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A fragile cease-fire between Israel and Iran appeared to be holding on Tuesday, as Israel’s military lifted emergency restrictions imposed during the conflict and Iran’s president hailed “the end of a 12-day war that was imposed on the Iranian people” in an address to the nation.
The nascent truce came hours after President Trump lashed out at both countries for launching attacks after he had announced an end to their brief war. Within hours, however, Mr. Trump had praised both countries for seeking an end to the fighting and taken credit for delivering it.
“Both Israel and Iran wanted to stop the War, equally!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media as he flew to a NATO summit in the Netherlands. Referring to U.S. airstrikes over the weekend, he added, “It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR!”
Earlier, in remarks to reporters punctuated by an expletive, Mr. Trump said he was “not happy” with either side. He sharply criticized Israel for retaliating for an Iranian missile attack “right after we made the deal,” and said that the two adversaries didn’t know what they were doing.
On Air Force One, Mr. Trump said he had spoken with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Tuesday morning and was “firm and direct” about what needed to happen to sustain the cease-fire.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office said that Iran had fired missiles after the cease-fire took effect, and that the Israeli military had retaliated by striking a radar system near Tehran. Iran’s military denied violating the cease-fire, and Mr. Netanyahu’s statement indicated that Israel’s retaliation was limited.
Even as they offered competing versions of events, their explanations suggested that the two sides — both of which claim to have prevailed in the conflict — want the cease-fire to hold.
Here’s what else to know:
Global reaction: The cease-fire announcement was welcomed, albeit cautiously, by world leaders. “If a cease-fire has indeed been achieved, then that can only be welcomed,” said Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman. President Emmanuel Macron of France praised the announcement but warned that “the situation remains volatile and unstable.”
Trading fire: Iran and Israel both mounted attacks overnight, and then presented competing narratives about who was at fault for the back and forth. At least four people were killed when a missile fired from Iran hit an apartment building in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. In Tehran, residents said they endured a night of the heaviest airstrikes since the war began June 13.
Diplomacy: As Qatar and the other Gulf nations watched the war unfold over the past two weeks, they worried that an escalation could result in a widening conflict, or Iran’s targeting their strategic energy resources. So even before Iran fired missiles at it on Monday, Qatar engaged quietly with Israel’s American allies and with the Iranian government to lay the groundwork for a truce. Read more ›
Investors relieved: Stocks rose and oil prices fell for a second day as markets calmed after a bout of volatility stemming from the conflict in the Middle East.
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Cancellations and confusion plagued passengers traveling to and from the Middle East on Tuesday after an Iranian missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar temporarily closed the airspace in several Gulf nations on Monday.
At least 288 flights into and out of Hamad International Airport, in Doha, Qatar, were canceled on Tuesday, 227 of them operated by Qatar Airways, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company. That amounts to nearly half of the airline’s scheduled flights for the day.
The intercepted Iranian attack, which came in response to U.S. bombing of nuclear sites in Iran, also briefly interrupted air traffic in Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, the home of Dubai International Airport, the second-busiest airport in the world. The airspace closure there was short enough that disruptions appeared to be minimal.
About 1,000 flights with a total of about 359,000 seats were scheduled to depart from North America to Doha and Dubai this month before the cancellations, according to Cirium. Qatar Airways alone had an average of 5,500 total daily seats on flights from North America in June.
In addition to the cancellations, at least 85 flights to Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi were diverted on Monday, according to Cirium.
On social media, hundreds of users posted messages asking airlines if their flights to or from the Middle East were operating as scheduled, as passengers heard conflicting messages about cancellations.
Reima Abu was booked on a Qatar Airways flight from Chicago to Doha on Tuesday but was unsure if she would be able to fly after an airline representative told her by phone that her flight had been canceled, but then she read on social media that it had been reinstated. Ms. Abu, 23, planned to visit family in Jordan, but her connecting flight on another airline was canceled. She was also worried about safety.
“Factors like, is it actually safe or will another country attack is on my mind,” she said via text.
U.S. carriers including American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have indefinitely suspended flights to Doha and Dubai, but those carriers make up a tiny fraction of traffic to the cities, which are primarily served by their national carriers.
Major U.S. airlines suspended flights to Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv when Israel closed its airspace on June 13. That closure appeared to be easing on Tuesday as some airlines, including El Al, resumed limited flights. Iranian airspace appeared to still be closed on Tuesday night, according to Flightradar24.
Stock markets continued to rise on Tuesday as the cease-fire between Israel and Iran began to take hold and bolstered investor confidence that the worst of the conflict between the two Middle Eastern nations had passed.
The S&P 500 had risen over 1 percent heading into afternoon trading on Tuesday, adding to a 1 percent gain for the index on Monday.
The index now sits less than 1 percent away from its February record high, having staged a sharp recovery from April’s tariff-induced sell-off. The Trump administration has walked back many of its original trade proposals, spurring that recovery.
A second day of declining oil prices helped lift stocks. Energy costs are a primary expense for companies, making them an important factor in inflation calculations. Investors hope that lower oil prices will help keep inflation trending lower.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell more than 6 percent on Tuesday after dropping more than 7 percent a day earlier, its biggest one-day decline in almost three years. West Texas Intermediate crude, the oil benchmark in the United States, also fell over 6 percent on Tuesday.
Investors’ concerns about inflation appeared to ease alongside the drop in oil prices, which contributed to a dip in government bond yields. The 10-year Treasury yield fell below 4.30 percent for the first time in over a month.
Elsewhere, markets also rallied. European and Asian stock indexes rose on Tuesday, after being more mixed on Monday.
Sanam Mahoozi
A day after Iran agreed to a cease-fire with Israel, its president, Masoud Pezeshkian, praised the resilience of his people. “Today, following your courageous resistance, this great and history-making nation witnesses a cease-fire and the end of a 12-day war that was imposed on the Iranian people through the adventurism and warmongering of the Zionist regime,” he said in an address to the nation, according to IRNA, the state new agency.
Israel’s Civil Aviation Authority announced Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv would be fully reopening. The announcement came after the Israeli military said it was lifting emergency restrictions that were enforced during the Israel-Iran war.
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The Israeli military just said it was lifting emergency restrictions imposed during the war with Iran that shuttered schools and workplaces. As with its earlier statement that it was shifting its forces’ focus back to the campaign in Gaza, the announcement suggests the Israeli authorities believe the truce will hold, at least for the time being.
Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military chief of staff, said the country’s forces were now shifting their attention back to the ongoing campaign in Gaza as the fragile cease-fire with Iran appeared to be holding. “The focus now returns to Gaza, to bring home the hostages and topple Hamas’s rule,” Zamir said in a written statement distributed by the Israeli military.
Congressional briefings from White House intelligence officials on the U.S. strikes in Iran have been postponed, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. House and Senate members were expecting to receive a classified briefing on Tuesday, their first since the attacks were carried out early Sunday in Iran (Saturday night in the United States).
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After President Trump harshly criticized Israel and Iran on Tuesday for mounting attacks after his announcement that a cease-fire deal had been reached, both countries denied having violated the truce and pushed back with their own timelines of events.
The absence of details surrounding the truce deal added to the confusion about the sequence of the strikes and counter-strikes that took place in the hours after the initial announcement. Mr. Trump did not publicly specify a start time when he announced the truce, for example. There are also time differences involved. Iranian time is half an hour ahead of Israeli time, which is seven hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time.
Yet despite the discordant Iranian and Israeli claims about timelines, the mutual denials of violations strongly suggested that each side wanted the cease-fire to hold.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Tuesday afternoon that the cease-fire had been set to take effect at 7 a.m. Israel time. Four hours earlier, at 3 a.m., Israel attacked targets “in the heart of Tehran,” his office said in a statement, adding that shortly before the truce came into effect Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel.
One hit an apartment building in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, killing four people.
At 7:06 a.m. in Israel, Iran fired another missile, and then two more at 10:25 a.m., according to Israel. Mr. Netanyahu’s office said those missiles were intercepted or fell in open areas.
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In response, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said, Israeli forces destroyed a radar position near Tehran.
By then, Mr. Trump had publicly demanded that Israel not respond, describing the last volley of missiles fired by Iran at northern Israel as “one rocket that didn’t land, that was shot perhaps by mistake.”
Despite earlier threats from the Israeli defense minister and military that Israel would respond forcefully to the missile fire, the actual Israeli response appeared to be limited and symbolic.
“Following a conversation between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel refrained from further attacks,” the statement from Mr. Netanyahu’s office said.
Around the same time, Mr. Trump wrote on social media that Israel’s warplanes would “turn around and head home.”
Iran, for its part, said its missile fire came as retaliation for Israel’s pre-dawn bombardment, and only before the cease-fire was meant to start.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said that in retaliation for “savage” Israeli attacks on Iran overnight, Iran had launched 14 missiles at military and logistical centers in Israel in the “final minutes” before the cease-fire came into effect, according to a statement published on the Telegram channel of Press TV, an Iranian state news channel. The statement made no mention of the firing any missiles after the cease-fire came into force, as Mr. Trump and Israel charged.
In addition, an Iranian military spokesman, Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaqari, said Israel had launched “three waves of attacks” against Iran on Tuesday morning, after the cease-fire was supposed to take effect, with the last ending at 9 a.m. Iranian time, according to a Press TV report citing a report from Defa Press, another Iranian outlet.
Fars, a news agency managed by the Revolutionary Guards, reported that explosions were heard in Babol and Babolsar, Iranian cities to the northeast of Tehran, without providing a time or any other details.
Mr. Trump first announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a cease-fire deal on Monday evening — around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday in Tehran — and Iran’s state television later announced a cease-fire early on Tuesday morning local time. The Israeli government remained silent until it made its own announcement of a cease-fire at about 9 a.m. Israel time, saying Israel had agreed to the truce.
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As he departed Washington on Tuesday morning for a NATO summit in the Netherlands, Mr. Trump fumed about violations of the cease-fire he had heralded, saying that he “didn’t like the fact that Israel unloaded right after we made the deal.”
“They didn’t have to unload,” he said, “and I didn’t like the fact that the retaliation was very strong.”
Mr. Trump also said he was unhappy to learn that Israeli warplanes had headed out to retaliate for the Iranian missile fire hours after the truce came into effect.
“I think they both violated it,” he said. “I don’t think, I’m not sure they did it intentionally. They couldn’t rein people back.”
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Before midnight on Monday, Qatari officials convened a group of journalists in a purple meeting room to protest a missile barrage from Iran that targeted a large U.S. military installation in the desert outside the Qatari capital, Doha.
Majed al-Ansari, the foreign ministry spokesman, declared that his country had the right to respond to the attack a few hours earlier. At the same time, he called for de-escalating the new war between Israel and Iran and for cease-fire negotiations.
But it seems that Qatar had already begun to help to broker a truce, engaging quietly with Israel’s American allies and with the Iranian government behind the scenes.
“What happened shows Qatar can take a hit but be pragmatic,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House.
After the United States intervened on the side of Israel and bombed Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday morning, Iran responded by attacking the Al Udeid aid base in Qatar.
Qatar knew in advance that an attack on the base was planned on and almost all missiles fired at the site were intercepted, according to Maj. Gen. Shayeq Misfer al-Hajri, the Qatari deputy chief of staff for joint operations.
On Tuesday, the Qatari foreign ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador in Doha but did not announce any punitive measures against Iran.
The Qatari government’s swift shift from defending its right to respond to playing mediator suggested an element of “choreography,” said Nicholas Hopton, who was Britain’s ambassador to Qatar from 2013 to 2015.
As Qatar and the other Gulf nations watched the Israel-Iran war unfold over the past two weeks, they worried that an escalation could result in Iran targeting their strategic energy resources, undermining a critical source of their revenue.
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If the Iranian government was set on targeting American soldiers in the Gulf, it may have viewed the base in Qatar as less likely to provoke an escalation or damage its relations with some other Gulf Arab countries, which had been warming in recent years.
The wealthy emirate of Qatar has generally maintained closer ties with Iran than most of the other Gulf countries. It has also played a leading role in mediating between Israel and Hamas, the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group, since the war in Gaza began in October 2023.
If Iran attacked another Gulf nation, it might have run into more complicated territory.
The headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, in Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia’s oil installations could also have been become targets. But Iran’s diplomatic relations with these two other Gulf nations are still new and relatively shaky.
The United Arab Emirates is one of Iran’s largest trading partners, offering Iran a vital link to the global economy as it navigates longstanding Western sanctions. The prospect of missiles flying over Dubai, a glitzy metropolis in the Emirates, would have alienated a neighbor that Iran depends on.
Qatari officials intervened with Iran on behalf of the Trump administration, according to three diplomats briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. They said that Mr. Trump had told the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, that Israel had signed off on an American cease-fire proposal.
The president had asked Qatar to help bring Iran on board, the diplomats said. The Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, then persuaded Iran to agree to the truce proposal by late Monday in a call with the Iranian leadership, the diplomats said.
A senior White House official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations publicly, said the Qatari emir played a role in the cease-fire discussions.
The truce took effect early Tuesday morning and appeared to be holding as evening approached.
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Qatar’s handling of the crisis illustrated the value the wealthy Gulf emirate puts in its relationship with the United States, said Mr. Hopton, the former British diplomat.
“Trump wanted a de-escalation and Qatar was able to help him with that,” Mr. Hopton said.
A pillar of Qatar’s foreign policy is to maintain a close relationship with the United States, and Qatari officials frequently take advantage of opportunities to prove to the American government that they can be a strategic ally on important American foreign policy objectives.
With a small army, Qatar relies on the United States to provide it with a security blanket. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, powerful neighboring countries, have occasionally taken hostile positions against Qatar.
Vivian Nereim and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting to this article.
Stocks rose and oil prices fell for a second day as markets calmed after a bout of volatility stemming from the conflicts in the Middle East. The S&P 500 rose roughly 0.9 percent, adding to a similar gain on Monday. The price of Brent Crude, the international oil benchmark, fell more than 4 percent.
Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, says he will introduce articles of impeachment against President Trump citing an abuse of power and the use of the military in a war without congressional authorization. “President Trump has not only violated his oath of office, he has also disregarded the separation of powers necessary to maintain the independence of our three branches of government,” Mr. Green said in a statement. One other Democratic lawmaker, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also raised the idea of impeachment, though her overture was not embraced by most within the party. This is the fourth time Mr. Green has led an impeachment effort against Mr. Trump.
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As he left Washington Tuesday morning to travel to The Hague for the annual summit meeting of the NATO military alliance, President Trump was busy trying to hold together a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Iran. “Now we’re going to NATO and we’ll get a new set of problems,” Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “We’ll solve a new set of problems.”
The tentative cease-fire between Israel and Iran will likely dominate the agenda at the meeting, even as Russia continues to pummel Ukraine at the edge of the alliance’s territory. Mr. Trump is also expected to claim victory and assert that all NATO allies have agreed to spend 5 percent of their gross domestic product on their militaries, up from the current commitment of 2 percent. He has accused the allies of being overly dependent on the protection of U.S. forces.
“NATO was broke, and I said, ‘You’re going to have to pay,’ and we did a whole thing, and now they’re paying a lot,” he said.
But despite Mr. Trump's eagerness to take credit, not all countries have committed to the pledge. Spain, for example, has said it would not increase its spending above 2.1 percent of its G.D.P.
“They’re having a problem with Spain,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday. “Always a problem with Spain. Spain’s not agreeing, which is very unfair to the rest of them.”
And yet Mr. Trump has maintained that the United States — which spends about 3.5 percent of its G.D.P. on its military — does not need to meet the 5 percent goal he has demanded of other countries. He argues that, for one thing, the United States does not have the same need to invest in its infrastructure to support military equipment.
“A lot of that money goes to rebuilding their bridges, their roads, so it can take heavy equipment,” he said. “And you know, we don’t have any roads in Europe. We don’t have any bridges in Europe."
Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, has been eager to make Mr. Trump’s time at the summit go smoothly and avoid any diplomatic blowups — an effort that was clearly on display in a message from Mr. Rutte that Mr. Trump posted on his social media site.
In the message, which representatives for Mr. Rutte confirmed as authentic, the NATO leader praised Mr. Trump’s “decisive action in Iran” and said he was “flying into another big success in The Hague this evening,” citing a consensus on the 5 percent spending figure.
“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” the message said.
On the plane, Mr. Trump played coy when asked whether he was committed to Article 5, the part of NATO’s treaty that stipulates an attack on one ally would be defended as an attack on all. The president said it “depends on your definition” of Article 5.
“I’m committed to saving lives,” he said. “I’m committed to life and safety, and I’m going to give you an exact definition when I get there. I just don’t want to do it on the back of an airplane.”
Mr. Trump is expected to spend less than 24 hours on the ground in the Netherlands. He will attend a dinner with other world leaders on Tuesday night and start Wednesday by having breakfast with the country’s king and queen. He will then participate in the plenary session and hold bilateral meetings and a news conference before returning to Washington.
This is the fourth international trip of Mr. Trump’s second term, after a visit to Rome for the pope’s funeral, a trip to the Gulf and a brief visit to Canada for a Group of 7 meeting. He departed from Canada a day early because of the war between Israel and Iran.
Most communications between world leaders are considered private — unless President Trump sees some advantage to making it public. Which is what apparently just happened: Mr. Trump posted, on Truth Social, a screenshot of what appeared to be a Signal message from Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, praising him for striking the Iranian nuclear sites. “Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran,” the message read. Rutte called it “truly extraordinary and something no one else dared to do.” NATO confirmed that the message was genuine.
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President Trump on Tuesday accused Israel and Iran of violating a cease-fire deal that he had announced hours earlier, and demanded that the two countries adhere to the truce and bring an end to the war.
Using an expletive in remarks to reporters, Mr. Trump said that the two adversaries did not know what they were doing, and sharply criticized Israel for firing on Iran “right after we made the deal.” Israel’s military earlier accused Tehran of firing missiles after the deal went into effect on Tuesday and vowed to retaliate. Iran’s military denied doing so, according to Iranian state news outlets.
“They’ve violated but Israel’s violated it too,” Mr. Trump told reporters, referring to Iran and the cease-fire agreement as he boarded Marine One to begin a journey to The Hague for a NATO summit. Mr. Trump appeared to reserve greater criticism for Israel’s actions in the hours after the agreement was reached.
“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. I’m not happy with Israel,” he said, adding that he would be “really unhappy” if Israel attacked Iran on Tuesday in retaliation for what the president described as “one rocket that didn’t land.”
In a post on social media, Trump later warned Israel not to “DROP THOSE BOMBS,” saying “IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME NOW.”
Nearly two hours after Israel’s announcement confirming that it had agreed to the truce, sirens in northern Israel warned of missiles launched from Iran. Israel’s military accused Iran of breaking the cease-fire, saying in a statement that it would “respond with force.”
Israel retaliated by striking a radar system near Tehran, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement released after Mr. Trump’s comments. Despite the threat to respond with force, the attack appeared to have been minor and symbolic.
In his comments to reporters, Mr. Trump also claimed that “Iran will never rebuild its nuclear,” apparently referring to the country’s nuclear program, which was one of the targets of Israel’s military campaign, along with Iran’s military leadership.
Mr. Trump said later that the cease-fire between Israel and Iran remained in effect.
“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter.” There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military.
President Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he had spoken by phone to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel after the plane took off for Europe. He said that he told Netanyahu to bring back military aircraft that Trump indicated were on the verge of attacking Iran. Trump also declared that the “last thing” on Iran’s mind now is a nuclear weapon.
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In the hours before a cease-fire between Israel and Iran went into effect Tuesday morning, Tehran was pounded by the most intense and sustained airstrikes since the war started on June 13, residents said.
Fifteen residents, speaking by phone and in texts and audio messages, said large flames illuminated the night sky over the city and there were massive billows of smoke. Close to sunrise, the attacks came to an end, according to four residents in different parts of the city.
President Trump announced on Monday evening — around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday in Tehran — that Iran and Israel had agreed to a cease-fire. Iran’s state television later announced a cease-fire early morning local time on Tuesday.
By then, Tehran residents had endured one more night of heavy attacks and terror.
Mariam, a 54-year-old art gallery owner, said in a tearful voice message that she and her teenage son were fleeing their home to her parents’ apartment because the airstrikes around them were too intense. Earlier on Monday, Israel’s military had urged people to evacuate their district, a densely populated residential and commercial area in central Tehran.
“I pray that when I return tomorrow I still have a house, they are flattening the city tonight,” Mariam said in the message. Like all the residents contacted for this article, she only provided her first name because of fear of retribution from the authorities.
Mostafa Shams, a journalist in Tehran, said the explosions around his house were loud and constant. He said he could see two jets flying over the area where he lives. As he spoke on Clubhouse, an audio-based social media platform, the audience of thousands could hear the boom and thuds of explosions.
Amir, a 48-year-old resident of Tehran’s Jordan neighborhood, shared a video that showed loud explosions and huge flashes of orange lighting up the night sky.
“No night has been like this, the sounds are huge, we can see fire and smoke from our window in multiple locations, We don’t know if we will be alive tomorrow morning,” Alireza, a 27-year-old graduate student in Tehran, said in a phone message. He said he did not have electricity.
Residents of several other districts in Tehran also said that they did not have power. “It’s the most terrifying night we have experienced, we are sitting in darkness and hearing things blowing up,” said Roya, 60, who said she was huddling with her husband and daughter in the stairwell of her apartment building.
Ramin, who lives in Chitgar, a western suburb of Tehran, said many people in his neighborhood had come outside into the streets because they were afraid they might not survive the strikes if they stayed indoors.
“It feels like they are using much bigger bombs tonight,” he said at around 3 a.m. local time, describing his neighborhood as “shaking badly.” Reached by phone at around 6 a.m. after the cease-fire announcement on state television, Ramin said, “Is it really over? Thank God.”
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World leaders reacted with cautious optimism to the news on Tuesday that Israel and Iran had agreed to a cease-fire after 12 days of unprecedented warfare between the two countries.
Hours after the agreement was first announced by President Trump, then confirmed by Israel and Iran, Mr. Trump suggested that both had continued fighting and warned Israel that further attacks would be a “major violation.”
Israel has accused Iran of violating the cease-fire and said it would retaliate. Iran’s military denied launching an attack after the cease-fire went into effect, Iranian state news outlets reported.
Here is what some leaders and governments have said:
United States: Mr. Trump, who helped broker the agreement, expressed displeasure with Israel and Iran on Tuesday, saying attacks appeared to have continued. “I’m gonna see if I can stop it,” he told reporters as he departed the White House to head to the NATO summit in the Netherlands.
Russia: Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, said the Kremlin hoped the cease-fire would prove durable. “If a cease-fire has indeed been achieved, then that can only be welcomed,” he said. Russia and Iran are close allies, and Mr. Putin met with Iran’s foreign minister in Moscow on Monday, but there was no immediate indication that Russia had been involved in the diplomacy that led to the cease-fire announcements.
France: President Emmanuel Macron praised Mr. Trump’s announcement that a cease-fire had been agreed, but he said that “the situation remains volatile and unstable.” Speaking to reporters during a visit to Norway, Mr. Macron said: “The last minutes have shown that the situation remains very fragile.”
Germany: Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he welcomed Mr. Trump’s announcement and urged Israel and Iran to heed it. The United States and European countries would discuss ways to stabilize the situation later on Tuesday on the sidelines of the NATO summit, he said.
The Netherlands: Prime Minister Dick Schoof called the cease-fire a “good step to prevent further escalation in the region.” Iran must never become a nuclear-armed state, he said on social media, urging the country to return to nuclear negotiations.
Qatar: The cease-fire was in a “gray area,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman, prime minister of Qatar, told a news conference on Tuesday. “No party wants to be the party that was hit last,” he said. Qatar’s emir helped negotiate the cease-fire, he said, adding that “what we hope to see, truly, is a serious cease-fire, with the parties acting responsibly.”
Saudi Arabia: The country’s foreign ministry said in a statement that it welcomed the cease-fire announcement and valued “the efforts exerted to de-escalate tensions.”
European Union: Reports of missile fire underscore “just how fragile this cease-fire potentially remains,” Anouar El Anouni, an E.U. spokesman for foreign affairs, said during a news conference. “We do call on Iran to engage seriously in a credible diplomatic process,” he added.
A White House official says that in a phone call from Air Force One as he was leaving for the NATO summit, President Trump was “firm and direct” with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel about what needed to happen to sustain the cease-fire. “The prime minister understood the severity of the situation and the concerns President Trump expressed,” the official said.
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Fresh from striking an American air base and then agreeing to a cease-fire with Israel, Iran claimed victory on Tuesday morning, saying that its attacks had pressured Israel into accepting a truce.
“Defeat of the Zionist enemy,” ran the chyron on Iran’s state TV network as it broadcast news of the agreement Tuesday morning. State news agencies published a statement by the Iranian national security council saying that Tehran was “imposing a cease-fire” on Israel by striking a U.S. air base in Qatar and other targets.
The 12-day war began with a barrage of Israeli airstrikes on Iran that wiped out much of the Iranian military’s top brass, and destroyed its air defenses and some of its nuclear and missile facilities. Subsequent Israeli attacks killed hundreds of Iranians, including children. And American airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear sites damaged, or may have destroyed, key parts of the country’s nuclear program.
Still, Iranian officials were casting the outcome of the conflict as a resounding triumph for Iran and a decisive loss for Israel — a positive spin on what officials privately said was a face-saving effort to retaliate while avoiding an unwinnable all-out war with the United States.
In public, the tone was swaggering, emphasizing Iran’s response: first, Iranian missile barrages into Israeli towns that sent Israelis ducking into bomb shelters, destroyed buildings and killed 28 people; then, the missile strike on Monday on the installation in Qatar, Al Udeid Air Base, which left no casualties.
A retired Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps naval commander, Gen. Hossein Alaei, told ISNA, a state news agency, that Iran had been able not only to withstand Israeli attacks but also to hit targets in Israel and then launch an attack of its own devastating enough to force the United States to retreat.
“In such circumstances, the warmongering Trump chose to accept a cease-fire and rein in the bloodthirsty Netanyahu,” he said, according to ISNA, referring to the American president and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Despite losing its top commanders, Iran proved it still had the capacity to strike Israel, General Alaei said. He added that the United States had entered the war only because “it became clear that Israel was unable to defeat Iran.”
Tehran had “forced the enemy to regret and accept defeat and unilaterally stop its aggression,” the statement from the Iranian national security council said. It praised the “dazzling power” of the military, adding that Iran’s attacks had proven that its forces “will be ready” to respond “to any act of aggression by the enemy.”
The government controls or restricts news outlets in Iran and has tightly limited internet access during the war, allowing little beyond its own message to filter into the country. Still, it is unclear how many Iranians — many of whom despise their theocratic leadership — will buy the official version of events. Although there has been widespread grumbling, mainly on social media, about the regime’s handling of Iran’s security, Iranians have also excoriated Israel and the United States for attacking their country.
On social media on Tuesday, some Iranians expressed hope that the fear and destruction would finally end, while others remained cautious, saying that it was not clear whether the cease-fire would hold. They also posted about their worries that the conflict would cause the government to crack down harder than ever on domestic critics. Only hard-line supporters of the regime were echoing its triumphal statements.
President Trump says the cease-fire remains in force, after he demanded Israel refrain from retaliating for an Iranian missile that he said was fired after the truce came into effect. “ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he wrote on social media. There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military.
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A wave of drones targeted several Iraqi military sites overnight on Tuesday, damaging two bases in what the Iraqi authorities described as a “cowardly and treacherous” assault at a time of heightened tensions in the Middle East.
The attacks, which occurred between 2:15 a.m. and 3:45 a.m. local time, struck the Taji military base, around 12 miles north of Baghdad, and the Imam Ali base in the southeast of Iraq. No casualties were reported, but “significant damage” was caused to the radar systems at both bases, Sabah al-Numan, a spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, said in a statement.
Security forces intercepted drones aimed at four other military sites operated by the Iraqi government, Mr. al-Numan added.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility.
The Taji base was a frequent target of rocket attacks by Iranian-linked Iraqi militias before U.S.-led coalition forces withdrew from the site in 2020. Once a major hub for American troops, the base was handed over to Iraqi forces that year as part of a broader drawdown by the United States in the country.
Iranian-linked militias have long played a dual role in Iraq as security enforcers and political power brokers, and have been implicated in past attacks on Iraqi and U.S. military bases.
Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, ordered an investigation to identify the perpetrators and the circumstances surrounding the latest attacks, according to Mr. al-Numan.
The wave of drone attacks occurred just hours after Iran launched missiles at a U.S. military base in Qatar, an offensive that was telegraphed in advance by Tehran and was in response to American strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran. The tit-for-tat strikes marked a significant escalation after nearly two weeks of intense conflict between Iran and Israel.
On Tuesday, President Trump announced a cease-fire between Israel and Iran but the truce appeared to hang in the balance. The Israeli military said that Iran had broken the terms of the deal by firing missiles at Israel and vowed to retaliate.
The Iranian military denied firing missiles after the cease-fire went into effect, according to Iranian state news outlets.
