After Ceasefire With Israel: Iran Says 'We Didn't Fire Missiles'
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, June 24, (AP): Iran's military denied Tuesday that it fired missiles at Israel hours after a ceasefire was supposed to begin, Iranian state television reported.
The report quoted the general staff of Iran's armed forces, which includes its regular military and its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, as making the denial. Israel reported missile fire some two and a half hours after the ceasefire began.
Israeli officials have ordered a strike on Iran in response, though there's no immediate report of an attack there.
A tentative truce faltered Tuesday as Israel said Iran had launched missiles into its airspace more than two hours after a ceasefire went into effect and vowed to retaliate.
Explosions boomed and sirens sounded across northern Israel midmorning on Tuesday, after both Israel and Iran on Tuesday accepted the ceasefire plan to end the 12-day war roiling the Middle East.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called the missiles a violation of the ceasefire and instructed Israel's military to resume "the intense operations to attack Tehran and to destroy targets of the regime and terror infrastructure.'
The shaky agreement was announced early Tuesday morning after Tehran launched a retaliatory limited missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar on Monday.
Between U.S. President Donald Trump's post and the start of the ceasefire, Israel launched a blitz of airstrikes targeting sites across Iran before dawn and Iran replied with an onslaught of missiles that killed at least four people in Israel early Tuesday morning. Israel said it had intercepted the midmorning barrage of missiles that came hours into the truce.
"Tehran will tremble' Israel's Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich wrote on X after the missiles were launched. The midmorning barrage of missiles came after regional leaders, including in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, welcomed Trump's announcement of the ceasefire. "THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!' he wrote on his social media platform Tuesday morning.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had agreed to a bilateral ceasefire with Iran in coordination with Trump, pledging to respond to any subsequent violation.
He said he had told Israel's security cabinet that the country had achieved all of its war goals, 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.
Iranian officials did not comment either after Trump announced the ceasefire or Israel claimed it had intercepted additional missiles hours after it supposedly went into effect.
Hours earlier, Iran's top diplomat had 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.' The shaky ceasefire followed a day of hostilities spreading further across the region. Iran launched a limited missile attack Monday on a U.S. military base in Qatar, retaliating for earlier American bombing of its nuclear sites.
The U.S. was warned by Iran in advance, and there were no casualties. Israel's military said Iran launched 20 missiles toward Israel before the ceasefire began on Tuesday morning.
Police said they damaged at least three densely packed residential buildings in the city of Beersheba. First responders said they retrieved four bodies from one building and were searching for more. Earlier, the Fire and Rescue service said five bodies were found before revising the number downward.
At least 20 people were injured. Outside, the shells of burned out cars littered the streets. Broken glass and rubble covered the area. Hundreds of emergency workers gathered to search for anyone else trapped in the buildings.
Police said some people were injured even while inside their apartments' reinforced safe rooms, which are meant to withstand rockets and shrapnel but not direct hits from ballistic missiles.
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Iran must face reality
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It said they "possessed decades of accumulated experience in the development of nuclear weapons' and included specialists in chemistry, materials and explosives as well as physicists. Zarka spoke Monday to AP. On Tuesday, Iran state TV reported the death of another Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohammad Reza Sedighi Saber, in an Israeli strike, after he'd survived an earlier attack that killed his 17-year-old son on June 13. Experts say that decades of Iranian work on nuclear energy - and, Western powers allege, nuclear weapons - has given the country reserves of know-how and scientists who could continue any work toward building warheads to fit on Iran's ballistic missiles. "Blueprints will be around and, you know, the next generation of Ph.D. students will be able to figure it out," said Mark Fitzpatrick, who specialized in nuclear non-proliferation as a former U.S. diplomat. Bombing nuclear facilities "or killing the people will set it back some period of time. 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The Israeli ambassador said: "I do think that people that will be asked to be part of a future nuclear weapon program in Iran will think twice about it.' Israel has long been suspected of killing Iranian nuclear scientists but previously didn't claim responsibility as it did this time. In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for killing its top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, with a remote-controlled machine gun. "It delayed the program but they still have a program. So it doesn't work,' said Paris-based analyst Lova Rinel, with the Foundation for Strategic Research think tank. "It's more symbolic than strategic." Without saying that Israel killed Fakhrizadeh, the Israeli ambassador said "Iran would have had a bomb a long time ago' were it not for repeated setbacks to its nuclear program - some of which Iran attributed to Israeli sabotage. "They have not reached the bomb yet,' Zarka said. "Every one of these accidents has postponed a little bit the program.' 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