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Donald Trump lashed out at both Israel and Iran as he battled to preserve the fragile truce agreed after 12 days of war between two of the Middle East’s most powerful militaries.
The ceasefire brokered by the US president appeared to be holding on Tuesday evening despite what Trump denounced as violations by both sides, which led him to issue a rare rebuke of the Israeli government.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” he told reporters at the White House before leaving for a Nato summit in the Netherlands.
The outbreak of a full-blown war between Israel and Iran has long been one of the region’s worst-case scenarios amid fears it would spill across borders and engulf the entire region.
Trump added that he was “really unhappy” with Israel in particular, but insisted that “the ceasefire is in effect”.
He had triumphantly declared the end of hostilities between the two countries on Monday.
The president promised to usher in new era of peace in the region after 48 hours in which the US claimed to have destroyed Iran’s principal nuclear sites and Tehran staged a largely symbolic retaliation against the largest US air base in the Middle East.
But in the hours before the ceasefire took effect early in the morning, Israel said it had killed “hundreds” of Iranian security personnel in bombing raids in Tehran, while an Iranian missile pierced Israeli air defences, hitting a residential building in Beersheba, killing at least four people.
After the truce came into force, Iran fired three further missiles, according to Israeli officials. The attacks left no casualties, but sparked outrage in Israel, which dispatched bombers in retaliation and struck an Iranian radar station.
“ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” Trump posted on his Truth Social network as the US mobilised its diplomatic efforts to halt the conflict. “IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”
After a conversation between the US president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel said it had “refrained from additional attacks”.
Netanyahu’s office added: “President Trump expressed his great appreciation for Israel, which achieved all of its objectives for the war, as well as his confidence in the stability of the ceasefire.”
Trump said on the flight to the summit that he thought the ceasefire would be in place “for a long time”, adding that he respected “very greatly” Israel’s decision to “hold back the planes”.
While maintaining that Iran had also breached the truce, he offered conciliatory gestures towards Tehran’s leaders, adding that the country was “going to do well and . . . not going to have a nuclear weapon”.
The president said he was not looking for regime change in Iran, despite floating that possibility on Sunday.
“I don’t want it. I’d like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible,” he told reporters on Air Force One.
“Regime change takes chaos and ideally we don’t want to see so much chaos. So we’ll see how it goes.”
Trump also said China could “now continue to purchase oil from Iran”, in an apparent reversal of policy after his administration spent months imposing sanctions on Chinese refineries for buying Iranian crude.
Vice-President JD Vance sought to portray Trump’s rapidly shifting positions on the crisis in the Middle East as a “foreign policy doctrine” that would “change the country (and the world) for the better”. He added that the focus on US interests would involve “no mission creep” or protracted, ill defined ‘nation building’ BS”.
In a move Trump hailed as “great”, oil prices fell as Tuesday’s ceasefire appeared to take hold, trading 6.1 per cent lower at $67.13 a barrel.
Crude had dropped sharply following Iran’s attack on the US air base in Doha, which traders interpreted as designed to avoid a further response from the US.
Netanyahu launched Israel’s military campaign against Iran nearly two weeks ago, vowing to eliminate what he said was a threat from Tehran’s missile and nuclear programmes. Iran has maintained its nuclear programme is peaceful.
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