Explosions rang out in Tehran on Tuesday despite U.S. President Donald Trump saying Israel had called airstrikes off at his command to preserve an hours-old ceasefire.
Two witnesses reached by telephone in the Iranian capital said they heard two loud explosions. Israeli army radio said Israel had struck an Iranian radar site near Tehran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had carried out no further strikes after Netanyahu spoke to Trump.
Trump, en route to a NATO summit in the Netherlands, had said Israel had called off its attack, after he rebuked Israel with an obscenity in an extraordinary outburst at an ally whose military campaign he had joined two days earlier.
“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!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
That followed a post in which he had said: “Israel. Do not drop those bombs. If you do it it is a major violation. Bring your pilots home, now!”
Before departing the White House, Trump told reporters he was unhappy with both sides for violating the ceasefire, but particularly unhappy with Israel, which he said had “unloaded” shortly after agreeing the deal.
“I’ve got to get Israel to calm down now,” Trump said. Iran and Israel had been fighting “so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”
Israeli media reported that Trump had spoken to Netanyahu by phone. A reporter for Axios said Netanyahu had told Trump that Israel would scale back the bombing mission rather than cancel it.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz had said earlier on Tuesday that he had ordered the military to mount new strikes on targets in Tehran in response to what he said were Iranian missiles fired in a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire.
Iran denied launching any missiles and said Israel’s attacks had continued for an hour and a half beyond the time the ceasefire was meant to start.