Lebanon is on the brink. Yesterday, Wednesday 8 April, Israel conducted a vicious attack on civilian targets across the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Hundreds of people were killed. Thousands lost their homes, adding to the hundreds of thousands already displaced in the last three weeks. An already fragile Lebanon is now on the brink. The international community - and especially Europe - must now step up to save Lebanon. In this op-ed for commonspace.eu, Alexandra Dumitrescu says  Israel has made claims that it intends to continue its occupation and possibly even annex southern Lebanon. Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on 23 March that Israel should extend its border with Lebanon up to the Litani ​River. Since then, all of the Litani’s main bridge crossings have been bombed and severely damaged, if not fully destroyed. As Maha Yahya, the Director of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, put it in her article for Foreign Affairs, “By joining the battle, Hezbollah inextricably tied Lebanon’s fate to the larger war. But it is also clear that Israel is using the war and Hezbollah’s provocations to justify a much larger—and potentially devastating—assault on Lebanon itself.” (Click the image to read her op-ed in full).

Crowds in Tehran have been celebrating a "pause" in the war of Israel and the United States against Iran. US president Donald Trump announced a two-week pause in attacks on Iran if shipping is allowed through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump confirmed that discussions will be based on a 10 point Iranian plan. Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) has said in a statement following the announced conditional ceasefire that negotiations will be held in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad within a maximum period of 15 days for the details to be "finalised". The statement has said that the negotiations will be held so that "Iran's victory in the field would also be consolidated in political negotiations". The statement has gone beyond the 10-point plan that had been announced by state TV, and the statement has said that the US has agreed to: Guarantee not to repeat its "aggression" against Iran The continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz Acceptance of [uranium] enrichment Lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions Termination of all resolutions of the [UN] Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency Payment of compensation to Iran Withdrawal of US combat forces from the region And the cessation of war on all fronts, including against the "Islamic resistance of Lebanon" The ceasefire came just over an hour before Trump's 20:00 EDT (01:00 BST) deadline for Iran to make a deal, or else a  "whole civilisation will die" Iranians gathered in Iran's capital city carrying flags and portraits of Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei following the announcement of the ceasefire. Donald Trump says there is no question the US had won a "total and complete victory" after agreeing a two-week ceasefire deal with Iran. In an interview with Agence France Presse after his announcement, he said that Iran's enriched uranium would be "perfectly taken care of" under the deal. "Or I wouldn't have settled," Trump said, without giving any specifics about what would happen to the uranium. When asked if he would go back to his original threats to destroy to Iran's civilian power plants and bridges if the deal fell apart all he would say was: "You're going to have to see."