BEIRUT — President Trump excoriated both Israel and Iran over what he said were violations of the surprise ceasefire between the two nations and that was set to begin Tuesday morning, underscoring the tenuousness of a deal meant to bring a denouement to the fiercest confrontation in the belligerents’ decades-long enmity.
“We have two countries that have been fighting for so hard and so long they don’t know what the f—they are doing,” said Trump in an enraged briefing to journalists ahead of his trip to the NATO summit.
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The details of the ceasefire — which was brokered by Trump and Qatar’s leadership hours after a limited volley of Iranian ballistic missiles targeted the United States’ Al Udeid Air Base on Monday — remain unclear, but it had spurred cautious optimism across the Middle East.
Yet its fragility was emphasized when Israel accused Iran of breaking the agreement mere hours after it was supposed to take effect, with the Israeli military saying it intercepted a pair of ballistic missiles fired from Iran and that it would respond.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement he instructed the Israeli military “to continue the intensive operation to strike in Tehran and thwart regime targets and terror infrastructure in Tehran.”
Iran’s General Staff of the Armed Forces Abdolrahim Mousavi denied any launch after the truce’s beginning according to Iranian official media. A later IRGC statement said 14 missiles were fired “in the last minutes” before the ceasefire.
A visibly enraged Trump castigated both sides for the violations, saying he was not happy with either country.
“These guys gotta calm down,” he said in a briefing to journalists before flying out to the NATO summit in Europe. “I don’t like the fact that Israel went out this morning at all, and I’m going to see if I can stop it.”
Shortly after, he took to Truth Social to tell Israel to “BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”
Later he wrote from Air Force One that “all planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Israeli officials later told reporters that warplanes carried out a small strike against an Iranian radar north of Tehran around the time Trump was talking to reporters.
“Following President Trump’s conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel refrained from additional attacks,” said a statement from the office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The war began June 13, when Israel launched a wide-scale campaign targeting Iran’s military leadership and nuclear facilities, in a bid to destroy what it said was the existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes.
The Israeli government confirmed its agreement to the ceasefire proposal on Tuesday morning, saying in a statement it had fulfilled its objectives to eliminate “dual immediate existential threats from itself — both in the nuclear and ballistic missile fields.”
“In Operation Rising Lion, the State of Israel achieved great historical achievements and placed itself on par with the world powers,” the statement said.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, the governmental body in charge of military affairs, took a similarly triumphant tone in its statement agreeing to the ceasefire, saying that Iran’s victory “forced the enemy to regret and accept defeat and unilaterally halt its attack.” It added that Iranian forces will remain “with their hands on the trigger, ready to deliver a decisive and regrettable response to any act of aggression by the enemy.”
Both sides took the opportunity to land powerful blows before the scheduled start of the cessation.
Israel pounded the Iranian capital with a massive barrage against multiple neighborhoods that residents said was unprecedented in its ferocity over the 12-day war. That tactic — to launch a major attack at the 11th hour before a ceasefire — has been employed by Israel in past conflicts, but which infuriated Trump, who said he “didn’t like the fact that Israel unloaded right after I made the deal” and blamed Israel for violating it.
“They didn’t have to unload… You know, when I say OK now you have 12 hours, you don’t go out to the first hour, just drop everything you have on,” he said.
Iran gave in kind and dispatched waves of missiles. One hit an apartment block in southern Israel, killing at least four people, according to Israeli health authorities. That too drew Trump’s ire.
“I don’t like the fact that the retaliation was really strong. But in all fairness, Israel unloaded a lot,” he said.
Iran’s attacks on Israel have killed 28 people and wounded more than 1,000 others, including the victims of Tuesday’s strike. Israel’s campaign on Iran has killed 610 people and wounded 4,746 since the war began, according to Iran’s health ministry.
That a ceasefire was brokered at all came as a surprise. In the hours before Trump’s announcement, Iran lobbed missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military installation in the region with some 10,000 U.S. troops and its Central Command headquarters
But although it initially triggered fears of a rapid expansion of the conflict, Iran’s attack proved to be relatively subdued, less the “mighty and powerful response” it vowed before the barrage than a pre-choreographed, face-saving gesture designed to be largely symbolic. Trump said Monday that Iran had actually warned the U.S. of the attack in advance.
Qatar said the attack was a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty and airspace, and promised it would respond in an appropriate manner. Instead, in a measure of the urgency felt by Persian Gulf nations to prevent a wider conflagration, the Qatari emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani coordinated with Trump and Vice President JD Vance to end the hostilities, according to an official briefed on the talks and who requested anonymity to be able to speak freely.
Around 6 p.m. Eastern, Trump posted on his social media platform there would be a ceasefire and “an Official END to the 12 DAY WAR.”
“This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!”
In Tehran on Tuesday, there was a mood of tentative joy at the end of what had been a bruising few weeks for the capital. Still, many expressed the feeling of being betrayed by the international community.
“Iran was left with very few options,” said Venus Shahri, a 40-year-old teacher from Tehran.
Others said that although they were disappointed by the defensive capabilities of Iran’s army, they wanted to double down on the fight.
“We shouldn’t have accepted the ceasefire offer at all,” said Jaber Khadiri, 55. “We must have nuclear weapons. There’s no other choice.”
