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Israel and Iran at Odds Over Missile Launches Amid Ceasefire
A tentative truce faltered when Israel vowed to retaliate after saying Iran launched missiles into its airspace more than two hours after the ceasefire was supposed to take effect.
Iran's military denied firing on Israel, but explosions boomed and sirens sounded across northern Israel midmorning. Earlier, both Israel and Iran had accepted the ceasefire plan to end their 12-day war.
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 by U.S. President Donald Trump after Tehran launched a limited retaliatory missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar on Monday.
Between 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.
An Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Iran launched two missiles at Israel hours into the tenuous ceasefire. Both missiles were intercepted, the official said.
“Tehran will tremble,” Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich wrote after the missiles were launched.
Netanyahu accepts ceasefire as Iranian state TV says fighting has stopped
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.”
Israel's Airports Authority said Iran's barrage forced them to close the country's airspace to emergency flights for several hours, with some flights forced to circle over the Mediterranean Sea according to Israeli media.
A handful of emergency flights had started arriving and departing over the past few days, but by early Tuesday, Qatar Airways resumed its flights after Qatar shut down its airspace over the Iranian attack on Al Udeid Air Base. Flight-tracking data showed commercial aircraft again flying in Qatari airspace, signaling Doha believed the threat had passed.
In Israel, at least 28 people have been killed and more than 1,000 wounded in the war. Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 974 people and wounded 3,458 others, according to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists.
The group identified 387 civilians and 268 security force personnel among those killed.
The U.S. has evacuated some 250 American citizens and their immediate family members from Israel by government, military and charter flights that began over the weekend, a State Department official said. There are roughly 700,000 American citizens, most of them dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, believed to be in Israel.