THE HAGUE, Netherlands: US President Donald Trump asserted on Wednesday that US and Iranian officials will talk next week, giving rise to cautious hope for longer-term peace even as Tehran insisted it will not give up its nuclear program.
Trump, who helped negotiate the ceasefire that took hold Tuesday on the 12th day of the war, told reporters at a NATO summit that he wasn’t particularly interested in restarting negotiations with Iran, insisting that US strikes had destroyed its nuclear program. Earlier in the day, an Iranian official questioned whether the United States could be trusted after its weekend attack.
“We may sign an agreement, I don’t know,” Trump said. “The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done.”
Iran has not acknowledged any talks taking place next week, though US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries. A sixth round of negotiations between the US and Iran had been scheduled for earlier this month in Oman but was canceled when Israel attacked Iran.
Earlier, Trump said the ceasefire was going “very well,” and added that Iran was “not going to have a bomb and they’re not going to enrich.”
Iran has insisted, however, that it will not give up its nuclear program. In a vote underscoring the tough path ahead, its parliament agreed to fast-track a proposal that would effectively stop the country’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog that has monitored the program for years.
Ahead of the vote, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf criticized the IAEA for having “refused to even pretend to condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities” that the US carried out on Sunday.
“For this reason, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran will suspend cooperation with the IAEA until security of nuclear facilities is ensured, and Iran’s peaceful nuclear program will move forward at a faster pace,” Qalibaf told lawmakers.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said he had written to Iran to discuss resuming inspections of their nuclear facilities. Among other things, Iran claims to have moved its highly enriched uranium ahead of the US strikes, and Grossi said his inspectors need to re-assess the country’s stockpiles.
“We need to return,” he said. “We need to engage.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country was part of the 2015 deal with Iran that restricted its nuclear program but began unraveling after Trump pulled the US out in his first term, said he hoped Tehran would come back to the table.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program was peaceful, and US intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. However, Israeli leaders have argued that Iran could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon.
Israel is widely believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, which it has never acknowledged.
The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said its assessment was that the US and Israeli strikes have “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” It did not give evidence to back up its claim.
The US strikes hit three Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump said “completely and fully obliterated” the country’s nuclear program. When asked about a US intelligence report that found Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months, Trump scoffed and said it would at least take “years” to rebuild.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed that the strikes by US B-2 bombers using bunker-buster bombs had caused significant damage.
“Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, while refusing to go into detail.
He seemed to suggest Iran might not shut out IAEA inspectors for good, noting that the bill before parliament only talks of suspending work with the agency, not ending it. He also insisted Iran has the right to pursue a nuclear energy program.
“Iran is determined to preserve that right under any circumstances,” he said.
Witkoff said on Fox News late on Tuesday that Israel and the US had achieved their objective of “the total destruction of the enrichment capacity” in Iran, and Iran’s prerequisite for talks — that Israel end its campaign — had been fulfilled.
“The proof is in the pudding,” he said. “No one’s shooting at each other. It’s over.”

BEIRUT: The Israeli army on Wednesday claimed that Lebanese Haytham Abdullah Bakri, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday in the town of Kfar Dajjal in the Nabatiyeh governorate in southern Lebanon, was “the head of a currency exchange who operated with Hezbollah to transfer funds for Hezbollah terrorist activities.”

In a social media post, Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said: “The ‘Al-Sadiq’ Currency Exchange, managed by Bakri, serves as a funds storage and transfer mechanism for Hezbollah, for funds originating from the Iranian Quds Force.”

Adraee also posted photos of five other exchange centers in Lebanon that he accused of being companies that also finance Hezbollah, in what appeared to be a threat that they could be targeted similarly to Bakri.

The documented establishments include Al-Insaf Exchange under the management of Ali Hassan Shamas, and a currency house operated by Hassan Mohammed Hussein Ayyash.

The intelligence imagery also shows Yara Exchange, run by Mohammed Badr Barbir, alongside another operation managed by Ramez Mektef. Additionally, surveillance targeted Maliha Exchange, which operates under Hussein Shaheen’s management.

The post displayed photographs of these shops pinpointed on a map stretching from Beirut to Chtoura in the Bekaa and Mount Lebanon, including Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Adraee said that “these funds are used for military purposes including purchasing weapons, manufacturing means, and providing salaries to operatives, and are diverted for terrorist purposes and to finance the continuation of Hezbollah's terrorist activities.”

The Israeli forces announced the killing of Behnam Shahriari in Iran last weekend, identifying him as the head of Quds Force Unit 190 responsible for channeling hundreds of millions of dollars every year to Iranian proxy organizations. Israeli officials claim Shahriari oversaw sophisticated money transfer operations that funneled Quds Force resources to Hezbollah through a network of currency exchange firms spanning Turkey, Iraq, the UAE, and Lebanon. The killings of Shahriari and Bakri allegedly disrupted critical Iranian financing channels to the Lebanese militant group.

Dr. Louis Hobeika, an economic analyst, said to Arab News that Lebanon’s Central Bank monitors all international transfers, automatically freezing transactions above $10,000 to verify their purpose, origin, and destination.

“Money exchange operators in Lebanon operate under regulatory oversight without special exemptions based on transaction volume,” Hobeika said. “Yet Lebanon harbors financial channels that evade state monitoring and control. Legal and illegal operations sometimes blur together — a pattern visible beyond banking, including customs enforcement where contraband interdiction remains incomplete pending better scanning technology.”

Hobeika described Lebanon’s Syrian frontier as equally challenging, noting that financial flows previously moved through coordinated arrangements under Bashar Al-Assad’s government but now rely on individual smuggling operations.

Israel has repeatedly targeted Hezbollah’s Al-Qard Al-Hassan financial network, which it accuses of bankrolling the organization’s activities. During last year’s Israel-Hezbollah confrontations before November, Israeli airstrikes hit several branches of the institution, which operates a parallel banking system outside Lebanon’s regulated financial sector.

The Lebanese Ministry of Interior and Municipalities officially licensed the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association in 1987, describing its objective as “assisting individuals by providing short-term loans to help address certain social challenges.”

Following the ceasefire agreement reached at the end of November, the Israeli army placed Beirut International Airport under surveillance, blocking an Iranian plane from landing to “prevent the transfer of funds and weapons to Hezbollah.”

This measure coincided with a period in which Hezbollah faced a severe economic crisis, struggling to secure the funds needed to pay its members’ salaries and to provide shelter for thousands of families displaced by Israel’s systematic destruction of villages along the southern border, as well as hundreds of residential buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley.

In February, Hezbollah called on the government to “revoke its decision to prevent (the) Iranian plane from landing at Beirut Airport and to take serious measures to stop the Israeli enemy from imposing its orders and violating national sovereignty.”

Iran is estimated to provide Hezbollah with up to $700 million a year, according to a US State Department report issued in 2022.

In a 2016 speech, the former secretary-general of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, said: “Our budget, salaries, expenses, food, water, weapons, and missiles are provided by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

He also confirmed in a 2021 speech that Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association has provided $3.7 billion in loans to 1.8 million people in Lebanon since its founding in the 1980s, with approximately 300,000 individuals obtaining loans during that period.

In May, the US State Department announced a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the disruption of Hezbollah’s financial networks operating in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.