Trump says both Israel and Iran violated ceasefire: ‘Bring your pilots home, do not drop bombs. If you do, it is…’
Expressing disappointment over the continued attacks, US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that ‘they violated it but Israel violated it too,’ adding, 'I'm not happy with Israel'. He was departing for the NATO summit at The Hague when he made these comments.
US President Donald Trump said that both Israel and Iran had violated the ceasefire with attacks following an early Tuesday deadline to cease hostilities between the two nations, news agency AP reported.
Expressing disappointment over the continued attacks, Trump told reporters at the White House that “they violated it but Israel violated it too,” adding, “I'm not happy with Israel.”
The US president was departing for the NATO summit at The Hague when he made these comments.
In a message posted on Truth Social, Trump asked Israel to call its pilots back and stop launching attacks at Iran. “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!” he wrote in his post.
"I gotta get Israel to calm down now," Trump said as he left the White House. “Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I've never seen before, the biggest load that we've seen,” a Reuters report quoted him as saying.
"We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f*** they're doing."
A faltered truce
Mere hours after Trump announced a ceasefire between the two warring nations on Tuesday, Israel accused Iran of launching missiles into its airspace, which the Iranian military denied, an AP report said.
However, the report also said that 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 Defence 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.”
According to the AP report, 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 in line with military regulations 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 on X after the missiles were launched.
Israel-Iran conflict
The conflict between Israel and Iran started on 13 June when the former launched a massive airstrike on Iranian military and nuclear sites, codenamed “Operation Rising Lion”. In retaliation, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) initiated a large-scale drone and missile campaign called ‘Operation True Promise 3’, targeting Israeli fighter jet fuel production facilities and energy supply centres.
Tensions escalated further after the US conducted precision airstrikes early Sunday morning on three key Iranian nuclear facilities under “Operation Midnight Hammer”. Iran retaliated by launching multiple missiles at US military installations in Qatar and Iraq, including the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar – the largest US military base in the region.
(With inputs from agencies)
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