President Donald Trump on Monday announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran after a nearly two-week war between the two countries.
Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said that the ceasefire would take effect just after midnight on the East Coast of the United States, with the war slated to officially end 12 hours later.
“This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will!” Trump wrote in the post.
Israel and Iran have been indirectly fighting since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks against Israel by Tehran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas and have traded direct fire intermittently since 2024. But after Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this month, the two longtime Middle East adversaries have launched volleys of drones and missiles against each other.
The U.S. initially sought to stay out of the conflict but waded into the fighting on Saturday by bombing key Iranian nuclear sites, including Fordo and Natanz. In response, Iran gave the United States advance notice it would strike a major U.S. airbase in Qatar, which it did on Monday.
The enthusiastic announcement of the apparent ceasefire marked the latest wild swing from the president on the matter of Iran. After suggesting for months that a deal was close between the U.S. and Tehran to dramatically curb Iran’s nuclear development program, Trump got fully behind Israel’s June 13 attack on Iran. Less than two weeks later, he opted to involve the U.S. directly, authorizing Saturday’s bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities.
But following Iran’s highly choreographed and quite limited response on Monday, Trump shifted back into favoring diplomacy once more. He struck a conciliatory tone, couching Iran’s attack not as an escalation of conflict but as a way for the country to, in his words, get “it all out of their ‘system.’”
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