United States President Donald Trump has demanded that Israel and Iran immediately stop attacking each other, after an overnight exchange of fire threatened to collapse the ceasefire the two reached in April.
“Israel and Iran must immediately stop shooting,” Trump wrote in a brief post on his Truth Social platform on June 8. The intervention followed waves of Iranian missile fire and Israeli airstrikes that marked the most serious confrontation since the April 8 truce.
Iran launched the missiles on June 7 in apparent retaliation for Israeli air raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, which Israel said had targeted Hezbollah. Tehran had warned that any attack on the Lebanese capital would cross a red line.
Israel hit back by striking what its military described as targets belonging to the “Iranian terror regime” in western and central Iran. Among them was a petrochemical complex in Khuzestan province, southwest Iran, which the Israel Defense Forces said produced raw materials for missiles.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had responded by hitting similar industrial sites in the Israeli port city of Haifa, home to the country’s largest oil refinery. The Guard blamed the US for the escalation and warned that further strikes on energy targets would carry consequences for the global economy.
Explosions were reported in Tehran, Tabriz and Isfahan, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency, which said air defences had brought down a drone over the capital. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Trump said he had urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to retaliate, though Israel struck regardless. The President told Axios he had intended to call the Israeli leader directly to press for restraint, saying each side had taken its turn and another round was not needed.
He also called on Iran to abandon further launches and return to talks. Trump has said the two governments are close to an agreement, with the main sticking point being guarantees that Tehran would not develop or acquire nuclear weapons.
The renewed fighting pushed oil prices up by nearly 5 per cent, with Brent crude rising above $97 a barrel, and complicated US-led efforts to broker a wider settlement. Yemen’s Houthi rebels also fired at Israel as the violence spread across the region.
