Explosions rang out in Tehran on Tuesday despite U.S. President Donald Trump saying Israel had called airstrikes off at his command to preserve an hours-old ceasefire.
Two witnesses reached by telephone in the Iranian capital said they heard two loud explosions. Israeli army radio said Israel had struck an Iranian radar site near Tehran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had carried out no further strikes after Netanyahu spoke to Trump.
Trump, en route to a NATO summit in the Netherlands, had said Israel had called off its attack, after he rebuked Israel with an obscenity in an extraordinary outburst at an ally whose military campaign he had joined two days earlier.
“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!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
That followed a post in which he had said: “Israel. Do not drop those bombs. If you do it it is a major violation. Bring your pilots home, now!”
Before departing the White House, Trump told reporters he was unhappy with both sides for violating the ceasefire, but particularly unhappy with Israel, which he said had “unloaded” shortly after agreeing the deal.
“I’ve got to get Israel to calm down now,” Trump said. Iran and Israel had been fighting “so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing.”
Israeli media reported that Trump had spoken to Netanyahu by phone. A reporter for Axios said Netanyahu had told Trump that Israel would scale back the bombing mission rather than cancel it.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had said earlier on Tuesday that he had ordered the military to mount new strikes on targets in Tehran in response to what he said were Iranian missiles fired in a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire.
Iran denied launching any missiles and said Israel’s attacks had continued for an hour and a half beyond the time the ceasefire was meant to start.
Despite the initial reports of violations, in both countries there was a palpable sense of relief that a path out of war had been charted, 12 days after Israel launched it with a surprise attack, and two days after Trump joined in with strikes on Iranian nuclear targets.
“We’re happy, very happy. Who mediated or how it happened doesn’t matter. The war is over. It never should have started in the first place,” Reza Sharifi, 38, heading back to Tehran from Rasht on the Caspian Sea where he had relocated with his family to escape strikes on the capital, said by telephone.
Arik Daimant, a software engineer in Tel Aviv, said: “Regrettably, it’s a bit too late for me and my family, because our house back here was totally destroyed in the recent bombings last Sunday. But as they say: ‘better late than never’, and I hope this ceasefire is a new beginning.”
Trump had announced the ceasefire with a post on Truth Social: “THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!”
Israel launched a surprise attack on June 13, hitting Iranian nuclear sites and killing the top echelon of its military command in the worst threat faced by the Islamic Republic since war with Iraq in the 1980s.
During the campaign, Israel said it was prepared to topple Iran’s clerical rulers if necessary to achieve its aims. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and denies trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Iranian officials say hundreds of people have been killed in airstrikes. Full information about the extent of the damage cannot be confirmed independently, with media tightly controlled.
Retaliatory missile strikes have killed 28 people in Israel, the first time large numbers of Iranian missiles have penetrated its defenses. (Japan Times)
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