President Donald Trump threatened large-scale strikes on Iran if Hezbollah does not halt attacks on Israeli forces that invaded Lebanon. 

“Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!” the President wrote on Truth Social Sunday. 

The post resulted in the Iranian negotiating team walking out of talks with the US. Tehran said talks will not resume unless Israel halts its war against Lebanon. 

The post follows a week of Trump stating that Israel needed to halt attacks on Lebanon. “Israel’s fighting Hezbollah for too long, and too many people are being killed. You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody because there’s a lot of people in those apartment houses and they’re not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you,” the president told reporters during a meeting with Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France.

The US and Iran agreed to a memorandum of understanding to end the war. Iran says a key condition in the MOU is an end to the Israeli war against Lebanon. However, fighting in Lebanon continues as Israel continues its bombing campaign, and Hezbollah is targeting IDF soldiers occupying the country. 

Trump has repeatedly threatened massive strikes on Iran if Tehran fails to comply with his demands, but has rarely followed through. 

It’s unclear if Hezbollah would take orders from Tehran to stop fighting if Israel doesn’t stop the bombing and withdraw its troops first.