The State Department denied claims from Lebanon's foreign minister, made during an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, that former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a ceasefire deal just before Israel killed him in a strike on the terror group's Beirut headquarters.
In the interview, which aired late Wednesday, Lebanese foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib said Nasrallah agreed to a U.S.-brokered three-week ceasefire just days before his death. "He agreed, he agreed, yes, yes," Habib said. "We informed the Americans and the French what happened."
A State Department spokesman, however, denied the account. "This is not something we had heard before," the spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon. "If true, it was not communicated to us."
Habib's claim was extraordinary, given that Nasrallah had spent months greenlighting near-daily missile attacks on Israel in the wake of Oct. 7, including the day before his death, which came while he was meeting with his senior commanders. One week before the Hezbollah HQ strike, meanwhile, Nasrallah said Hezbollah would unleash a "reckoning" on Israel.
Amanpour did not disclose that information in her conversation with Habib and did not push back on his claim. Instead, she blamed the lack of a deal on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"He actually said publicly, 'The IDF must fight on,' and then he ordered the assassination and the targeting of that headquarters, which killed Nasrallah," Amanpour said before asking Habib who he has "any faith in, if the strongest country in the world, the United States, seems to have no or very little influence."
CNN covered the interview in its Wednesday live thread of Middle East coverage, writing that Nasrallah "had agreed to a 21-day ceasefire just days before he was assassinated by Israel." The post did not indicate that CNN had reached out about the claim to the State Department or Israel.
One day later, CNN published a standalone story on the interview, again saying Nasrallah had agreed to the ceasefire. That story includes the Biden-Harris administration's denial in its 10th and 11th paragraphs—after citing an unnamed "Western source" who said Hezbollah "had agreed to the temporary truce."
CNN did not respond to a request for comment.
Regional experts criticized Amanpour's parroting of Habib's claims, with Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and veteran Middle East analyst, saying Amanpour "allowed herself to be used as a useful idiot."
"How did the Lebanese foreign minister have inside information about Nasrallah that no one else did?" Rubin asked. "By throwing gasoline on the embers of conspiracy, she is essentially committing arson and will get people killed."