and cowardly act," state television said, while two other Guards members were wounded.

State television said "exact details of this incident and the measures being taken to identify those responsible are under review."

Separately, "a family's vehicle was sprayed with bullets" on Monday in the southeastern town of Saravan in Sistan-Baluchistan province, killing the father and wounding the mother, state television reported.

The woman later died of her wounds.

Authorities did not immediately identify those responsible or provide further details about the victims.

But state television said the attack "was carried out by Zionist-American mercenaries," a term Iranian officials commonly use for separatist and militant groups.

Sistan-Baluchistan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, has long seen clashes between security forces, insurgents and drug smugglers.

One of Iran's poorest provinces, it is home to a sizable ethnic Baloch population, most of whom are Sunni Muslims in a Shiite-majority nation.

AFP

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, expressed doubt on CBS News' "The Takeout" that ships would return to moving through the Strait of Hormuz as freely as they were before the war.

"Whether it's the horse has left the barn or the genie's out of the bottle or I don't know what other cliche you could use, we are not going back to Feb. 27, where the straits were free and unfettered," Miller said, referring to the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another key waterway.

"Iran has their hands all over them," Miller said, "and they're going to seek remuneration to use those straits, weaponizing geography, basically as leverage."

The Iran war has cost Americans roughly $1,000 per household in higher fuel, food and other expenses since the start of the conflict in February, according to an estimate shared last week by Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.

Zandi's analysis comes as government data shows inflation in May hit its highest level in three years, and with the U.S. and Iran yet to broker a lasting peace deal.

Read more here.

President Trump said U.S. officials' planned efforts in Qatar this week would be "perhaps important, perhaps not" after Iran denied that its negotiators would be meeting with Americans in the Middle East.

"The meeting in Doha is going to be perhaps important, perhaps not," Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, referring to Qatar's capital. "We're going to find out."

Iran on Monday said a delegation of experts would travel to Qatar's capital of Doha this week for discussions on the implementation of the memorandum of understanding with the U.S., but no meetings would be happening between the two countries.

"An expert delegation from the Islamic Republic of Iran will travel to Doha later this week" to discuss the implementation of clauses of the memorandum, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said.

"We have not yet entered the stage of negotiating a final agreement," he said, noting that "over the coming days, we will not have any negotiation meetings with the U.S. side at any level."

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