Israel says 3 killed in Iranian barrage after Trump announces ceasefire

The agree­ment involves two 12-hour cease­fire peri­ods, start­ing with Iran.

DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates — Israel said at least three peo­ple had been killed in Iran­ian attacks Tues­day morn­ing, hours after U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump announced the two Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries had agreed to a “com­plete and total cease­fire.”

Israel’s Magen David Adom res­cue ser­vices said at least eight more peo­ple were injured in the ear­ly morn­ing bar­rage. At least one per­son is believed trapped in the rub­ble and a res­i­den­tial build­ing in Israel’s south sus­tained heavy dam­age, accord­ing to emer­gency ser­vices.

Waves of mis­siles sent Israelis to bomb shel­ters for almost two hours in the morn­ing.

Trump’s announce­ment came soon after Iran launched a lim­it­ed mis­sile attack Mon­day on a U.S. mil­i­tary base in Qatar, retal­i­at­ing for the Amer­i­can bomb­ing of its nuclear sites.

Iran’s for­eign min­is­ter said that as long as Israel stopped its attacks by 4 a.m. local Tehran time Tues­day, Iran would halt its own. But near­ly an hour after that dead­line, Israel’s mil­i­tary warned its pub­lic that Iran had launched mis­siles towards it as sirens sound­ed. At least one mis­sile inter­cep­tion could be seen over the skies of Jerusalem and warn­ings of three fur­ther attacks fol­lowed as day broke.

It’s unclear what the detect­ed mis­sile launch­es would do for the cease­fire’s time­line.

Trump’s announce­ment on Truth Social said the cease­fire would­n’t begin until about mid­night Tues­day East­ern time. He said it would bring an “Offi­cial END” to the war.

Israel doesn’t confirm ceasefire but appears to pause strikes

Israel did not imme­di­ate­ly acknowl­edge any cease­fire, but there were no reports of Israeli strikes in Iran after 4 a.m. local. Heavy Israeli strikes con­tin­ued in Tehran and oth­er cities until short­ly before that time. Israel in oth­er con­flicts has stepped up its strikes just before cease­fires took effect.

“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.”

His mes­sage was post­ed at 4:16 a.m. Tehran time. Araghchi added: “The final deci­sion on the ces­sa­tion of our mil­i­tary oper­a­tions will be made lat­er.”

The Israeli mil­i­tary declined to com­ment on Trump’s cease­fire state­ment and the office of Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a mes­sage seek­ing com­ment.

Trump describes con­flict as ’12 Day War’
Trump gave the con­flict between Israel and Iran a name: the “12 Day War.” That recalls the 1967 Mideast war, known by some as the “Six Day War,” in which Israel fought a group of Arab coun­tries includ­ing Egypt, Jor­dan and Syr­ia.

Trump’s ref­er­ence car­ries emo­tion­al weight for the Arab world, par­tic­u­lar­ly Pales­tini­ans. In the 1967 war, Israel cap­tured the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jor­dan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Penin­su­la from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syr­ia. Though Israel lat­er gave the Sinai back to Egypt, it still holds the oth­er ter­ri­to­ries.

Trump com­mu­ni­cat­ed direct­ly with Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu to secure the cease­fire, accord­ing to a senior White House offi­cial who insist­ed on anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the Mon­day talks. Vance, Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Rubio and spe­cial envoy Steve Witkoff com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the Ira­ni­ans through direct and indi­rect chan­nels.

The White House has main­tained that the Sat­ur­day bomb­ing helped get the Israelis to agree to the cease­fire and that the Qatari gov­ern­ment helped to bro­ker the deal.

It’s unclear what role Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader, played in the talks. He said ear­li­er on social media that he would not sur­ren­der.

Iran attack against US implied willingness to de-escalate

Iran attacked a U.S. base in Qatar on Mon­day, but appeared to indi­cate it was pre­pared to reduce ten­sions. The U.S. was warned by Iran in advance, and there were no casu­al­ties, said Trump, who dis­missed the attack as a “very weak response.”

Qatar con­demned the attack on Al Udeid Air Base as “a fla­grant vio­la­tion” of its sov­er­eign­ty, air­space and inter­na­tion­al law. Qatar said it inter­cept­ed all but one mis­sile, though it was not clear if that mis­sile caused any dam­age.

Iran said the vol­ley matched the num­ber of bombs dropped by the Unit­ed States on Iran­ian nuclear sites over the week­end. Iran also said it tar­get­ed the base because it was out­side of pop­u­lat­ed areas.

Qatar Maj. Gen. Shayeq Al Hajri said 19 mis­siles were fired at the base that is home to the Com­bined Air Oper­a­tions Cen­ter, which pro­vides com­mand and con­trol of air pow­er across the region, as well as the 379th Air Expe­di­tionary Wing, the largest such wing in the world. Trump said 14 mis­siles were fired, 13 were knocked down and one was “set free” because it posed no threat.

Iran announced the attack on state tele­vi­sion, with a cap­tion call­ing it “a mighty and suc­cess­ful response” to “Amer­i­ca’s aggres­sion.”

Ear­li­er reports that a mis­sile was launched at a base hous­ing Amer­i­can forces in Iraq were a false alarm, a senior U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cial said. The offi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because he was not autho­rized to com­ment pub­licly, said debris from a mal­func­tion­ing Iran­ian mis­sile tar­get­ing Israel had trig­gered an alert of an impend­ing attack on the Ain al-Assad base.

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 on the ener­gy-rich nation had passed.

Israel and Iran trade attacks

Israel and Iran trad­ed bar­rages ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing.

Iran struck Israel with mis­siles and drones while Israel said it attacked “regime tar­gets and gov­ern­ment repres­sion bod­ies in the heart of Tehran.”

In Tehran, Israel hit the head­quar­ters of the mil­i­tary force that sup­pressed recent protests and blew open a gate at Evin prison, which is known for hold­ing polit­i­cal activists.

Iran­ian state tele­vi­sion aired footage it said was shot inside Evin, with pris­on­ers under con­trol. How­ev­er, the Wash­ing­ton-based Abdor­rah­man Boroumand Cen­ter for Human Rights in Iran said many fam­i­lies of detainees “have expressed deep con­cern about the safe­ty and con­di­tion of their loved ones” in the prison.

The Israeli mil­i­tary also con­firmed it struck roads around Iran’s For­do enrich­ment facil­i­ty to obstruct access to the site. The under­ground site was one of those hit in Sun­day’s attack by the Unit­ed States. The Israeli mil­i­tary did not elab­o­rate.

In Vien­na, the head of the Unit­ed Nations nuclear watch­dog said he expect­ed there to be heavy dam­age at the For­do facil­i­ty fol­low­ing Sun­day’s U.S. airstrike there with sophis­ti­cat­ed bunker-buster bombs.

Sev­er­al Iran­ian offi­cials, includ­ing Atom­ic Ener­gy Orga­ni­za­tion of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamal­van­di, have claimed Iran removed nuclear mate­r­i­al from tar­get­ed sites ahead of time.

Trump floats regime change

Israeli offi­cials insist­ed they did not seek the over­throw of Iran’s gov­ern­ment, their arch­en­e­my since the coun­try’s 1979 Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion.

But the lat­est strikes unfold­ed only hours after Trump him­self men­tioned the pos­si­bil­i­ty of regime change a day after insert­ing Amer­i­ca into the war with its stealth-bomber strike on three Iran­ian nuclear sites.

“If the cur­rent Iran­ian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why would­n’t there be a Regime change???” he asked on his Truth Social web­site. White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt lat­er described Trump as “sim­ply rais­ing a ques­tion.”

Before the news of a cease­fire, an Israeli offi­cial, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss high-lev­el inter­nal delib­er­a­tions, said Israel aimed to wind down the war in the com­ing days, but that it would depend on the Ira­ni­ans.

Israel’s pre­ferred out­come is for Iran to agree to a cease­fire and reen­ter nego­ti­a­tions with the U.S. over its nuclear pro­gram, the offi­cial said. But Israel is pre­pared for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an extend­ed low-inten­si­ty war of attri­tion or peri­od of “qui­et for qui­et,” in which it would close­ly mon­i­tor Iran’s activ­i­ties and strike if it iden­ti­fies new threats.

Conflict has killed hundreds

In Israel, at least 24 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, which has pro­vid­ed detailed casu­al­ty fig­ures from Iran­ian unrest such as the protests sur­round­ing the death of Mah­sa Ami­ni in 2022, said of those killed, it iden­ti­fied 387 civil­ians and 268 secu­ri­ty force per­son­nel.

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.