A ceasefire only in name. That appears to be the deal on the table right now, with cracks slowly beginning to show.
President Donald Trump confirmed Thursday, in an interview with NBC News, that he asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pull back on Lebanon strikes during a phone call on Wednesday.
Assuring that the Israelis were “scaling back” operations, Trump told NBC News, “I spoke with Bibi and he’s going to low-key it. I just think we have to be sort of a little more low-key.”
Breaking 🚨
🇺🇸🇮🇱 TRUMP SAYS NETANYAHU TOLD HIM HE’D ‘LOW-KEY IT’ https://t.co/KnuK09FS9o pic.twitter.com/bOHYYlk3VS
— Aiden Reports (@AidenReports) April 9, 2026
However, while Trump was making that call, the bombs weren’t stopping. Just hours after the ceasefire began, Israel launched its largest wave of strikes on Lebanon since renewed fighting broke out on March 2: hitting more than 100 targets in 10 minutes, killing over 300 people, and wounding more than 1,100, according to a report by Foreign Policy. The attack in Beirut’s streets was hardly “low-key.”
Then came the diplomatic whiplash. Multiple diplomatic sources told CBS News that Trump had been told the ceasefire would apply to the Middle East region and he agreed that included Lebanon. Mediators believed the ceasefire to include Lebanon, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who brokered the deal, announced it did.
But all of that, apparently, changed after Netanyahu picked up the phone. The U.S. position shifted following a call between Netanyahu and Trump, leaving allies scrambling and Iran seething.
Iran didn’t hold back. Tehran termed the strikes a “grave violation” of the agreement, threatened “strong responses,” and insisted that Lebanon be included in any regional peace.
Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz continued to be a ghost town. Only a small number of ships dared to sail through because of the uncertainty surrounding the ceasefire, shipping company executives and analysts told CNN.
For his part, Netanyahu had a very different plan. He said on Wednesday: “I insisted that the temporary ceasefire with Iran not include Hezbollah, and we continue to strike them forcefully.”
⚡️Benjamin Netanyahu, contradicting President Trump who said today that Israel is “gonna low key a little bit” in Lebanon:
“There is no ceasefire in Lebanon. We continue to strike Hezbollah with full force, and we will not stop until.”
pic.twitter.com/vTvao3c4Z9 https://t.co/igssLpODR4
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) April 9, 2026
Netanyahu did announce that Israel would pursue direct negotiations with Lebanon with the aim of disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful relations, but Lebanon wasn’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat. Lebanese officials said Beirut had not received a formal invitation for talks, with one insisting there would be “no negotiations under fire.”
Back at the White House, the messaging was equally tangled. Netanyahu’s chief foreign policy adviser, Ophir Falk, refused to say Israel was scaling back its military operation in Lebanon, even as he insisted Trump and Netanyahu were in “complete agreement.” Agreement on what, exactly, remains anyone’s guess.
Whether Netanyahu reads that same memo remains to be seen. At present, the ceasefire looks less like a truce and more like a ticking clock.
