BERN (Realist English). US President’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is heading to Switzerland to resume technical talks with Iran, while the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah has again come under threat due to new strikes from both sides.
The talks, originally scheduled for Friday, were postponed due to the outbreak of violence in Lebanon, but now, after the restoration of the truce, diplomats are trying to get the process back on track.
Witkoff and Kushner in Switzerland
According to Axios, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is already en route to Switzerland, where the first round of talks with the Iranian delegation is expected to take place. Another US negotiator, Jared Kushner, had already arrived in the country earlier. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is expected to join them on Saturday.
The talks are part of the 60‑day period provided for by the memorandum of understanding signed on June 17 between the US and Iran. Their goal is to reach a long‑term nuclear agreement between Washington and Tehran. The technical talks were originally supposed to begin on Friday, but were cancelled amid the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah
On the afternoon of June 19, Israel and Hezbollah reached a ceasefire agreement, which came into force at 16:00 local time. The truce came in response to one of the deadliest days of confrontation in recent weeks: Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon killed at least 47 people, and 97 others were wounded. The Israeli side, for its part, reported the deaths of four of its soldiers in the fighting.
However, within the first hours after the ceasefire took effect, the agreement came under threat. According to Lebanese sources, in the first hour after the ceasefire was announced, Israel carried out about a dozen airstrikes on southern Lebanon.
The Israeli side said that overnight it had struck more than 80 Hezbollah targets in response to “repeated violations of the ceasefire regime” by the group. The IDF stressed that it would continue to “neutralise immediate threats and respond to Hezbollah’s violations.”
Interconnection of the two crises
The Lebanese escalation and the US‑Iran talks turned out to be closely linked. It was the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that caused the postponement of the talks between the US and Iran scheduled for Friday in Switzerland. Tehran, which backs Hezbollah, made it clear that any Israeli attacks on Lebanon are seen as a violation of the memorandum of understanding with the US.
The restoration of the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah opened the way for the resumption of the US‑Iran dialogue. However, the continued military tension on the Lebanese‑Israeli border continues to pose serious risks to the entire Middle East peace process.
