US President Donald Trump has renewed his warning of possible military action against Iran if negotiations fail, while saying he still prefers a diplomatic agreement.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said, “We’re either going to make a deal, or we’re going to finish the job. It won’t be tough to finish the job.”
He added that his preference is to reach a deal but claimed the United States could swiftly target Iran’s bridges and energy infrastructure if necessary.
“We can knock out their electricity and power-generating plants… in the small part of an afternoon,” Trump said.
Four people, including a school principal, were killed in an Israeli strike on a vehicle in southern Lebanon on Monday, Lebanon’s health ministry said, in one of the deadliest attacks in weeks.
The attack tests a ceasefire announced last month that has sharply reduced violence in southern Lebanon, the main arena for conflict between Iran-aligned Hezbollah and Israel, but not eliminated it entirely.
The Israeli military said it had struck a vehicle carrying four people it said were approaching what it calls a “security zone” in southern Lebanon and posing a threat to its forces.
The health ministry identified the victims as school principal Esperanza Ghandour, her mother, a female domestic worker and a male foreign labourer.
Ghandour had been checking on repairs at her war-damaged home in Nabatieh and was on her way back when the vehicle was struck, a local source and Lebanon’s state news agency said.
At Najdeh Hospital in Nabatieh, a health official told Reuters by phone that staff heard the strike before the victims arrived. “We heard the explosion and saw the smoke rising,” the official said. The strike took place in an area that local residents had considered safe from attack, he added.
He added that attacks by Israeli drones have continued since the ceasefire but not as regularly as before.
Israel has established what it describes as a security zone extending about 10 km (6 miles) into southern Lebanon along the border, saying it is needed to protect northern Israeli communities from attacks by Hezbollah.
Israeli forces remain deployed in parts of the zone despite the ceasefire, while Lebanon says the Israeli presence violates its sovereignty.
For residents of Nabatieh and surrounding towns, the attack shattered what little sense of security had returned under the ceasefire.
Ali Safa, 32, said his family had been back and forth, forced to flee the south several times since a truce was announced in late June.
“It brought the fear back all over again,” Safa said of Monday’s strike.