Welcome to meet the press now. I'm Kelly O'Donnell in Washington. And we begin with that very fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran amid a new wave of Israeli attacks in the region

that have infuriated Iranian officials who are responding by reasserting Tehran's control over the

Strait of Hormuz. This morning, Israel unleashed another wave of attacks in Beirut as part of its

ongoing offensive against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

It follows a series of bombardments yesterday, which, according to Lebanese officials,

killed more than 250 people, including nearly 100 in Beirut.

Now, Iran claims that Israel's actions are a clear violation of its ceasefire agreement with the U.S.

But the Trump administration is insisting that Lebanon was not part of any deal.

I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn't.

We never made that promise. We never indicated that was going to be the case.

What we said is that the

ceasefire would be focused on Iran and the ceasefire would be focused on America's allies, both Israel and

the Gulf Arab states. Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire. That has been related to all parties

involved in the ceasefire. This will continue to be discussed, I am sure, between the president and

Prime Minister Netanyahu,

the United States and Israel, and all of the parties involved. But at this point in time,

they're not included in the ceasefire deal. However, it seems the administration is clearly

concerned about those strikes in Lebanon. According to a senior administration official,

during a phone call yesterday, President Trump personally asked

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to scale back Israel strikes on Lebanon, to help ensure the

success of the upcoming negotiations with Iran. And the president telling our colleague Peter

Nicholas in a phone call this morning that Israel will be scaling back its attacks and saying, quote,

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