Donald Trump has claimed that Israel and Iran have negotiated a ceasefire, halting a two-week-old war that has killed hundreds in tit-for-tat strikes by Israeli warplanes and Iranian ballistic missiles.
Just after 5am Irish time on Tuesday, the US president posted to social media that the ceasefire was now in effect and asked both countries not to violate it.
However, confusion over the timeline of the agreement continued, with no immediate confirmation from Israeli officials and further exchanges of fire into Tuesday morning.
Iran launched several salvoes of ballistic missiles at Israel early on Tuesday – before the ceasefire came into effect – with at least one of the missiles directly hitting a residential building in Beersheba, killing four and injuring 22 more, emergency services said.
The launches came after 4am Tehran time, the time that Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said it would end its attacks if Israel stopped its bombings. Overnight, Israel had carried out some of its most intense airstrikes on Tehran yet, residents said.
Fighting often intensifies in the lead-up to ceasefire deadlines, but the absence of official statements left it unclear what the continuing strikes would mean for a truce.
Trump said he hoped that the ceasefire would lead to an end of what he called the “12 Day War”.
“CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE!” Trump wrote on the Truth Social platform. “It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE.”
Hours earlier, Reuters reported that three Israeli officials had signalled Israel was looking to wrap up its strikes on Iran soon and had passed the message on to the US. On Sunday, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “very, very close to completing” its goals.
Iranian state TV said that a ceasefire was coming into effect, which it described as a being “imposed on the enemy.”
Trump’s initial ceasefire announcement appeared to suggest that Israel and Iran would have time to complete missions that were underway, at which point the ceasefire would begin in a staged process, but commentators continued to question the choreography of the agreement, even after it reportedly came into effect.
“Does Israel have 12 more hours to strike based on his first announcement? Or are they supposed to be in ceasefire now?” asked Daniel Shapiro, a former Pentagon official for Middle Eastern affairs and ex-ambassador to Israel.
An Iranian social media user in Tehran wrote that the Israeli strikes on the capital city were “intense” in the run-up to the announced ceasefire.
“The bombardment tonight in Tehran was extremely intense. For a full hour the explosions wouldn’t stop. We are a completely defenseless people,” the user wrote.
The ceasefire announcement came after the US joined the Israel-led campaign by striking Iranian uranium enrichment facilities early on Sunday morning, prompting Iran on Monday to launch a choreographed retaliatory strike against a US airbase in Qatar. Trump had called the Iranian attack a “very weak response” and said he would renew efforts to negotiate a peace between Israel and Iran.
In an online post, Trump earlier thanked Iran for “giving us early notice” of a missile barrage against the US airbase in Qatar and said that no Americans had been killed or harmed in the attack.
His remarks suggested that the Iranian response was carefully coordinated to allow Tehran and Washington an off-ramp after the US joined in Israeli strikes target Iranian uranium enrichment facilities in order to cripple Iran’s nuclear program before the country could produce a bomb.
Trump advisers privately said they believed Iran would accept the US president’s olive branch in order to avoid continued strikes by Israel, and because they had inflicted symbolic retaliation.
The ceasefire announcement also appeared an effort to reframe the metrics for success for the US operation targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, after it was unclear whether the deeply buried Fordow site had been destroyed.
In a post on social media, Trump said the Iranian sites had been “totally destroyed”.
But the UN’s nuclear chief, Rafael Grossi, said: “At this time, no one, including the [International Atomic Energy Agency], is in a position to assess the underground damage at Fordow.”
Trump advisers tried to suggest it did not matter if Fordow was destroyed because Iran had been forced to the negotiating table – even though that would mark a departure from what Trump said he was aiming for over the weekend.
Still, the actual damage to the nuclear facilities remains an important question ahead of possible talks between US and Iran – expected to be led by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff – as it would affect Witkoff’s negotiating leverage.
Other senior administration officials claimed victory. Vice-president JD Vance on Monday evening claimed Iran was “incapable of building a nuclear weapon with the equipment they have because we destroyed it”.
The US attack followed a wave of missile strikes between Israel and Iran, with Israel bombing the notorious Evin prison, and came after Trump raised the prospect of regime change in Tehran. But as of Monday evening, senior US officials had suggested that the Iranian attack on Qatar was designed to avoid a further escalation that could lead to an all-out war which could imperil the Iranian regime.
Trump said 13 of the 14 missiles fired by Iran had been shot down and that one was allowed to hit its target because it was “headed in a non-threatening direction”.
In a statement posted on the X social platform while the missiles were in the air, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said: “We neither initiated the war nor were we seeking it. But we will not leave aggression against the great Iran without answer.”
Iranian armed forces said the barrage was not directed at Qatar itself, which it described as a “friendly and brotherly” regime.
Emmanuel Macron expressed solidarity with Qatar, but he also warned that the US strikes against Iran had no “framework of legality”, adding that any regime change in the country should be a result of the will of the people, not of bombs.
Over the first 11 days of its attacks on Iran, the governing coalition of Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that regime change was a formal war aim, though the prime minister has said it would be a welcome outcome, and called on Iran’s people to rise up against the regime in Tehran. On Monday, however, members of his cabinet openly called for the overthrow of Iran’s theocratic regime.
The science and technology minister, Gila Gamleil, a leading member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, wrote on X, according to a translation by the Haaretz newspaper: “As long as the Nazi ayatollah regime sits in Tehran, it has the potential to rebuild its destructive capabilities.”
He added: “Therefore, we must continue the campaign until the conditions are created for revolution and the removal of the ayatollah regime.”
He signed off with the slogan: “Next year in Tehran.” Iran’s judiciary confirmed the damage to Evin but, through its mouthpiece, the Mizan news agency, said: “The situation in the prison is under control and all means have been used to manage the prison complex.”
A Washington-based group, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, said: “Many families of current detainees have expressed deep concern about the safety and condition of their loved ones held inside the prison.”
Evin is not just used by the regime to incarcerate Iranian dissidents, but also foreigners and dual nationals who have been seized over the past several years for use as hostages and bargaining chips.
