A ceasefire is signed for Lebanon while the bombs keep falling

The clearest fact about the Middle East today is also the strangest: a ceasefire was announced for Lebanon, and the war went on anyway.

A truce on paper, a war in the air

Israel and Lebanon — two countries with no formal diplomatic relations — agreed in Washington to renew the ceasefire that collapsed earlier this year [1][3][5]. It was the fourth round of US-mediated talks since fighting flared on 2 March [1][4]. The deal would create “pilot zones” in south Lebanon where the Lebanese army takes sole control, pushing out Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group that has fought Israel from Lebanese soil [1][5][14].

There are two problems. Hezbollah wasn’t at the table, and a Hezbollah official said the group “will not accept a partial ceasefire” [1]. And within hours of the announcement, Israel’s military ordered the evacuation of all of southern Lebanon and said the war “hasn’t ended” [8]. Israeli strikes killed at least nine people in Lebanon the same day; Hezbollah fired rockets back [4].

The numbers underneath are large. At least 3,516 people have been killed in Lebanon since the war began, by the country’s health ministry count, which doesn’t separate fighters from civilians [4]. More than a million people — over an eighth of the country — are registered as displaced [4]. Israel says 26 of its soldiers and four civilians have died [4]. The war started when a US–Israeli strike killed Iran’s supreme leader in late February, and Hezbollah entered days later in retaliation [4][9].

The Gulf, still on fire

While diplomats talked in Washington, the Gulf flared again. An Iranian drone-and-missile attack hit Kuwait’s international airport, killing one person, injuring more than 60, and suspending flights before two airlines resumed them [7][15]. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards denied firing on the airport and blamed stray US interceptor missiles; the US military said that was false and the drones were aimed deliberately [15]. In response, US forces struck Iranian targets near the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow shipping lane that carries a fifth of the world’s oil [15].

That strait has now been largely closed for more than three months, and oil rose nearly 2% on the day’s fighting [15]. The closure is why Oman matters: the small Gulf state, a longtime US ally and traditional back-channel to Tehran, is resisting American pressure to cut ties with Iran [23]. Oman says it’s only negotiating a lawful, UN-supervised system to manage the strait — but it also condemned the Iranian attacks on Kuwait, and Trump last week threatened to bomb it [23]. The mediator is being squeezed from both sides.

”It could happen over the weekend”

Over all of this hangs the bigger prize: a deal to end the US–Iran war itself. President Trump said Iran has “already agreed they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon” and that talks were “going very well,” floating a deal “over the weekend” [9][11]. Tehran denied any progress [11].

The sticking point is Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium — material refined far past any civilian use. Trump insists “we will get” it removed from Iranian soil; Iran insists on its right to keep enriching [11]. And the two wars Trump wants to treat separately won’t separate cleanly: Iran’s foreign minister warned that an Israeli attack on Beirut would reignite the whole conflict [11]. Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, told Iranians the enemy had been “defeated on the battlefield” and was now trying to sow division at home [8] — the language of a government bracing for a long aftermath, not a surrender.

For anyone watching the oil price, the tell isn’t the talks — it’s the strait. Until Hormuz reopens, every “deal by the weekend” is words; the tankers moving again would be the fact.

Why a Gulf war is in your grocery bill

This is where the war stops being foreign news. The US Federal Reserve’s “Beige Book” — a plain-language survey of business conditions across the country — said this week that energy costs tied to the Middle East conflict were the primary driver of inflation, spilling into shipping, packaging, groceries, and fertiliser [10]. Higher oil doesn’t stay at the pump; it rides into the price of nearly everything that has to be moved or made.

That has split the Fed. Dallas Fed president Lorie Logan said she’s worried the central bank may need to raise interest rates this year to drag inflation back to its 2% target — unusual, because rate hikes are normally a tool against an overheating economy, not a war shock [13]. Higher rates make borrowing — mortgages, car loans, business debt — more expensive on purpose, to cool spending. Kevin Warsh, the new Fed chair, holds his first policy meeting in two weeks with this in his lap [10][13].

There’s a second pressure too. The Trump administration proposed tariffs of up to 12.5% on imports from China and 59 other economies, citing forced labour [26]. China called it “political manipulation”; a senior EU trade official called the claim “utterly absurd” [26]. Tariffs are taxes on imports, and they tend to push consumer prices the same direction oil just did — up.

Russia loses the ground, takes to the sky

Away from the Gulf, the shape of the Ukraine war is shifting. Russia’s spring-summer offensive has largely stalled: in May its forces gained just 14 square kilometres, the smallest monthly advance since October 2023, even as the number of assaults jumped 37.5%, according to open-source trackers cited by the Institute for the Study of War [6]. Unable to win on the ground, analysts say, Russia is escalating air raids on Ukrainian cities instead [6].

Ukraine, meanwhile, is reaching deep into Russia. Long-range drones hit oil-storage sites in St Petersburg and struck the Kronstadt naval base, setting a guided-missile corvette ablaze in dry dock — about 10 miles from where Putin is due to headline Russia’s flagship economic forum on Friday [25]. The message was aimed less at the front line than at the guests.

The story almost no one is telling

In the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, rebel attacks around the city of Beni have killed more than 30 people in a few days, with at least 10 massacred in raids on three villages overnight [20]. The Allied Democratic Forces, a militia linked to Islamic State, is blamed [20]. The attacks are crippling something fragile: the response to an Ebola outbreak that has already reached 344 cases and 60 deaths, with three infected patients reported to have fled clinics in the chaos [20].

It is the quiet pattern behind a lot of the world’s worst outbreaks — disease and armed conflict feeding each other, in places too dangerous for the people who could stop both. When the doctors can’t reach the sick, the virus travels on the violence’s schedule.