Although former President Michel Aoun stands against Hezbollah’s clashes with Israel on Lebanon’s southern border, the former president is still keen on maintaining good relations with the Iran-backed group.

Aoun told pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar newspaper, in remarks published Thursday, that he would be happy if Hezbollah won the war with Israel, although he opposes it. "I would celebrate with them if they won, and would be sad if, God forbid, they lost."

Germany is planning to deport the leader of an Islamic center it banned in July over alleged links to militant groups, an interior ministry spokeswoman said Thursday.

Investigators swooped on the Hamburg Islamic Center five weeks ago after concluding it was an "Islamist extremist organization" with links to Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Washington is opposed to an expansion of the confrontations and is exerting major pressures to contain the escalation in Gaza and the West Bank, a diplomatic source said.

The U.S. administration is meanwhile relieved that the chances of a bigger Israel-Hezbollah war have diminished, the source told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Thursday.

The Israeli military said it has killed a "significant" Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative in a strike in the Syria-Lebanon border area, while a monitor of Syria's conflict reported four dead in the incident.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, said in a statement that three of its fighters "from the Syrian arena" were killed, while Lebanon's Hezbollah issued a statement saying a fighter was killed, without specifying where.

The United Nations Security Council has extended the mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon for a year, calling for a "de-escalation" of a recent surge in violence between Israel and armed group Hezbollah.

A unanimously adopted resolution said the council "decides to extend the present mandate of UNIFIL until 31st August 2025," referring to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

The U.N. Security Council has demanded a halt to the increasing attacks between Hezbollah and Israeli forces and warned that further escalation "carries the high risk of leading to a widespread conflict."

Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah pulled back after an exchange of heavy fire across the U.N.-drawn boundary between Lebanon and Israel over the weekend. But their decades-old conflict is far from over and regional tensions linked to the war in Gaza are still high.

Paris believes that the Lebanese presidential file is still on the table despite the impressions that it will not be resolved before the end of the current Hezbollah-Israel clashes, a senior French source in Paris said.

MP Ibrahim Kanaan of the Strong Lebanon bloc on Wednesday announced his resignation from the Free Patriotic Movement led by MP Jebran Bassil.

Kanaan had on August 14 announced an initiative aimed at “unifying the ranks” of the FPM.

Israeli warplanes raided Wednesday the Taoumat Niha heights near the town of Ain al-Tineh in the Western Bekaa, hours after an air strike hit a lorry loaded with Hezbollah missiles in the Rasm al-Hadath area in the Baalbek region.

Hezbollah later announced the death of one of its members from the city of Baalbek on the road to Jerusalem.

Egyptian Ambassador to Lebanon Alaa Moussa has said that Cairo is working on sparing Lebanon a bigger war through its efforts to reach a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Noting that “this has been Egypt’s stance from the beginning,” Moussa said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has stressed “the need not to expand the conflict or ignite the southern front.”