The United States and Iran are preparing for ceasefire talks.

While the ceasefire remained fragile on Friday, Iranian and American negotiators prepared for high-level talks, while Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire and Tehran maintained control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Several points of contention could still derail the truce, as well as negotiations aimed at reaching a broader agreement to definitively end the war.

The semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim, close to the Revolutionary Guards, stated that the talks scheduled for Saturday would not take place unless Israel ended its attacks in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump complained that Iran was doing a “very bad job” by not allowing the free movement of ships in the strait, through which 20% of the world’s commercial oil once passed.

In Kuwait, there was a drone attack on Thursday evening which was attributed to Iran and its allied militias in the region. Although the Iranian Revolutionary Guard denied launching any attack, they have previously conducted strikes across the Middle East without claiming responsibility.

Despite these clashes, preparations for talks between Iran and the United States in Pakistan seemed to be moving forward, with US Vice President J.D. Vance set to depart from Washington.

Negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, on the other hand, are expected to begin next week in Washington, according to a US official and a person familiar with the matter.

Direct Negotiations

Israel’s insistence on excluding Hezbollah from the truce with Iran threatened to derail the agreement.

On the day the ceasefire was announced, Israel bombed Beirut with airstrikes, killing over 300 people, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. It was the deadliest day in the country since the start of the war on February 28.

Donald Trump stated on Thursday that he had asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reduce the intensity of the strikes. On Friday, the Israeli army reported hitting around 10 launchers in Lebanon that had fired rockets towards northern Israel the previous day.

The President of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, warned on Thursday that continued Israeli attacks on Hezbollah would lead to “explicit costs and firm responses.”

Netanyahu, on the other hand, assured that negotiations with Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah and establish relations between the two neighboring countries, which have been technically at war since the creation of Israel in 1948, would begin “as soon as possible.”

By Friday afternoon, the Lebanese government had not yet reacted. Axios was the first to reveal the date and location of the talks.

Two days after intense Israeli bombings, residents were sifting through the rubble of their homes, trying to retrieve furniture and personal belongings they could find under the debris.

Some expressed gratitude for having only lost their homes and belongings, not their loved ones. “Nothing replaces family,” said 35-year-old Wissam Tabila. “Everything else can be replaced.”

Point of Friction

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran has caused oil prices to soar, stock markets to plummet, and has disrupted the global economy. Tehran’s control over this waterway has proven to be its greatest strategic advantage in this war.

The spot price of Brent, the international benchmark, stood at around $97 US dollars on Friday, up over 30% since the start of the war.

Prior to the conflict, over 100 ships passed through the strait every day, many of which transported oil to Asia. Since the ceasefire took effect, only 12 passages have been recorded.

Highlighting the fragile situation, a Mauritian-flagged tanker attempted to leave the Persian Gulf by following a route imposed by the Revolutionary Guards, but suddenly turned back on Friday, according to ship tracking data.

The CEO of the leading oil company in the United Arab Emirates, Sultan al-Jaber, stated that around 230 oil-laden ships were waiting to cross the strait and should be allowed “to sail through this corridor unconditionally.”

President Trump complained about this situation, writing on his social network that Iran was doing “a very bad job that some would call unworthy” by allowing oil passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

“This is not the agreement we made!” the American president wrote.

Fragile Ceasefire

Questions also remain about the fate of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs – issues that the United States and Israel sought to eliminate by entering the war.

The United States insists that Iran should never be able to manufacture nuclear weapons and aims to eliminate Tehran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, which could be used for their production. Iran claims its program is peaceful.

Donald Trump stated that the US would work with Iran to eliminate the uranium, although Tehran has not confirmed this information.

The head of the Iranian nuclear agency, Mohammad Eslami, declared on Thursday that TTehran’s right to enrich uranium was “necessary” for any ceasefire negotiation.

More than 3000 people have been killed in Iran since the start of the war, as reported by a senior Iranian medical official to the state-run Iran newspaper. The Iranian government has not released a definitive death toll.

In Lebanon, over 1888 people have been killed and 1 million displaced. More than a dozen people have died in the Gulf Arab states and in occupied West Bank, while 23 civilians have been killed in Israel. Thirteen American soldiers have also been killed.

___

Associated Press journalists Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong; Zeke Miller, Matthew Lee, and Will Weissert in Washington; Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; as well as Kareem Chehayeb and Hussein Malla in Beirut contributed to this dispatch.