Trump says Iran and Israel have agreed to a phased-in ceasefire over next 24 hours
Trump's announcement comes just before he leaves Tuesday for a NATO summit in the Netherlands, where he will likely make the case that his mix of aggression and diplomacy has succeeded. Never shy to suggest he deserves the Nobel Peace Price, Trump went so far as to give the conflict between Israel and Iran the name of the '12 day war,' a title that seemed to reference the 1967 'Six Day War' in which Israel fought a group of Arab countries including Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
As Trump described it, the ceasefire would start with Iran and then be joined by Israel 12 hours later, with the president writing that the respective sides would 'remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL.' The phased-in ceasefire was set to begin at roughly midnight Washington time and culminate within 24 hours.
'This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn't, and never will!' Trump said.
The exact terms of the ceasefire other than the timeline provided by the Trump remained to be seen. On Sunday, the Trump administration had insisted that Iran abandon its program to enrich uranium for possible use in nuclear weapons as a condition of any lasting peace. While the bombings of the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan facilities were a powerful show of force, it remained uncertain just how much nuclear material Iran still possessed and what its ambitions would be going forward.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Indian Express
34 minutes ago
- New Indian Express
Israel and Iran accept US-brokered ceasefire, ending 12-day conflict that roiled Middle East
BEERSHEBA: Israel and Iran on Tuesday accepted a ceasefire plan proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump to end their 12-day war that roiled the Middle East, after Tehran launched a retaliatory limited missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar. The acceptance of the deal by both sides came after Tehran launched a final onslaught of missiles targeting Israel that killed at least five people early Tuesday morning, while Israel launched a blitz of airstrikes targeting sites across Iran before dawn. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had agreed to a bilateral ceasefire with Iran in coordination with Trump. Netanyahu said that he had reported to Israel's security cabinet Monday night that Israel had achieved all of its war goals in the 12-day operation against Iran, including removing the threat of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Israel also damaged Iran's military leadership and several government sites and achieved control over Tehran's skies, Netanyahu said. 'Israel will respond forcefully to any violation of the ceasefire,' Netanyahu said. Heavy Israeli strikes continued in Iranian cities until shortly before 4 a.m., followed by Iranian barrages that sent Israelis hurrying into bomb shelters as the sun rose, killing at least five people and injuring eight others, Israel's Magen David Adom rescue services said. Writing over an hour after a deadline passed for Iran to halt its attacks, Trump wrote on Truth Social: 'THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!' Iranian state television reported that the ceasefire went into effect at 7:30 a.m., but Iranian officials have not commented since Trump's announcement. Hours earlier Iran's top diplomat said the country was prepared to halt airstrikes. 'As of now, there is NO 'agreement' on any ceasefire or cessation of military operations,' Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in a post on X. 'However, provided that the Israeli regime stops its illegal aggression against the Iranian people no later than 4 am Tehran time, we have no intention to continue our response afterwards.' Araghchi added: 'The final decision on the cessation of our military operations will be made later.'
Time of India
41 minutes ago
- Time of India
Oil falls 5.3% as Iran's response to US strikes spares energy assets
Oil fell as Iran's retaliatory strikes on US bases in Qatar were less severe than investors feared, allaying some concerns that the conflict would immediately disrupt supplies from West Asia. Futures for West Texas Intermediate fell 5.3 per cent to $69.9 a barrel, while Brent oil futures fell by similar amounts after Iran launched six missiles toward US bases in Qatar, according to an Axios report. Traders had initially feared that Iran's retaliatory response would involve a closure of the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint, through which about a fifth of the world's oil passes. Earlier in the session, prices weakened after Trump warned against rising oil prices in a social media post, urging the Energy Department to facilitate more drilling "now." Energy Secretary Chris Wright replied, "We're on it." Crude's gains had begun fading even before Trump's post. While there was initial concern that Iran would interfere with energy flows in retaliation for US air attacks on its nuclear sites over the weekend, those fears have ebbed somewhat. Tehran warned earlier that the strikes would trigger "everlasting consequences," and Reuters reported that the US sees a high risk of a strike against US forces soon. "This appears to me well orchestrated, Iran hits an empty US base, plenty of warning ahead with airspace closure and guidance for shelter. Iran gets its face saving response and stays clear of the Straits of Hormuz," said Harry Tchilinguirian, group head of research at Onyx Capital Group.
Indian Express
44 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Israel-Iran conflict: After the ceasefire, some questions that loom large for the Americans
With indications of an apparent truce coming into effect after Iran launched symbolic missile strikes on a US base in Qatar on Monday (June 23), as part of its avowed revenge against Washington for bombing its facilities at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz a day earlier, there are at least three questions that loom large. * What is the bomb damage assessment of the three sites, especially Fordow, and how significantly has it degraded the Iranian nuclear program? * Where is the highly enriched uranium (enriched to 60 per cent) that seems to have been moved out of Fordow before the US strikes took place Sunday? * And, does the calling of the truce, which at least the Iranians and the Americans seem to have wanted way more than the Israelis at this stage, deter the Iranians, or actually push the regime in Tehran towards making a bomb as an extreme deterrence measure? When the dust settles, there might be a few more questions that need to be addressed: What was the intelligence input that the Trump administration relied on before it decided to bomb Iran. Or was it more a Weapons of Mass Destruction-style witch hunt of the sort that the US pursued against Iraq in 2003? This question is significant, given that the US intelligence community still assesses that Iran has not restarted their nuclear weapons programme, which they suspended in 2003, and there has been no contrary claims by the Trump administration that the US intelligence has changed on that count at all. Even if the Iranians were moving ahead with enriching more uranium, they still were far away from actually being able to get a nuclear warhead. So, what really was the trigger for the US to actually carry out these strikes, other than pure opportunism? An emerging view is that the Americans simply took advantage of the fact that Iran was much weaker now. The Lebanon-based Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen and the Palestinian militant group Hamas (known as Iran's 'Axis of Resistance') are badly degraded, and Israel had taken out most of Iran's air defences. A strike on a badly weakened foe, even when it was perhaps not needed, is not new to the Americans. Just ask the Iraqis, or the people of Japan. And, finally, what are the diplomatic efforts that would push Iran to not develop a bomb and does Trump's claim of a 'forever truce' really stand? Those are still big, looming questions. According to the Washington DC-based Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan membership organisation dedicated to promoting public understanding of effective arms control policies, effective diplomacy is the only viable option for sustainably reducing Iran's proliferation risk. And for this, unless Trump and his negotiating team need to demonstrate willingness to accord more flexibility and realism regarding the future of Iran's nuclear activities, the proliferation risk will continue. Uranium enrichment is really the key point of contention. In the run up to the conflict, early comments from Steve Witkoff, the American Special Envoy for the Middle East, seemed to suggest Iran could retain a limited uranium enrichment program under strict monitoring. Reports on a written proposal the United States shared with Iran in June, quoted by the Arms Control Association, also seemed to indicate some flexibility on the question of enrichment: that Iran would retain limited domestic enrichment, which would phase out with the creation of a regional enrichment consortium. Trump's subsequent utterances and public rhetoric, though, presented a more maximalist approach to a deal: the demand for the complete elimination of the Iranian enrichment programme. That is unlikely to lead to any progress on future negotiations. While Trump claimed after the strikes on Sunday that Iran's uranium stockpile was 'obliterated', the International Atomic Energy Agency (the global nuclear watchdog) has said that the claim could not be verified at this stage and that it is not sure of the whereabouts of Iran's official stock of 400kg of highly enriched uranium, concentrated to 60 per cent purity. If Iran has hidden enrichment centrifuges, it could make weapons-grade fissile material (usually 90 per cent) relatively quickly. That would be enough for around ten bombs. Iran can also make bombs using the 60 per cent enriched uranium, but these would be cruder and will have to be much bigger in size. For all practical purposes, intelligence inputs are actually very important for ascertaining all this, and even the IAEA assessment is predicated on intelligence inputs. What is also clear is that after the '12-day War', the attempt for regime change in Iran, and repeated invocations of this by Trump and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, is still a pipedream. According to Arash Azizi, visiting fellow at Boston University's Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, while Israel's relentless war on Iran is likely to fundamentally reshape the trajectory of the latter's history, this is not likely to be a regime change as it's typically imagined — a swift replacement of the Islamic Republic with a democracy. 'More plausibly, the war will accelerate a process that was quietly underway long before Israeli jets took off on June 13 to bombard Iran. In this transformation, Iran will turn from an ideological actor to an interest-focused authoritarian state,' Azizi wrote in a article for Foreign Policy. Also, America's record on regime change in West Asia is quite patchy, whether in Iraq or Syria or Libya. It is easy to carry out military strikes and dismantle regimes, but the big challenge is what happens in the days and weeks, months and years afterward. For the record, one of the reasons Trump's MAGA base voted for him was his promise of ending wars and not getting into fresh ones. A prolonged engagement in Iran, with American boots on the ground, is the last thing Trump needs at this point in time. The only problem in all of this is that Israel, which was the last to agree to the ceasefire deal, is pretty much setting the agenda for the region and has pretty much lassoed the Americans into it. It remains to be seen if the Trump administration can extricate itself out of its blinders-on strategy on West Asia, orchestrated and conducted by Tel Aviv.
