India, June 4 -- The ink on Washington's ceasefire announcement was barely dry when Hezbollah dismantled it.

Naim Qassem, the secretary-general of the Iran-backed movement, issued a written statement Thursday rejecting the framework agreed in US-mediated talks between Lebanon and Israel a day earlier, describing it as a roadmap for what he called the annihilation of a section of the Lebanese people and the enslavement of the rest. The resistance, he said, would continue for as long as occupation persists. The deal was dead on arrival - not at the negotiating table, but in the street.

The agreement, announced Wednesday in a joint statement by the United States, Lebanon, and Israel following a fourth round of high-level talks at the Stat...