The Zahrani River is doing diplomatic work now.

Thursday's lead argued that Tyre had entered the Iran deal file, because Tehran wanted Lebanon covered while Israel wanted freedom of action kept separate. The paper's separate Zahrani account made the evacuation line a displacement and capacity story.

BBC now reports Israeli evacuation orders north of the Zahrani River, strikes around Tyre, and continued U.S.-Iran talks in the same cycle. [1] A second BBC account puts Beirut into the boundary question after a targeted strike in the capital. [2] The UK government's Lebanon security bulletin supplies the longer risk backdrop. [3]

The brief point is not that Lebanon cancels diplomacy. It is that the diplomacy cannot pretend Lebanon is outside the text. If civilians move, roads close, and Beirut becomes reachable while negotiators discuss Iran, the border file has already joined the bargain.

That also changes what counts as a successful deal. A uranium sentence cannot answer a Zahrani evacuation order by itself. A Hormuz passage sentence cannot answer Hezbollah drone pressure by itself. Friday's Lebanon file asks whether negotiators are writing the war they have, or the narrower war they would rather describe.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem