Donald Trump put it bluntly. “Israel, do not drop those bombs,” the US president told Israel on June 24, 2025, the first morning of a ceasefire that was supposed to end the Twelve-Day War. By then he had already accused both sides of breaking it.
How the truce came together
Trump announced on Monday, June 23, that Iran and Israel had agreed to a “complete and total” ceasefire that would start within hours. His post congratulated both countries for ending what he called “THE 12 DAY WAR”. The timing mattered. Iran had just fired missiles at the Al Udeid base in Qatar, where American troops are stationed. At first neither government confirmed the deal. Al Jazeera’s reporter in Tehran said that an hour on he could still hear interceptions over the capital.
Qatar did the quiet work. The Jerusalem Post cited a diplomatic source saying Trump phoned Qatar’s emir ahead of the deal, and that Vice President JD Vance then talked to the Qatari prime minister. Reuters reported that the prime minister secured Iranian consent to the American plan in a call made after the strike on the Qatar base. Trump had asked Doha for help once Israel said yes. CNN, citing an Iranian official, said at one stage that Tehran had never received a proposal at all.
Trump described a sequence: Iran would stop firing at once, Israel would join at the 12th hour, and at the 24th hour both would accept an end to the war.
Violations within hours
The ceasefire began at 07:00 local time on Tuesday. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, Iran then launched three missiles, and Israel answered by striking a radar in Iran. Trump’s reaction was blunt. He said Israel “needs to calm down” and made it plain he was unhappy with both countries. He said both had broken the agreement, and warned that dropping those bombs would be a “major violation”.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian offered a conditional line: “If the Zionist regime does not violate the ceasefire, Iran will not violate it either.” Netanyahu’s office said Trump “voiced his confidence” in the truce holding.
What each side claimed
Netanyahu went on television for nearly ten minutes to declare “a historic victory” over Iran. He said Israel had wrecked the nuclear sites at Natanz and Isfahan, and the Arak heavy water reactor too, and promised that anyone in Iran who tried to rebuild would meet the same determination. Britain, Germany and France, whose leaders talked on the margins of the NATO summit at The Hague, said it was time for diplomacy and urged Tehran to sit down and negotiate. Russia, through Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said the ceasefire “can only be welcomed” and hoped it would be sustainable.
Not everyone read the outcome the same way. A preliminary US intelligence assessment reported by Reuters on June 25 found that the American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites had set the program back by only months, with the earliest restart possibly one to two months away. That sits awkwardly beside the Trump administration’s claim that the program was essentially eliminated.
Israel’s military chief, Eyal Zamir, said the army would now turn back to Gaza, to recover hostages and “dismantle Hamas’s rule.”
Sources
- share-nodes
- Qatar mediated between Israel and Iran to agree on ending war | The Jerusalem Post
- DW live blog: Israeli military to shift focus back to Gaza after Iran war
