Photo: President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on April 7, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on June 24 that his country’s military “refrained from additional attacks” targeting Iran after a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Trump on Monday night announced a cease-fire between Iran and Israel after 12 days of strikes, and after the United States launched airstrikes of its own on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In a thread on social media platform X, Netanyahu’s office wrote that a cease-fire between his country and Iran “was set for 07:00 this morning.”
“At 03:00, Israel forcefully attacked in the heart of Tehran, struck regime targets and eliminated hundreds of Basij and Iranian security forces personnel,” he said.
“Shortly before the ceasefire was due to take effect, Iran launched a barrage of missiles, one of which took the lives of four of our citizens in Be’er Sheva. The ceasefire took effect at 07:00,” his office said.
Minutes later, Iran launched one missile at Israel, and two or three missiles were launched three hours later, the office added. The missiles either did no damage or were intercepted, while Israel moved to destroy a radar installation near Tehran, it said.
“Pursuant to the conversation between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel has refrained from additional attacks,” Netanyahu’s office said, adding that Trump had “expressed his great appreciation for Israel, which achieved all of its objectives for the war, as well as his confidence in the stability of the ceasefire.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said later on Tuesday that Tehran would not violate the cease-fire unless Israel did so, and that it was prepared to return to the negotiating table, without elaborating, according to state-run Tasnim News Agency.
Trump scolded both Iran and Israel for early violations of the truce that he had announced but directed particularly stinging criticism at Israel over the scale of its strikes, telling it to cease the attacks.
During a press gaggle with reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said that he was unhappy that Israel and Iran had engaged in fighting after he had announced the cease-fire on Monday evening.
“We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know” what they’re trying to do, he told reporters before heading to a NATO Summit. “I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either, but I’m really unhappy with Israel going out this morning,” Trump said.
The president also took to his Truth Social platform to warn Israel to end its strikes.
“Israel, do not drop those bombs. If you do it is a major violation,” Trump wrote on the platform in all caps. “Bring your pilots home, now!”
Israel launched the surprise air war on June 13, hitting Iranian nuclear sites where it said Iran was trying to develop an atomic bomb and killing top military commanders in what may be the worst blow to the Iranian regime since the Iran–Iraq War that lasted throughout the 1980s.
Iran says its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes and denies trying to build nuclear weapons. However, both the United States and Israel have long said that Iran is trying to build atomic weapons.
Since the start of the conflict, Trump has said repeatedly that Iran cannot gain possession of a nuclear weapon and that U.S. strikes on Saturday were meant to prevent the regime from achieving that goal.
Reuters contributed to this report.
