Trump Threatens Iran with New Strikes Amid Ongoing Swiss Peace Talks on Middle‑East War

By Nkiruka Nnorom with agency report

United States President Donald Trump issued a new threat to Iran yesterday, warning that the U.S. would resume military action if Tehran failed to curb the activities of its proxies in Lebanon.

Read Also: Keir Starmer may announce exit as prime minister today

The warning came as Vice President Mike Pence met with Iranian officials for the first time under an interim peace framework, at a time when Tehran had announced the re‑closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The meeting took place at the Qatari‑owned mountaintop resort of Buergenstock in Switzerland and was the first to be held under the terms of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed a week earlier.

The MoU calls for the reopening of the strait and a cessation of all hostilities, including those in Lebanon, which the U.S. ally Israel invaded in March.

Iran, arguing that Washington had not fulfilled its pledge to halt fighting in Lebanon, said it had shut the strait again and that the Swiss talks would not address substantive issues such as Iran’s nuclear program.

“Iran must immediately stop its highly paid proxies in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!” Trump said, apparently referring to Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

Fox News reported that Trump had gone further in an interview, saying he had told Iranian officials that if they closed the strait “you won’t have a country,” and threatening to take control of the waterway.

During the Swiss talks, where U.S. and Iranian officials met in the presence of Qatari mediators, Pence downplayed the impact of violence in Lebanon, saying progress had been made toward ending hostilities there.

“These things are always a little bit messy,” he said.

Even as Trump threatened Iran, Pence told reporters that the U.S. president had “asked us to turn over a new leaf to transform our relationship with the people of Iran.”

Despite the announcement of a new ceasefire in Lebanon on Friday, fighting had not ended.

Iran said on Saturday that it had again shut the Strait, a closure that had lasted nearly four months and caused the biggest disruption of global energy supplies in history.

Iran’s Fars news agency cited a military source saying that no new permits were being issued for ships to cross the strait until further notice.

The post Middle-East war: Trump threatens Iran with fresh strikes amid ongoing peace talks in Switzerland appeared first on Vanguard News.