Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Lebanon's Al Akhbar on 18 June that continued Israeli military presence in south Lebanon would mean "annulment" of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)1. He called the end of the Lebanon war "inseparable" from the deal, and said a second phase of negotiations toward a final agreement could succeed only if the memorandum was fully implemented, including a complete IDF withdrawal.
Baghaei speaks for Iran's civilian foreign ministry, the arm that negotiated and signed the MOU. Tehran had first reached for a "violation clause" on 15 June, after a Hezbollah exchange with Israeli forces. "Annulment" is a sharper word, and a newer one: it threatens to void the whole agreement rather than log a breach within it.
The legal awkwardness sits at the centre. Iran signed the MOU through Foreign Minister Araghchi and parliament speaker Ghalibaf; the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not, and their refusal to leave south Lebanon is the conduct Baghaei now cites as grounds to collapse the deal. Hezbollah answers to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, not to Ghalibaf, so every day the IDF stays in the zone hands the corps a clause to invoke while the civilian government carries the signature. Baghaei's "inseparable" framing makes the Lebanon ceasefire a trigger the elected government cannot switch off.
