Trump says Israel shouldn’t have attacked Beirut as US-Iran deal ‘very close’

Former US President Barack Obama said a new agreement with Iran was unlikely to improve significantly on the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.

“It is doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place, which had worked for a long stretch of time before the United States pulled out,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News.

“I’m hopeful that bombing stops and ordinary people are no longer suffering as a consequence of the war,” he added.

Obama said the crisis showed the limits of using force to resolve foreign policy problems.

“The notion that we can just bully our way or bomb our way to solutions may sometimes seem appealing,” Obama said, adding that diplomacy could produce deals “that don’t solve 100% of the problem but solve 80, 90% of the problem” while avoiding war.

Iran was conveying its message to the United States through Qatari mediators in Tehran before Israel’s attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday, IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency reported, citing a source close to the negotiations.

The source was quoting as saying that nothing had yet been finalized in the Iran-US talks.

“Even if all of Iran’s views are incorporated (into the US-Iran memorandum of understanding), no agreement will be signed at the time announced by Donald Trump,” the source added.

The Israeli military said it was preparing for the possibility of fire toward Israel in the coming hours following its strike in Beirut.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Chief of the General Staff Eyal Zamir was conducting ongoing situation assessments with relevant commanders.

“The IDF continues to maintain readiness and vigilance for a range of scenarios in defense and offense,” the military said in a statement.

“The IDF will not tolerate fire toward the territory of the State of Israel,” the military said.

Hezbollah commander Ali al-Hajj was killed in Israel’s airstrike on Dahieh in Beirut on Sunday, Al Arabiya reported.

Al Arabiya also reported that the Israeli military carried out three airstrikes on the town of Sajd in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli military earlier said it targeted a Hezbollah headquarters in Dahieh in Beirut in response to the Iran-backed group launching three drones toward northern Israel.

Iranian government spokesperson said on Sunday that those attacking the country’s negotiators were in effect attacking a national decision, not a person or political faction.

Fatemeh Mohajerani said diplomacy was not opposed to the battlefield but a continuation of it, adding that negotiating from a position of strength meant turning national power into tangible benefits for the public.

The spokesperson warned that any voice creating division would weaken Iran’s hand at the negotiating table and signal weakness to the other side.