Israel Halts Operation Against Hezbollah Amid Iranian Pressure, Vance Hails ‘Great Progress’ in Talks
Prime Minister Netanyahu: “The IDF has no restrictions” against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In the wake of Iranian pressure during Swiss diplomatic talks with the U.S., Israel on Sunday paused a major military offensive against Hezbollah’s main tunnel complex in southern Lebanon.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) halted its offensive aimed at clearing a vast underground network near the Crusader-era fortress of Beaufort, amid reports that hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists had been cornered in the terror tunnel complex built to invade northern Israel. The New York Times observed that “The fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah appeared to ease on Sunday, a day after the Israeli government directed the military to restrict itself to defensive actions only in Lebanon.”
With the IDF facing Hezbollah with its hands tied, Vice President JD Vance, who is leading negotiations with Iran, hailed “great progress” in the talks. Vance touted Iran’s decision to readmit United Nations nuclear inspectors, calling it a “major milestone.”
“The Iranians have agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country,” he told reporters on Monday. It is worth noting that Iranians have spent years deceiving and blindsiding these very UN inspectors.
“Yesterday was a very, very good day. We made a lot of good progress,” says @VP on the four big accomplishments negotiated yesterday in Switzerland.
“The Iranians have agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country. That is a major milestone for the American people and… pic.twitter.com/bljnaW74xg
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 22, 2026
CNBC News reported the vice president’s upbeat remarks:
Talks between the U.S. and Iran have made “great progress” despite “threatening” and “whining,” U.S Vice President JD Vance has said.
Speaking on Monday, Vance said the talks in Bürgenstock, Switzerland, were continuing and Tehran had agreed to permit International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors back into Iran. The talks were strained over the weekend when Iran announced it had closed the Strait of Hormuz over Israeli strikes on Lebanon, saying these violated the ceasefire.
“Yes, there was a little bit of threatening, there was a little bit of whining, but at the end of the day, the talks continued, and we made great progress,” Vance told reporters.
Vice President JD Vance:
“We love Pakistan! Thank you!” pic.twitter.com/hNZ05raXUL
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 21, 2026
Lebanon: Iran using talks with Vance to win back what it lost in the battle
From the nuclear weapons program to Hezbollah’s hold over Lebanon, Iran is using these negotiations to seize what it failed to win in the war.
As part of the ongoing U.S.-Iran talks, a new “conflict resolution mechanism” has been unveiled by Iranian allies Pakistan and Qatar. This mechanism seeks to give Iran a direct role in Lebanese affairs. Israel, directly threatened by Lebanon-based Hezbollah terrorists, has been kept out of the arrangement. According to Israel’s Ynetnews, “Iran says it will help supervise implementation in Lebanon while Israel is not listed as a direct member.”
The scheme has been devised to restrict Israeli military response to future Hezbollah’s aggressions, The Times of Israel notes:
A new deconfliction mechanism for Lebanon established as part of the weekend negotiations between the US and Iran in Switzerland would exclude Israel and limit Israeli military action to only responding to “imminent threats,” rather than to the broader category of “emerging threats,” Channel 12 reports, without citing sources.
Responding to the news, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected any outside ‘restrictions’ on IDF troops facing Hezbollah terrorists in the north. “IDF troops in southern Lebanon have full freedom of operation to engage any direct or emerging threat to them or to the residents of northern Israel,” he said on Monday. “The IDF has no restrictions in this regard.”
Israeli PM Netanyahu, after the announcement of the Lebanon "Deconfliction cell":
IDF troops in southern Lebanon have full freedom of operation to engage any direct or emerging threat to them or to the residents of northern Israel. The IDF has no restrictions in this regard. pic.twitter.com/hbwYg3KkOx
— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) June 22, 2026
IDF chief: “We are paying a heavy price in defending our home”
According to IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, peace can’t return to northern Israel as long as Hezbollah remains entrenched in terror tunnels along the border. “We continue to fight. Our objective remains clear—defending the communities in northern Israel and Israeli civilians,” he assured on Sunday. “This is the purpose guiding all of our efforts; the operations in the Ali al-Taher and Beaufort areas are also intended to serve this goal.”
“We are paying a heavy price in defending our home,” Lt. Gen. Zamir said. With Iran pledging to rebuild Hezbollah using billions in unfrozen U.S. assets, the IDF chief doubted that the ceasefire would last. “The ceasefire that has been declared is fragile,” he concluded.
200 meters of Hezbollah terror infrastructure buried more than 25 meters underground.
Built with Iranian support, this underground complex housed hundreds of lethal weapons, four missile launch shafts aimed at Israel, 12 military operational rooms, living quarters for… pic.twitter.com/lWD5MFsbkg
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) June 22, 2026
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Comments
I am die hard, conservative, republican, maga.
I am sorry to say the President Trump is losing me over this Iran war peace deal.
Iran now gets a veto over Israeli self defense actions.
Iran has gained new power it never had before after being trounced in battle.
“the oil must flow”
Trump and Vance lost me the minute the terms of the MOU were made public and they turned out to be worse that Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That is all.
eot
The U.S. delegation meekly and stupidly acceded to Iran’s utterly ridiculous, brazen and obnoxious demand to tie the belligerent actions of its terrorist proxy, Hezb’allah, in Lebanon, to this wretched “deal” — Lebanon is not Iranian territory.
The Iranian regime’s goal is clearly to further vilify Israel and to allow Hezb’allah maximum breathing room and operational flexibility to attack Israel and Israelis, with non-reprisals, or, meeker reprisals, received from the IDF. And, if the IDF does fairly respond to these incessant attacks — as it has every right to do — Iran can farcically blame Israel for derailing “peace” and the MOU, as Vance, and, to a slightly lesser extent, #47, are already lamentably doing, with the latter now criticizing and micromanaging the scale of the IDF’s reprisal attacks, as allegedly being excessive in scope and force.
And, Vance and U.S. delegation fell hook, line and sinker for this transparent, greasy and wicked ploy by the Iranian regime, to exploit and amplify global hatred of Israel by leftists, Labour and Dhimmi-crats.
Iran and its Islamofascist/Muslim terrorist allies/proxies are the heirs to the German National Socialists’ genocidal aims and genocidal projects. Israel and Israeli Jews don’t have the luxury of construing this reality and reacting to it, in any other way. And, until western powers, including the U.S., understand that “Submission” and its most fanatical and devout adherents are the problem — not just Israel’s problem in the middle east, but, the free world at-large’s problem — Islamofascists/Muslim terrorists and terrorist regimes will have the upper hand, tactically and diplomatically.
“hailed “great progress” in the talks.” More like a great pile of garbage. IDF should ignore these ‘talks’ and press on.
Guess Trump and Vance haven’t yet learned the lessons they need to learn. One of which is never negotiate with terrorists. And the other is definitely never negotiate with Arab moslem terrorists. Doing so will always end up poorly for the non-moslem side. They will stab their enemy in the back the first chance they get. The blood of any resulting dead Israelis is on Trump’s hands. It’s on Vance’s hands. That is all.
eot
This is a disaster. And the admin either doesn’t care or is too dumb to see it. Some of Vance’s comments are giving me serious cause for concern about his judgement.
Ok, enough with the concern trolling here.
Repeat after me: We have a midterm election to win.
Everything else (including grinding the mad mullahs of Tehran into a fine powder) is secondary to that.
Everything.
So please take this reporting from the always honest, always objective, always patriotic media with enough salt to suck all the water from your cells. They hate Trump and wouldn’t say a kind word about him if they had a jihadists blade to their throat.
Be patient…
Trump is not afraid of the Iranians. He’s afraid of the Democrats and their voters, and it’s not an irrational fear.
Sadly Democrats have aligned themselves with the enemies of America so right now maintaining control of Congress and the Senate IS the priority.
We love Pakistan? the same Pakistan that harbored Bin Laden all those years and turned over the steathy copter that crashed to China.No. No we don’t love Pakistan. We despise Pakistan.
Well it makes sense to sent Vance on this worthless trip. As a VP he doesn’t have much else to do. Now if they were sending someone busy and important like Rubio I’d be worried.
From Israel’s perspective at least they have confirmed the existence of this complex. They can destroy it at any time. Hell they should booby trap the whole thing now before they leave. Maybe leave a box of pagers as a gift.
There are no more bad people in Pakistan. They all went to the UK.
It would appear we not only snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, but this will be taught for eternity as the definition of no willpower.
Whatever else will be said about Trump’s second administration it will be said under President Taco.
Losing foreign wars absolutely when easily crushing the enemy in the field simply because you lack the willpower to just go through despite the fact that you may someday be called a neo-con is a new in foreign policy.
Just remember we are not Israel we could afford to lose wars, and we will still be a global hegemonic super power.
There is one reason and one reason only to enter a war and that is victory. What we have achieved is Iranian dominance.
If. U.S.S. Lincoln had been sunk and every attack on Iran easily shot down the terms would be identical.
Does this mean the IDF is going to leave all those poor terrorists trapped in the tunnels to starve to death?
You’re on a roll today, Good job!
Vance has a great personal story, but he seems in over his head with this stuff.
Great progress? It seems the people he’s negotiating with have no actual say in what’s happening on the ground in Iran.
The larger error of the Trump Admin was the initial extension of the ceasefire this Spring. Once that occurred the window the USA had to conduct large scale strikes was very compressed. Then the Trump Admin extended again despite threats of ‘civilization ending’ attacks on infrastructure to compel the ‘unconditional surrender’ of the Iranian regime which Trump had touted as the new, replacement objective overriding those initially declared.
That led to a series of problems we didn’t have in April:
1. The USA/world economy burned through the ‘slack’ in our oil supply system from April to late June.
2. No slack means a sustained campaign of destruction and death in Iran would send oil much higher; $150 barrel to start and climbing with rationing/70s style gas lines very possible.
3. Stock market tanking from oil shock of $150 barrel oil. Gold increasing and US Treasury instruments potential to fall in value on long end/short to rise then stabilize as investors recalibrate. US National debt cost for interest rising, crowding out other spending priorities b/c about 35% to 40% of our outstanding debt is now short-term and more sensitive to shift term swings.
4. Midterm Elections
5. The daily reports on ‘death and destruction’ from Iran. Lots of folks are very ‘pro bombing’ in the abstract or theoretical sense but shrink from the impact and lose their willingness to support the process to the necessary conclusion; drop bombs until they surrender and don’t stop until they do.
In sum the Iranian Regime was able to maneuver the Trump Admin into a short term reprieve. This MOU is, IMO, not gonna hold. The Iranian regime is gonna violate it and not in minor ways. The Trump Admin is smart enough to understand the reality of the timing. This way they get the positive PR of being willing (too much IMO) to try for peace while we simultaneously use the Strategic pause to from now till Nov to build up domestic oil supply. After the Midterms the Trump Admin will be able to prosecute the bombing campaign to its conclusion assuming that the President chooses to do so. Either way this decision, like every major decision of the Trump Admin, is gonna be decided by Trump himself.
Such a disappointment, this war with Iran
We had them by the cajoles and let them slip away
Waste of time, money American human loss, standing in the world
Trump offend sounds absolutely out of his mind when speaking of this Iranian war
It hasn’t gone as he felt it should but in actuality, it never could without boots on the ground and an uprising that never appeared.
The focus needs to be on eradicating Hezbollah.
Get the Lebanese government to work with Israel on exterminating every last Hezbollah Terrorist and this issue will be resolved.
Israel can then leave Lebanon.
Lebanon gets ALL of its territory back – both the land currently occupied by Israel and the land controlled by Hezbollah.
No point forcing Israel out if you’re going to let Hezbollah remain. They’ll just keep attacking Israel and then Israel will invade again.
But, all Trump/Vance care about right now is getting their deal with Iran signed. So, we end up going backwards on Hezbollah.
Great!
Seriously. If Israel has the rats surrounded and cut off from resupply, it can starve them out without losing a man.
Then they can send in “Palestinian” workers to clean up the resulting mess. I hope Hezbollah didn’t booby trap anything. If it did, that’s too bad.
If Taiwan survives at all it will be entirely because of Chinese military corruption matching what Russia had resulting in a better deterrence than the United States.
The more I learn the less I understand why we went to war in order to provide an unconditional surrender to Iran on all demands.
The terms would imply to an alien observer that U.S.S. Lincoln is at the bottom of the Ocean.