Trump says both Iran and Israel violated a ceasefire
- Last updated: June 24, 2025 | 14:57
President Donald Trump says Israel and Iran violated ceasefire terms with attacks following an early Tuesday deadline to cease hostilities.
Trump in comments to reporters at the White House before departing for the NATO summit at The Hague expressed disappointment about the continued attacks.
"They violated it but Israel violated it too,” Trump said. He added, ”I’m not happy with Israel.”
Earlier, a tentative truce faltered on Tuesday when Israel accused Iran of launching missiles into its airspace after the ceasefire was supposed to take effect and vowed to retaliate.
Iran’s military denied firing on Israel, state media reported - but explosions boomed and sirens sounded across northern Israel midmorning, and an Israeli military official said two Iranian missiles were intercepted.
The conflict, now in its 12th day, began with Israel targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites, saying it could not allow Tehran to develop atomic weapons - and that it feared the Islamic Republic was close. Iran has long maintained that its program is peaceful.
Many worried the war might widen after the US joined the attacks by dropping bunker-buster bombs over the weekend and Israel expanded the kinds of targets it was hitting.
But after Tehran launched a limited retaliatory strike on a US military base in Qatar on Monday, US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire.
Both sides accepted the agreement, but it is now unclear if it will hold.
"Tehran will tremble,” Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich warned on X, raising the specter that the war might continue.
An Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations said Iran launched two missiles at Israel hours into the tenuous ceasefire. Both were intercepted, the official said.
Iranian state television reported that the military denied firing missiles after the start of the ceasefire - while accusing Israel of conducting strikes. It offered no evidence to support the claim of Israeli fire, with the last reports of such attacks coming before dawn.
Part of the difficulty in sorting out the competing claims was that Trump's social media post announcing the ceasefire said Iran would begin holding its fire hours earlier than Israel. He later, however, announced that the ceasefire was in effect, even though the window he initially gave for Israel had not yet closed.
After accusing Iran of violating the ceasefire, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz instructed Israel’s military to resume "the intense operations to attack Tehran and to destroy targets of the regime and terror infrastructure.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had agreed to a bilateral ceasefire with Iran in coordination with Trump, while pledging to respond to any subsequent violation.
He said that Israel had achieved all of its war goals, including removing the threat of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
An announcement on Iranian state TV later said the ceasefire was in effect. So did Trump, who posted: "THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that his country would not fire at Israel if it was not fired upon, but that a "final decision on the cessation of our military operations will be made later.”
To secure the ceasefire, Trump had communicated directly with Netanyahu, according to a senior White House official who insisted on anonymity to discuss the Monday talks. Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff communicated with the Iranians through direct and indirect channels.
The White House has maintained that the US bombing helped get the Israelis to agree to the ceasefire and that the Qatari government helped to broker the deal.
It’s unclear what role Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader, played in the talks. He said earlier on social media that he would not surrender.
The shaky ceasefire came after hostilities spread further across the region.
Associated Press