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A ceasefire that was supposed to bring clarity has instead produced an immediate and pointed disagreement between two of its key players — with Pakistan insisting Lebanon is covered and Israel insisting it is not.
A fisherman stands in his boat, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran continues, at a port in Tyre, Lebanon, April 7, 2026. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi(REUTERS)Iran Ceaefire: Within hours of the US-Iran ceasefire being announced, a significant fault line had opened up - not between Washington DC and Tehran, but between Islamabad and Jerusalem. Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif declared the ceasefire agreement covered all fronts, explicitly including Lebanon. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the opposite, and said so without ambiguity.
The discrepancy matters enormously. Lebanon has been ravaged by an Israeli offensive that has killed at least 1,500 people and displaced 1.2 million others.
What Pakistan Said: 'Ceasefire Everywhere, Including Lebanon'
Sharif was unequivocal in his announcement, framing it as a comprehensive halt to hostilities across every front on which the conflict had spread.
"I am pleased to announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY," Sharif posted on X.
The Pakistani prime minister had played a central role in brokering the deal, personally urging Trump in the hours before his strike deadline to extend his timeline and allow diplomacy room to breathe. He had also asked Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz for two weeks. That both requests were granted lent Islamabad considerable credibility — and made Sharif's reading of the agreement's scope all the more significant.
What Israel Said: Lebanon Is Not Included
Netanyahu's office offered a sharply different account. Israel, it said, supports Trump's decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks — but the ceasefire does not extend to Lebanon.
The premier's office stated that Israel backed the US move provided Tehran immediately opened the strait and ceased attacks against the US, Israel and countries across the region. It added that Israel also supported US efforts to ensure Iran no longer posed a nuclear, missile or "terror" threat to the US, Israel and Iran's Arab neighbours — and that Washington had told Israel it remained committed to achieving their shared goals in the upcoming negotiations.
Crucially, Netanyahu's office made no mention of Lebanon being part of any pause, directly contradicting the framework Sharif had outlined.
How Lebanon Was Pulled Into the War
Lebanon's involvement in the conflict was not of its own choosing. When Iran was attacked by Israel and the US, Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group operating in Lebanon's south, fired rockets at Israel two days later in a show of solidarity with Tehran.
Israel responded with a renewed ground and air offensive that has since inflicted devastating casualties on Lebanese territory.
The Israeli offensive has now killed at least 1,500 people and forced 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes. For many in Beirut and beyond, the question of whether this ceasefire covers Lebanon is not an abstract diplomatic dispute.
What Washington Has Said — and What Remains Unclear
Two White House officials confirmed earlier that Israel had agreed to the two-week ceasefire and to suspend its bombing campaign on Iran. Neither official directly addressed the Lebanon question with the same clarity that Sharif did — leaving open a gap in the official record that both Islamabad and Jerusalem have now stepped into with contradictory accounts.
Iran, for its part, confirmed that negotiations with the US would begin on Friday, 10 April, in Islamabad. The talks are expected to address the broader framework for ending the conflict, though the status of Lebanon's inclusion remains, for now, unresolved.
About the Author
Sayantani Biswas
Sayantani Biswas is an assistant editor at Livemint with seven years of experience covering geopolitics, foreign policy, international relations and global power dynamics. She reports on Indian and international politics, including elections worldwide, and specialises in historically grounded analysis of contemporary conflicts and state decisions. She joined Mint in 2021, after covering politics at publications including The Telegraph. <br> She holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University (2019), with a specialisation in postcolonial Latin American literature. Her research examined economic nationalism through Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. She also writes on political language, cultural memory and the long shadows of conflict. <br> Biswas grew up in Durgapur, an industrial town in West Bengal shaped by migration, which drew families from across India to the Durgapur Steel Plant. As the only child in a joint family, she spent years listening—almost obsessively—to her grandparents’ testimonies of struggle, fear and loss as they fled Bangladesh during the Partition of 1947. This formative exposure to lived historical memory later converged with her training in Comparative Literature, equipping her to analyse socio-economic structures and their reverberations. <br> Outside the newsroom, she gravitates towards cultural history and critical theory, returning often to texts such as Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As a journalist, she is committed to accuracy, intellectual rigour and fairness, and believes political reporting demands not only clarity and speed, but historical depth, contextual precision, and a disciplined resistance to spectacle.
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