US President Donald Trump claimed a ceasefire between Iran and Israel was “in effect” on Tuesday, after expressing deep frustration with both sides for violating the agreement he brokered.
Israel earlier accused Iran of launching missiles into its airspace after the truce was supposed to take effect. The Iranian military denied firing on Israel.
Mr Trump reacted furiously after an Israel-Iran ceasefire he had brokered and taken credit for was violated within a few hours, ordering Israel to turn its warplanes around midair and abort their planned bombing sorties, which he warned would be a “major violation”.
Israel claimed Iran had been the first to break the truce, saying it had shot down two ballistic missiles heading for northern Israel at about 10.30am, about two and a half hours after the ceasefire was announced.
Nevertheless, on waking in Washington to the news that his truce had been broken so soon, Trump reserved his greatest rancour for Israel, for the scale of its planned retaliation, but also for the amount of bombs Israeli planes had dropped between agreeing the ceasefire on Monday night and it coming into force at 5am GMT on Tuesday.
“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, the biggest load that we’ve seen,” he said, in the strongest-worded public rebuke of Israel of any US president in history.
On his own private online platform, Truth Social, he issued a blunt instruction, writing: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!” After a conversation with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, he returned to the platform to announce: “ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. 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!”
Minutes later, however, explosions were reported by Iranian media around Tehran and in the north of the country.
The US website reported that Netanyahu had told Trump that he could not cancel the strike entirely, and that ultimately “it was decided to significantly scale back the strike, cancel the attack on a large number of targets and strike only one target”. Haaretz reported that the single target was an Iranian radar installation.
Iran denied having broken the truce or launched missiles that Israel claimed to have intercepted mid-morning on Tuesday, but Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said he had ordered immediate retaliation on Tehran.
Trump had used social media to announce the ceasefire just after 5am GMT on Tuesday, asking the warring parties not to violate it. Both sides carried out an intense exchange of fire before signalling their acceptance, but hours after the declaration it remained unclear if the truce would stick.
The all clear was later sounded in the north of Israel but the country’s hardline finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, posted a message on the social media platform X vowing a response, warning: “Tehran will tremble.” Iranian state media suggested the ceasefire had been “imposed on the enemy” after “four waves of attacks on Israeli-occupied territories”.
The Israeli authorities confirmed Iran had fired 20 missiles, and that five Israelis had been killed and more than 22 wounded in the southern city of Beersheba.
Ninety minutes after Trump’s announcement, Israel – which began the war with a surprise attack on 13 June – also acknowledged the truce and claimed victory.
In the hours before the declaration of a ceasefire, Israel carried out some of its most intense airstrikes on Tehran yet, residents said.
The Tasnim News Agency said nine Iranians had been killed in the north of the country, while Israel claimed to have struck missile launchers in western Iran and struck dozens of targets in Tehran in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The prime minister’s office claimed to have killed hundreds of militants in the Basij, a volunteer force used to suppress internal dissent, and targeted an Iranian nuclear scientist, bringing the toll of assassinations of Iranian scientists to at least 15.
