A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Israeli strikes in Lebanon and Iran and Iranian attacks on Israel are threatening to plunge the Middle East back into an all-out war.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Iran launched rounds of missiles toward Israel, and Israel struck central and western Iran early Monday following an Israeli attack on Hezbollah targets in the Lebanese capital. This morning, President Trump posted on social media that Israel and Iran must, quote, "immediately stop shooting," unquote.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Jane Arraf joins us from Beirut. Jane, there was supposed to be a ceasefire. Now what we have is a lot of fast-moving military developments.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Well, Iran now says it's halting further attacks on Israel, saying Israel has, quote, "learned a lesson." But earlier this morning, sirens sounded in Israel after Iran and Yemen's Houthi rebels, Iranian allies, launched missiles. Iran says it targeted two Israeli military bases in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Iranian radar sites, and Israel says it hit an Iranian petrochemical plant. In Lebanon, Israel kept up attacks in the south Sunday, including on the southern city of Tyre.
MARTÍNEZ: So there's been a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in place since April, although there have been sporadic attacks. So what prompted this escalation?
ARRAF: Well, the background is that this war in Lebanon is part of a wider Iran-U.S. deal. Iran insists on a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel has occupied parts of the south and is fighting Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. Iran warned that if it saw any strikes by Israel on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, where Hezbollah has offices, it would see that as a red line. So last night Israel struck an apartment building there, killing two people, and Iran retaliated with the wave of strikes.
MARTÍNEZ: Jane, you've just returned from southern Lebanon this morning. What's happening there?
ARRAF: We were able to see some of the damage there from Israeli airstrikes in neighborhoods that are still under attack. Israel two weeks ago warned almost the entire city to leave, along with surrounding villages. It left the tip of Tyre, the section of the ancient city with a large Christian population, exempt from the warnings. So in areas that were still under threat, we saw apartment buildings leveled by airstrikes, and another place, there was an entire block with nothing standing, but despite that, there are still people there, a lot of them elderly or disabled and they're trying to live in those neighborhoods. Tyre was a thriving coastal city. Imagine Miami.
So yesterday, there were new Israeli strikes in Tyre and other parts of the city, and more people flooded into that tiny section of the old city. There were displaced families with absolutely nothing, leaving damaged houses, setting up tents on the beach near fancy shuttered restaurants and luxury hotels, and some were just sleeping on the sand.
MARTÍNEZ: What are you looking for next, Jane?
ARRAF: There's still the question of what Yemen will do. It has said it will target Israeli assets in the Red Sea, affecting crucial Suez Canal shipping channels. And there are Iran-backed groups in Iraq that the Iraqi government has been trying to rein in that are also a factor. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said events of the last 24 hours fueled Iran's distrust of the U.S. And then some of this depends on President Trump. He told Fox News on Sunday that the deal with Iran had been days away, so we'll have to see what happens with that. He says Israel had not coordinated the strikes in Lebanon with the United States, and he said, I am not happy about it.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Jane Arraf from Beirut. Thank you very much.
ARRAF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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