Both sides say they will pause but warn of more if the other moves first.
Israel and Iran have each announced they are halting strikes against the other, ending, at least for now, the first direct exchange of fire between the two countries since April’s ceasefire collapsed. But no one is calling it peace.
The sequence began on Sunday, June 7, when Iran fired missiles at Israel in retaliation for an Israeli strike on Beirut. Israel responded in the early hours of Monday by targeting what it described as military sites inside Iran, including a petrochemical complex in the southwestern city of Mahshahr where an Israeli military official said chemicals for ballistic missiles were produced. Iran then launched more missiles toward Jerusalem and central and southern Israel on Monday morning, according to Israeli authorities.
The back-and-forth was the most serious breach of the ceasefire that had largely held since April, when the US and Israel first launched their joint campaign against Iran following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28.
By Monday afternoon, both sides had stepped back from the brink, but only just.
Iran’s armed forces said it had stopped operations after delivering what it called a “painful response” to Israel. It promised “more severe and crushing measures” if Israel carried out more strikes, including in Lebanon, where Israeli forces are fighting the Iran-backed group Hezbollah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was holding fire “at the moment.” But he stressed that the struggle against Iran and Hezbollah was “not finished.” In a televised statement, Netanyahu said he had told US President Donald Trump that “Israel has a full right to self-defense, and we are exercising it as required.”
Trump, who has been caught between publicly backing Israel and trying to negotiate an end to the broader regional war, told the BBC that Netanyahu had not defied his wishes by launching strikes. “No, no. They had already gone. They had already gone. They were already on their way,” he said.
The White House confirmed Trump had called Netanyahu to discuss the crisis. An Israeli official said Israel had halted its strikes at Trump’s request. Asked how he persuaded Netanyahu to stop, Trump told the BBC: “All I did is say, ‘We have to use sense.’ We’re very close to signing a very powerful deal, a very good deal. No nuclear weapons, no nothing.”
But Trump also signaled a harder line privately. He told Axios he had warned Netanyahu that he might find himself fighting alone if he went back to war with Iran. “I said, ‘Bibi, you better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon,'” Axios quoted him as saying.
On Truth Social, Trump wrote that both countries were “looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE” and that “final negotiations on ‘Peace’ are proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way.”
The human cost of Monday’s exchange was limited but real. Iran’s Emergency Organization chief, Jafar Miadfar, told Tasnim news agency that Israeli strikes injured 14 people in Mahshahr and one in Tehran. In Lebanon, the health ministry said five people had been killed and eight wounded in an Israeli strike on Tyre, including four Red Cross rescuers among the injured. Hezbollah said it had fired a rocket barrage at Israeli army vehicles and soldiers in southern Lebanon on Monday morning.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, struck a darker note, saying the US was “neither seeking a ceasefire nor seeking dialogue” and that Tehran should respond “decisively to defend the rights of the Iranian people.”
The question now is whether this pause holds, or whether it is simply a breather before the next round. The ceasefire that collapsed this weekend was itself the product of months of painstaking diplomacy. If the current pause fractures, the prospect of a wider, more destructive war that neither side can control becomes harder to dismiss.
For now, both sides are claiming victory and blaming the other for the breach. That is not the language of lasting peace. It is the language of two exhausted fighters stepping back to catch their breath, fully aware the bell could ring again at any moment.
– George, 1ban.news