an “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts”<\/a>. <\/p>\nAs part of the MoU, Iran had agreed to use its “best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days”.<\/p>\n
But the ceasefire agreed less than two weeks ago has been under threat in recent days because of renewed attacks by both sides.<\/p>\n
Strikes kicked off once more on Thursday after an Iranian projectile hit a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz. <\/p>\n
Over the weekend, the US retaliated with a series of strikes on Iran, hitting multiple targets in what US Central Command (Centcom) called a direct response to the “continued aggression” against commercial shipping. <\/p>\n
On Saturday, Iran responded with strikes on US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. The US has said none of these attacks reached their targets, and there were no casualties or damage.<\/p>\n
The Strait of Hormuz is a key waterway for oil and gas shipments, and was effectively closed by Tehran after the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran at the end of February.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the US also mediated the signing of a framework agreement between Israel and Lebanon aimed at paving the way to a lasting peace.<\/p>\n
Due to ongoing fighting between Israeli forces and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, that ceasefire also looked shaky.<\/p>\n
The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group has rejected the agreement and accused the Beirut government of undermining Lebanon’s sovereignty.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, two days after the agreement was signed, the Israeli army said it had struck a 200-metre-long tunnel used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, which it said contained hundreds of weapons.<\/p>\n
The US was informed ahead of the attack, according to a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz.<\/p>\n
Tehran says hostilities in Lebanon must stop for a wider ceasefire deal to stick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US and Iran have agreed to “stand down” following an exchange of strikes over the past few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-663829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}