Lebanon and Israel are holding first direct talks in decades.

Israel agreed to the 10-day pause in attacks against Lebanon but has refused to withdraw its troops from the south.

The ceasefire was announced after officials met in person in Washington, DC – the first direct talks since 1993.

Now, there is hope for an agreement to end Israel’s invasion and air strikes.

The Iran-aligned armed group Hezbollah remains the main stumbling block.

Israel says any deal must include the dismantling of the group, while Hezbollah says it will not lay down its weapons.

So, is a lasting peace agreement possible?

And how much influence does Iran have in Lebanon?

Joe Macaron – Middle East geopolitical analyst

Yossi Mekelberg – Senior consulting fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House

Rami Khouri – Distinguished fellow at the American University of Beirut

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Top Foreign Office official takes fall for fiasco and resigns; Starmer promises to deliver ‘relevant facts’ on Monday.

Keir Starmer says he is “absolutely furious” that he was not informed that Peter Mandelson failed his security vetting before being appointed UK envoy to Washington, as the United Kingdom prime minister faced renewed calls to resign over the affair.

Starmer on Friday maintained that he was kept in the dark about the Foreign Office’s decision to overrule the recommendation of security officials not to give the job to the Labour Party grandee, who was fired in September over his links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Starmer, who has asserted he knew nothing about the vetting outcome, said that the Foreign Office’s failure to inform him, as prime minister, was “staggering” and “unforgivable”, pledging to “set out all the relevant facts in true transparency” to Parliament on Monday.

The beleaguered prime minister said he only found out about the botched process on Tuesday, just before the revelations were published by The Guardian on Thursday, with top Foreign Office civil servant Olly Robbins ousted on the same day.

Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, said Friday that “the recommendation was to not appoint Peter Mandelson to the role,” and that the Foreign Office ignored it. He said that was “astonishing”, but within the rules.

He said no government minister had been told of the security assessment, carried out by a department known as UK Security Vetting. People familiar with the process told The Associated Press that is standard practice because of the sensitive personal information involved, including “financial, personal, sexual, religious and other types of background information”.

Opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said claims the prime minister didn’t know were “completely preposterous”. “This story does not stack up. The prime minister is taking us for fools,” she told the BBC. “All roads lead to a resignation.”

Starmer has repeatedly insisted that “due process” was followed in the appointment, which was announced in December 2024, with Mandelson taking up the post in February, 2025.

He was sacked just seven months later, after documents released by a US Congressional committee revealed new details about the depth of his ties to Epstein.

Police have opened a probe into allegations of misconduct in office by Mandelson, who was arrested and bailed in February. Investigators are looking at allegations he leaked sensitive documents to Epstein when he was a government minister, including during the 2008 financial crash.

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President Joseph Aoun promised to work to preserve Lebanon’s sovereignty and freedom.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has said that the country would no longer be an “arena for anyone’s wars”, and that the ceasefire with Israel should lead to work on permanent agreements.

In a televised address to the Lebanese public on Friday, he said that Lebanon was no longer “a pawn in anyone’s game, nor an arena for anyone’s wars, and we never will be again”.

His speech comes a day after a 10-day ceasefire was announced between Lebanon and Israel, bringing respite from Israeli attacks that began on March 2, after Hezbollah fired at Israel, and have left more than 2,200 dead and more than a million displaced.

Aoun said that they were entering a phase of “transition from working on a ceasefire to working on permanent agreements that preserve the rights of our people, the unity of our land, and the sovereignty of our nation.”

He expressed gratitude to those who he said helped end the hostilities, naming United States President Donald Trump and “all our Arab brothers, foremost among them the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”.

Aoun promised that any agreement reached would not infringe on the country’s rights or relinquish any of its land, and that the negotiations were not a weakness or a concession.

The ceasefire was announced days after Lebanon and Israel held their first direct talks in decades in Washington, which prompted criticism from the Lebanese population.

“Our objective is clear and declared: to stop Israeli aggression against our land and our people, to obtain Israeli withdrawal, to extend state authority over all its land by its own forces, to ensure the return of prisoners, and to enable our families to return to their homes and villages, in safety, freedom and dignity,” the president said.

Israel continues to occupy areas of southern Lebanon despite the truce, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying troops would not withdraw during the ceasefire.

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