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Trump declares US-Iran peace deal ‘all signed’ as G7 leaders battle to tie up loose ends

Donald Trump has declared that the strait of Hormuz will be “completely open” from Friday, as western leaders gathering at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains battled to prevent the fragile US deal with Iran from almost immediately unravelling. “The deal’s all signed. And the strait ⁠is already partially opened,” Trump said as he arrived at the summit in France, but Israeli breaches of the ceasefire in Lebanon and Iran’s claims about its right to charge fees in the crucial waterway revealed the agreement’s many loose ends. Speaking at the start of bilateral talks with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Monday, Trump rejected a proposed UK-France joint naval mission in the strait, saying “I don’t think we will need much help” keeping it open. “I think a lot of great things are going to happen in the Middle East right now. And very importantly, the oil is plummeting down and the stock market is shooting up like a rocket today,” Trump said. “The main thing is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. They fully agreed to that with strong policing powers, and they won’t have a nuclear weapon, which is what it was all about.” The memorandum of understanding – which US officials said would open the strait of Hormuz in exchange for a lifting of a US naval blockade on Iran – is set to be formally signed at a ceremony in Geneva on Friday attended by the US vice-president, JD Vance, and the chief Iranian negotiator, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf. White House officials said the full details of the agreement would be published in the next 24 to 48 hours. But the G7 leaders gathering for three days of talks found themselves already trying to shore up the agreement that the US had signed. Technical discussions led by Vance from the US side will begin later this week, including the more thorny issues of the fate of Iran’s nuclear programme, which Trump has declared must never be able to produce a nuclear weapon. It would also include provisions to lift sanctions and unfreeze billions of dollars in frozen assets, but US officials said that would be tied to “Iran meeting their commitments”. They insisted no Gulf country was cutting a side deal to unfreeze Iran’s assets, but suggested the US was “prepared to release frozen funds, and we are prepared to relieve sanctions”. “We’ll do some small gestures of that in the beginning, if they make some small gestures to us that show that they’re willing to meet their commitments,” another official added. They declined to provide specifics on what that “small gesture” would be, but the first official later clarified that as of now, “$0 of unfrozen assets have been released by the United States or any other country”. The administration officials also said that there would not be an immediate drawdown of US forces near Iran upon the signing of the MOU. “The plan is to keep the current force posture during the … negotiations in force,” the official said. “We hope to draw them down. We’re not doing that yet. We want to see the Iranians do what they promise.” Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said the deal could stabilise the world economy, but warned Israel that the ceasefire agreement must apply to Lebanon. He spoke after an Israeli drone targeted a vehicle in southern Lebanon killing one person, the second death since the 60-day ceasefire was agreed. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, warned: “There can be no lasting peace whilst Lebanon remains in flames.” In Israel, concern and anger deepened during the day, directed at both Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Analysts and commenters quickly pointed out that none of Netanyahu’s promises at the beginning of the war in February – which included regime change in Tehran and the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme – had been fulfilled. Israel has also launched a wide-ranging offensive into Lebanon after Hezbollah, which has close links to Iran, fired missiles at northern Israeli towns during the first week of the war, suffering new casualties against an enemy that had been previously dismissed by officials as no longer posing a serious threat. In his first remarks on the agreement, Netanyahu did not denounce the deal but did distance himself from the negotiations, saying that it was “[Trump’s] decision”, adding: “We have our own interests.” He also said Israel would not leave the territory it was occupying in Lebanon despite the ceasefire agreement and it would be ready to strike Iran if it deemed it was moving toward making a nuclear weapon. “With an agreement or without an agreement, Iran will not have nuclear weapons – not today and not tomorrow,” he said. Opposition politicians were quick to capitalise on what some local media described as an “abject failure”. Far-right members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition called for Israel to ignore the agreement, saying it had not been party to negotiations. The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said of the memorandum: “Trump’s agreement does not bind us … We must not settle for anything less than the dismantling of Hezbollah. We must not withdraw from a single inch of territory that our soldiers have captured and cleared.” The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, insisted the US had to ensure Israel abided by the ceasefire, warning that the whole deal was contingent on its application to Lebanon. Trump was set to be quizzed by other world leaders whether he had signed an agreement that gave Iran a right to charge for maritime services in the strait of Hormuz. Such a formulation could prove in effect to be a tolling system that European leaders, committed to freedom of navigation, have fiercely opposed. In Evián, Trump insisted that would not be the case, saying: “because we have an agreement where it’s going to be open, and it’s toll-free”. The uncertainty meant plans to deploy a Franco-British maritime taskforce within days to clear mines and escort ships through the strait remained in doubt. Iranian officials have rejected what they see as foreign interference in the strait, and have insisted last-minute negotiated changes to the agreement have given Iran the right to charge fees for maritime services. Macron earlier declared the taskforce could help “ensure the reopening of the strait is peaceful” and France could send its Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, frigates, mine search boats and aircraft to the region within days. But the taskforce plan, partly conceived to soothe Trump’s anger over a European refusal to join a more aggressive US plan to open the strait earlier in the war, looks at best uncertain since all the contributor countries have insisted the taskforce cannot operate in the face of Iranian military resistance. Macron claimed Oman, on the southern waterways of the strait, did not object to the convoy. Trump also appeared to suggest the waterway was operating without need for a European escort mission. “Ships are starting to move many loaded up with oil, out of the Strait of Hormuz, They are going along the southern highway which is totally safe secure and pristine. There are other areas of travel also,” he posted to social media. But with shipping companies warning it will take months for trade to return to normal, the European Central Bank governor, Christine Lagarde, said the impact of the war on oil prices meant inflation was now spreading across the European economy, with a secondary effect on wages. Trump faces a broader uphill task persuading his sceptical fellow G7 leaders that he was right to ignore their advice since the war had secured objectives the west backed, including taming Iran and destroying its nuclear programme. Many G7 leaders refused to let Trump use US bases in Europe to mount attacks on Iran, and believe the whole episode has damaged the US, while weakening western economies in the battle with China. One western diplomat said: “No one wants a bitter or public inquest, but this has been a crash-and-burn moment for American unilateralism, and perhaps Trump will heed the lessons.” US officials speaking on Monday claimed the war had left Iran “substantially weakened” and it now had the option to be “invited into the world economy with all the prosperity that comes along with it”, on condition the country provided mechanisms to prove it was not trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Dismay and defiance in Israel as US and Iran move to end war on ‘all fronts’

Israeli military forces will not withdraw from a vast swathe of territory they have seized in southern Lebanon, the country’s defence minister has said, hours after Donald Trump and officials in Iran announced a new preliminary agreement between Washington and Tehran to end hostilities on “all fronts” in the Middle East pending a final settlement in about two months. Israel Katz’s remarks were the first official Israeli comments after the announcement of the interim deal, which has prompted widespread dismay and anger in Israel. The exact details of the agreement remain unclear but appear to explicitly include a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel launched a wide-ranging offensive after attacks on northern Israel by Hezbollah at the beginning of the 15-week-long conflict. US officials have sought to reassure Israel, saying on Monday that the ⁠withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon ⁠was ⁠not a condition of ⁠a pact between the ⁠US ‌and ‌Iran, and Israel would have the right to defend ⁠itself against attacks by Hezbollah. The apparent terms of the agreement still appear to be a major setback to Israel, which fiercely resisted Iranian efforts to link its interim deal with the US to halting Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Headlines in Israeli media described an “abject failure”. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, last week said he supported Trump’s efforts to end the war diplomatically but has not yet commented publicly. Amit Segal, a journalist close to Netanyahu, described the interim deal as “total surrender”. Katz said Israel planned to stay “indefinitely” in lands it held in Lebanon, as well as territory seized in recent years in Syria and the Gaza Strip, and would strike Iran with “great force” if it attacked Israel in response to Israeli strikes in Lebanon. There was relative calm in southern Lebanon on Monday. Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli military targets, both in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, stopped just before midnight, and Israel also significantly reduced its attacks, although there were unconfirmed reports of explosions in some southern towns and at least one drone was heard circling above Beirut and its southern suburbs. Military sources in Israel quoted by the Jerusalem Post said that if Hezbollah respected the new ceasefire, Israeli military forces would not attack anywhere in Lebanon. Hezbollah, which has close links with Tehran, ‌has not commented on the deal but has ‌previously said it supported Iran’s efforts for a Lebanon ceasefire. Officials and many commentators in Israel have claimed the deal will strengthen Hezbollah and other militant Islamist organisations around the region supported by Tehran. However Israel, which depends on the US for vital military, diplomatic and other support, could not afford to alienate Trump, analysts said. On Sunday, an Israeli strike on Hezbollah targets in Beirut earned Netanyahu a further expletive-laden reprimand from the US president. The announcement of the interim peace agreement may have averted a new barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles aimed at Israel. Neil Quilliam, of the Chatham House thinktank in London, said: “The personal relationship between Trump and Netanyahu has taken a hit but … the whole debate around Israel in the US is changing so Israeli-US ties are under some strain at the moment, both at the political level and the societal level.” Netanyahu was instrumental in convincing Trump to launch the war against Iran and Israeli military forces have coordinated closely with their US counterparts throughout the conflict. An Israeli military strike killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then Iran’s supreme leader, on the war’s first day. However, any achievements in the war have fallen far short of Netanyahu’s promises of regime change in Tehran as well as the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme and its ballistic missile capability. Opposition politicians in Israel have been quick to attack the deal. An election is due in Israel before October and there is likely to be a close fight for power. Yair Golan, the leader of the Democrats, a centre-left party, said Netanyahu had allowed “military achievements won through the courage of [Israel’s armed forces] to be erased”. “Trump signs an agreement that funnels billions to the ayatollahs’ regime, leaves the nuclear infrastructure intact, preserves the ballistic [missile] threat as it is, and throws a lifeline to the murderous regime in Tehran,” Golan said. Naftali Bennet, a former prime minister and a leading challenger in the forthcoming polls, said Netanyahu was “incapable of achieving a decisive victory” and had led Israel into wars of “stagnation and attrition”. Far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition government called for Israel to ignore the terms of the deal, saying Israel had not been involved in negotiations and so was not bound by the agreement. “We are not party to this agreement. It does not safeguard our security,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, said on his Telegram channel. “We must not settle for anything less than the dismantling of Hezbollah. We must not withdraw from a single inch of territory that our soldiers have captured and cleared of terrorist infrastructure,” he said. Israel has seized swathes of territory in Syria and has occupied more than 60% of Gaza since Hamas’s surprise raid into Israel on 7 October 2023 that triggered the series of recent conflicts. Airstrikes have continued in Gaza since a ceasefire arranged by Trump last year, killing close to 1,000 Palestinians. Danny Orbach, a military historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said if Trump forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon then Netanyahu’s political career would be over. “To withdraw from the border would be a repudiation of the basic lesson of October 7 … which is that if there is an enemy who want to destroy you, you do not withdraw from the border.” Dahlia Scheindlin, a leading Israeli electoral analyst, said the situation in the north was undoubtedly problematic for Netanyahu but many supporters of the prime minister would see the apparently unfavourable terms of the interim deal between Iran and the US as only a “blip in a long list of what they consider to be his accomplishments”. “I don’t know if any of them are going to change their minds because of the ceasefire,” Scheindlin said.

Canada eliminates human rights watchdog that oversees companies operating abroad

Canada is eliminating a watchdog that investigates alleged human rights violations committed by Canadian companies operating abroad, after Mark Carney said the office hadn’t been “effective” since it was set up in 2019. The move comes as Canada faces criticism from Donald Trump’s administration over its “unacceptable” efforts to combat forced labour. The Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (Core) was established by former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government to investigate the use of forced labour by industry. At the time, much of the focus was on China’s use of the Uyghur ethnic minority for what critics say was forced labour. Despite years of public reports from human rights groups, Beijing disputes claims it engages in modern day slavery. Over its six years, however, Canada’s watchdog has only launched five investigations, including against three US clothing companies with operations in the country – Ralph Lauren, Nike and Levi Strauss – as well as two mining companies: GobiMin and Dynasty Gold Corp. In all cases, the allegations centered on the use of forced labour in the northeastern Xinjiang region of China. The watchdog also used its mediation mechanism after Hugo Boss faced allegations that it used Uyghur forced labour. Core has only issued formal recommendations against two companies. As part of his austerity measures, Carney has said the Liberals will review the function of various offices in the federal government and will make cuts where resources are used inefficiently. “Part of government is to look at things and see whether or not they’re effective and try to improve it,” he said, adding the decision to cut the role was taken “a few months ago”. He said that while Canada has formal legislation to combat the issue, including the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act, it has been “less effective” in enforcing those laws. Despite criticisms of the watchdog, federal ministers have called it an important part of Canada’s efforts to combat human rights violations. When touring China in the spring as part of a trade mission, Canada’s finance minister François-Philippe Champagne cited Core as a safeguard against the use of forced labour in Chinese automobiles that might one day be sold in Canada. Other lawmakers say the oversight body needs resources, not elimination. “CORE has never been given the independence or powers it needs to do its job properly,” said Green party leader Elizabeth May said in a statement. “The Green Party has long called for this office to be strengthened so it can actually investigate abuses, compel evidence and deliver accountability. The solution to a flawed office cannot be to simply do away with it entirely.” The Liberals said on Friday that new legislation would create a public list of products that have been linked to forced labour in specific regions and would require importers to prove that specific products from listed regions were not made through slavery. The move comes as the US has called out Canada – and 80 other nations – over their perceived inability to tackle the use of forced labour in supply chains. The White House recently announced it would impose tariffs on Canada for what it suggested were weak enforcement rules around goods made with forced labour. The Liberals say their new legislation should address the issues raised by the Trump administration.

Trump hails Iran deal that fixes nothing except a problem his war caused

If we get to a Friday signing ceremony without this uncertain new US-Iran deal being derailed by any of its inherent ambiguities, then nuclear talks can finally restart in the same place – and at almost exactly the same point they were before this conflict started. The world will have irrevocably been changed in other ways. There is no going back for the 120 Iranian children in Minab killed in their primary school in the war’s first hours, nor for their bereaved parents, or any of the thousands in Iran, Lebanon and around the region whose lives were erased or blighted by a feckless war of choice. Iran itself has been changed as a state and society in ways which will only become clear in the coming months and years, but for the time being it is evident the military has been strengthened at the expense of secular civilian governance. Freedom and basic rights for Iranians are as elusive as they were before the conflict, maybe more so. Tehran has been bolstered by its proven capacity to close the strait of Hormuz and squeeze the lifeblood of the global economy. Conversely, the power and credibility of the US has been undermined decisively in front of the entire world. Donald Trump has so far achieved none of the stated regime change and nuclear disarmament goals he laid out when the war was launched with Israel on 28 February. The achievement he advertised overnight – “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” – was a matter of claiming credit for fixing a problem his war had caused. Even that is not in the bag yet. It is still a long way to Friday and a planned signing ceremony in Geneva, in view of all the fudges that have been packed into this compromise deal. It is not clear, for example, if Iran will continue to charge tolls (or “service fees”) for the use of the strait, nor whether $24bn (£18bn) of Iran’s frozen assets will be released and paid to Tehran before or during the intended nuclear talks in Geneva. The two sides have very different spins on what was agreed under those headings in the past few days. Ultimately, the ships will only start their engines and the oil begin to flow through the strait of Hormuz when the shipping companies and insurance companies judge it to be safe – and that may be some days or weeks off. At the same time, Iran and the Pakistani brokers are adamant that the deal should stop Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, but members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition have already made clear they do not intend Israel to be bound by the agreement. A deal that freezes the Middle East battlefield as it stands now is a political disaster for Netanyahu, who promised Israelis he would rid them of their worst enemies: Iran’s regime with its nuclear programme, Hezbollah and Hamas. They are all still standing while Israel’s relationship with the US, its ultimate security guarantee, has taken a battering. Netanyahu’s greatest success was finding a US president he could persuade to go to war with Iran with him, but that glimmering triumph has turned to ashes in his hands. Trump is now openly dismissing the Israeli prime minister as a “difficult guy”, and the relationship is unlikely to get any easier in the near future, as Netanyahu seeks to demonstrate his independence of action to sceptical voters before elections due by October. Trump will try to constrain Israel as much as possible – certainly to get to Friday’s signing, and through to the end of the US-hosted World Cup extravaganza – but Netanyahu has his own security and political imperatives. The divergence will sour the partnership still further, at a time when a majority of Americans no longer treat the relationship as sacrosanct. A continuing Lebanese conflict will not be the only centrifugal force tearing at the limbs of this fragile agreement. There will be internal US and Iranian politics too, which could tempt each side to renege. Most importantly, there will be the nuclear issue – the supposed casus belli itself, left essentially unmoved by the war. Starting from Friday, US and Iranian negotiators are due to sit down to 60 days of talks in Geneva to resolve the fundamental dispute over how much of a nuclear programme Iran should be allowed to have. At the centre of the negotiations will be Iran’s right to enrich uranium, how long a moratorium on enrichment it should observe, and what should be done with its stockpile of uranium which has already been enriched to a level approaching weapons grade. If that all sounds familiar, it is because it is exactly what was on the table in Geneva on 26 February, the last day of negotiations before Trump and Netanyahu went to war two days later. By all accounts, including those of UK government observers, those talks had been making progress at the time they were abruptly curtailed and the bombs started to drop. The hope now is that some of that forward momentum can be restored, but the postwar Iranian delegation is likely to be an even tougher nut to crack. The regime has shown its durability and has a proven weapon in its pocket: the Hormuz option. The Iranians will arrive knowing that it was Trump who blinked first to get this interim deal over the line. It seems to include no detailed parameters for future nuclear negotiations, as the Americans had wished, and Israeli reporting confirms arrangement for Tehran to get some of its frozen assets delivered before the Geneva nuclear talks, as Iran had demanded. If Trump and Netanyahu had set out to demonstrate the futility of war, they could not have staged it better.

US-Iran deal may get oil flowing again, but region’s root problems are unsolved

In much of the Middle East, news that the US and Iran had come to a fragile agreement was greeted with relief tempered with doubt that any deal would resolve the turbulent region’s deep problems or even prevent a future return to war. In Kuwait, a frequent target of Iranian drone strikes during the 15-week conflict, Iyad Joumma, a 37-year-old Jordanian engineer, spoke for many. While the agreement may allow the region to catch its breath, he said, its success “will depend on the ability of the parties involved to address the root causes of the tensions”. Of a dozen analysts and experts consulted by the Guardian since the news of a potential end to hostilities broke at the weekend, not one suggested the interim deal to be signed on Friday by representatives of Iran and the US would be any more than a temporary solution. “It’s just a big Band-Aid and future conflict is like to come at some point,” said Neil Quilliam, a Middle East expert at London’s Chatham House. The memorandum of understanding provides for a 60-day cessation of hostilities during which the two sides will address some of the most contentious issues – Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile and nuclear programme, sanctions and the release of billions of dollars of frozen Iranian assets – in the hope that a final settlement can be reached. Few analysts believe this is likely within such a short timescale – if at all. They point to the painstaking 18-month process that led to the 2015 agreement with Iran, which traded economic benefits for restrictions of its nuclear programme, and which Donald Trump tore up during his first term in office. The interim deal now agreed does little more than commit both sides to further talks, while obliging Washington to lift its naval blockade of Iran and making Tehran allow free passage to all shipping in the strait of Hormuz, which usually carries a fifth of the world’s oil and liquid gas supplies but was blocked by Iran early in the war. To the great displeasure of Israel, a ceasefire has been imposed once again in Lebanon as part of the interim deal and appears for the moment to be holding. But such ceasefires count for little these days, said several experts, pointing to Gaza as an example, where almost 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since Donald Trump brokered an end to the war there last year. Israel has occupied more than 60% of the territory, Hamas has not given up its weapons, and there has been almost no progress towards a projected second phase of the deal, let alone the third, which was to have brought a massive reconstruction effort. “Gaza is a case in point. The deal there didn’t contend with the past: the war crimes that had been committed. Nor the present: how to disarm Hamas. Nor the future: a pathway to a viable Palestinian state and a resolution of the conflict,” said Alia Brahimi at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “It’s almost as if … you can use the cover of a ceasefire to continue to achieve your aims, including military ones.” But this was not possible in the Gulf, Brahimi said, because the strategic geography was different. “The strait of Hormuz is of integral importance to the global economy, as the Iranians have demonstrated. They’ve shown us what we always knew in theory: that they can impose cascading stress globally by throwing a few projectiles towards a tanker or two.” Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at al-Azhar University in Gaza and now in Cairo, agreed. “The ceasefire in Gaza is holding because Hamas knows that if they fire it will give a pretext for another full-scale Israeli ground invasion but the situation in Gaza is disastrous,” he said. In Israel there is dismay and disappointment at a deal that does not appear to address Iran’s ballistic missile armoury nor funding of its so-called Axis of Resistance, a loose coalition of militant Islamist movements including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen and a series of militia in Iraq. This, too, could threaten instability in the near future, analysts argue. Danny Orbach, a military history professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, said that that after the bloody surprise October 2023 Hamas raid which triggered the Gaza war, Israel had set out to bring about structural change in the Middle East. “The structural change [Israel wants] is that the ‘Axis of Resistance’ must no longer be allowed to threaten Israel with destruction. Israel’s destabilising instinct is to tell all regional actors you will not have stability until you solve our problem, and that problem is Iran. This will not change until the memory of [the] 7 October [attack] fades and that will take years and years.” The sharpest shock, however, is being felt in the Sunni Arab Gulf states, where the stability behind decades of economic growth and growing diplomatic heft has been sharply challenged. It will take months or even years for damage to civilian infrastructure done by Iran’s strikes on Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to be repaired, and the psychological scars will last much longer. Meanwhile, Washington’s clear unwillingness to accept significant losses, months of potential economic pain or domestic dissatisfaction send a clear message. “A ‘superpower’ that is not ready to bear 100 casualties is not a superpower,” said Orbach. H.A. Hellyer, of London’s Royal United Services Institute, said that Gulf states would now seek to contain a newly empowered Iran led by a more confident and possibly more belligerent regime. “The realisation that they can’t rely on the US is the point of consensus but otherwise [Gulf states] have all got different views of the best strategy going forward,” Hellyer said. “The Arab world has important and legitimate grievances with how Iran projects power and influence and none of these are being addressed.” Quilliam described a “new era”. “The [current] agreement will hold and in 60 days we will probably see positive headlines and the oil and gas will flow [again] but there’ll be no major breakthrough,” he said. “We know that Hormuz can be closed again, the Iranians have carried out strikes on Gulf states, and we have seen that whatever Israel and the US can do, Iran will take it. All the previous thresholds have been passed now.”

Wheels of justice turn (very) slowly: moped stolen in 1984 returned to owner

A moped stolen from a northern Italian town in 1984 has been traced and returned to its rightful owner after four decades. The case of the missing moped – a dark grey Garelli that these days might be classified as vintage – was finally cracked by police in Volpiano, a suburb of Turin, after they spotted a 64-year-old man travelling without a licence plate during a roadside check. “This guy was riding this scooter without a licence plate and so he was stopped,” said Americo Celani, commander of the Carabinieri in Volpiano. “This gave us an indication that something was wrong.” A distinguishing feature of the stolen Garelli was that it did not have a licence plate because registration was not legally required on 50cc mopeds in Italy until 1994, a decade after Antonio Smiglio’s vehicle was stolen from outside his home in Vado Ligure, a town in the Liguria region where his family lived. Celani said police were also able to match the moped by the details on its frame and using various past reports. “So through that we traced the fact that this moped had been stolen 42 years ago.” The man riding it was charged with possessing a stolen item although he was not the thief, Celani said. After being reunited with his Garelli, Smiglio, who now lives in Saluzzo, a town close to Cuneo in the Piedmont region, told La Repubblica that when the police called to tell him they had found it, he “immediately thought it was a joke”. The moped was a 16th birthday present to himself in August 1984, paid off in instalments with money saved from working in a bar and doing odd jobs. “It felt like I owned a Kawasaki,” he said, referring to the Japanese manufacturer of high-speed motorbikes. But in December that year, the moped, along with several others, was stolen from where he had locked it outside his home. At the time, because mopeds did not have licence plates, “it was a bit like stealing a bike”, he said. “How much I cried.” He was initially worried to collect the vehicle owing to fears it might be ready for the scrap heap. But it was in good condition, he said, and after a few repairs he intends to ride it again along the Ligurian coast.

‘We want to be 100% sure’: war-weary Lebanese greet truce with caution

Hours after the US-Iran ceasefire was announced, residents of south Lebanon began to race back to their villages. One man filmed as he drove into the entrance of Harees, his arrival interrupted as the car in front of him suddenly veered off the road. An Israeli armoured vehicle was parked in the middle of the road less than 100 metres ahead; he scrambled to turn around. “It was packed with explosives. I guess they still want to blow things up,” said Abdullah al-Ali, a municipal official in Harees. Ali said that the entrance to the town had been blocked off after two other explosive-laden vehicles left by the Israelis were discovered in the area. The Lebanese army and civil defence told people not to return to their villages, warning that the war, which had so far claimed almost 3,800 lives in Lebanon, was not yet over. Their point was punctuated by the Israeli shelling that met people attempting to return to their homes south of the city of Nabatieh, still occupied by Israeli soldiers. It was the third ceasefire declared in Lebanon in less than two months; the fourth in two years. This time, war-weary Lebanese did not greet the apparent truce as they had before, with fingers held up in a V for victory sign, but with a question. Would it last? “How many times has this happened before? I have mixed feelings, there’s joy, I’m excited. But there’s a fear in the back of my head that won’t go away,” said Ghia Hajo, a 25-year-old woman who had been displaced from the town of Abbasieh, just outside the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, during the war. Hajo watched on her phone as videos came in from friends and social media of the long-awaited return to their villages in south Lebanon. She itched to see her own home, which, due to sheer luck, was still standing. But she did not want to return only to be displaced once again – or worse, be met with bombs. “We want to go and not have to leave our bags unpacked. Because we always had our clothes in our bag, ready to evacuate at any moment. We want to be 100% sure,” said Hajo, who was mulling a return once she was assured the situation was safe in Abbasieh. Lebanon’s officials welcomed the ceasefire, which came about on the heels of a greater US-Iran truce they had been informed of via news reports. How it would apply in Lebanon remained unclear. In the hours after the ceasefire was announced, Hezbollah’s attacks entirely stopped; Israeli strikes mostly stopped, with the exception of shelling and two drone strikes on residents who neared villages close to its troops. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said that Israeli troops would not withdraw from the “security zone” in south Lebanon, an area that was declared by its military to include at least 600 sq km (231 sq miles) along the border and that in recent weeks had crept up farther north to include the outskirts of Nabatieh. Israel further said that it reserved the right to respond to any Hezbollah attacks, while other officials suggested it retained freedom of movement in Lebanon. Under previous ceasefires in Lebanon, Israel continued to carry out airstrikes in the south of the country at will. Hezbollah said in a statement on Monday that it would not allow this scenario to repeat. Its warnings were backed by Tehran, which had shown that it would not hesitate to strike Israel if it felt red lines in Lebanon were crossed. The fundamental issues that drew Israel and Hezbollah into war remained unsolved. The current round of conflict started when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel on 2 March in retaliation for the killing of the then Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel invaded, stating at first that its aim was to destroy Hezbollah, then just to disarm it. It achieved neither. As the day continued, the trickle of cars heading south on Lebanon’s highways grew to a flood. Residents wanted to return to check on their homes, even if only for one day. For some, the act of return was enough; the call to prayer echoed from a minaret and filled the town of al-Sultaniyeh, which for weeks had only heard the sound of explosions. For others, return confirmed their worst fears. One man found his family home flattened by a bomb in the town of Seddiqine. “My house is gone,” was all he managed to choke out. Why or when it had been destroyed, he did not know – his family’s prolonged displacement had robbed him of an explanation. The war, which lasted just over 100 days, left thousands of homes and shops destroyed, dozens of villages occupied and flattened, more than 1 million people displaced and thousands dead. The question of reconstruction, both material and spiritual, was not yet on the table as it was unclear if the war was really over. To those residents whose homes lay in villages still occupied, many of which were demolished by the Israelis, the war would not end until their land was free. “We miss our villages, but our dear villages became a sorry sight, bulldozed, destroyed systematically,” said Ahmad Abu Taan, a 56-year-old construction supply shop owner from Taybeh, a village destroyed by the Israelis. “But we will return, hopefully, under a deal, under a truce. And when we do, then I’ll tell you how I feel,” he said over the phone, the buzz of an Israeli drone overhead punctuating his speech.