US President Donald Trump on Monday announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran after a nearly two-week war between the two countries.
Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said that the ceasefire will take effect just after midnight on the East Coast of the United States, with the war slated to officially end 12 hours later.
“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 wrote in the post.
Neither Israel nor Iran immediately confirmed Trump’s announcement that they had agreed to a ceasefire.
Both countries have been indirectly fighting since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against Israel by Tehran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas, and they have traded direct fire intermittently since 2024. But after Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this month, the two longtime Middle East adversaries have launched volleys of drones and missiles against each other.
Earlier on Monday, Israel launched another round of airstrikes on Iran targeting the country’s north and areas surrounding the nation’s capital of Tehran. And an hour before the ceasefire was announced, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote on X that “those who know the Iranian people and their history know that the Iranian nation isn’t a nation that surrenders.”
The Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York and the Israeli Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It is unclear how quickly both sides will begin complying with the tenets of the ceasefire, whose terms were not detailed in Trump’s social media post.
A senior White House official, granted anonymity to share sensitive details of negotiations, said Israel has agreed to the ceasefire — so long as it is not attacked further by Iran — as has Iran. The official added that Trump communicated directly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff spoke with the Iranians through direct and indirect channels, and that the Qataris were key in brokering the deal.
Additionally, the official said that the U.S. strike on Iran on Saturday made the deal “possible and agreeable, especially by the Israelis.”
The U.S. initially sought to stay out of the conflict but waded into the fighting on Saturday by bombing key Iranian nuclear sites, including Fordo and Natanz. In response, Iran gave the United States advance notice it would strike a major U.S. airbase in Qatar, which it did on Monday.
Trump’s enthusiastic announcement marked the latest wild swing from the president on Iran. After suggesting for months that a deal was close between the U.S. and Tehran to dramatically curb Iran’s nuclear program, Trump gave his full support to Israel’s June 13 attack, which launched the current conflict. Less than two weeks later, he opted to involve the U.S. directly, authorizing Saturday’s bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities.
Following Iran’s highly choreographed and relatively limited response on Monday, Trump shifted back into favoring diplomacy once more. He struck a conciliatory tone, couching Iran’s attack not as an escalation of conflict but as a way for the country to get “it all out of their ‘system.’”
It was a sentiment echoed by Vice President JD Vance, who framed the ceasefire as a victory for both Israel and Iran. In an interview on Fox News Monday Evening, Vance adopted Trump’s “12 Day War” moniker for the nearly two-week conflict and framed it as an “important reset moment for the entire region.”
Source: Politico
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