That was a short-lived ceasefire that President Donald Trump negotiated between Israel and Iran.
As PJ Media's own Catherine Salgado reported last night, Trump took to Truth Social to announce that "it has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED!"
Almost immediately, Israel announced that its war cabinet had not yet finished discussing Trump's arrangement, and Iran claimed not to have received any proposal — before quickly accepting it and then almost as quickly breaking it.
Iran violated the ceasefire just 13 minutes after it took effect at 7:00 a.m. local time with another missile barrage at Israeli cities, killing at least six civilians. Israel responded with more precision bombing of regime targets.
Things fell apart so quickly that I joked on Instapundit that Trump might have accidentally hit Send before all his ducks were in a row.
UPDATE: What a difference a few hours makes. After the initial tit-for-tat, things have settle down enough that both countries have re-opened their airspace and Israel has called off its emergency orders to Israeli civilians. The original column continues below.
You can see the damage from the missile strike here — it's nasty.
🚨 Breaking : Ceasefire Broken!
— World News 🌎 (@WorldNewsTimee) June 24, 2025
6 people have been killed in the latest Iranian ballistic missile strike, as uncertainty surrounds the status of the ceasefire.
Seems like Iron Dome stop after listening Trump #ceasefire #ceasefire #IsraeliranWar #Qatar #iranisraelwar #Trump… pic.twitter.com/fM8KWEiOl2
I'm not pointing fingers here — well, except at Iran, for reasons I'll get into momentarily. The point is that ceasefires are difficult to arrange and even more difficult to maintain, even when the broker is The Most Powerful Man in the World™ and a master of the art of the deal.
Wars are much easier to start than they are to end. Ask a German Kaiser or a Russian Czar about that sometime.
Let me also say that I supported Trump's ceasefire effort. There's an argument that he called for it too soon, but if the point of Operation Rising Lion (and our brief, direct involvement) was to set back or maybe even eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons program…
…well, it looks like mission accomplished.
And, ceasefire or not, the conditions that I wrote about yesterday — the conditions created by Israel to facilitate an Iranian uprising against the regime — those conditions still exist.
Even if the rumors are true and Iran managed to disperse its collection of 60% refined uranium away from Fordow before the bunker-busters hit, they have no facilities left to refine it to weapons grade. Or perhaps the regime did manage to refine it up to 90% — right under the U.N.'s nose — and now all they have to do is assemble what bombs they can with the materials they already have.
If so, Trump might have called the ceasefire too soon, and Israel's war cabinet should probably not have accepted it. But I cannot stress this last point too strongly: The Iranians were certainly fools for breaking it.
If for some damn reason anybody needed more evidence that the Islamic Republic is murderous to the point of self-destruction, they need look no further than today's missile barrage against Israel. Trump offered a respite from the endless destruction wrought by the Israelis, but the regime rejected it for the off chance of murdering a few more Jews.
So here we are on Tuesday, a day that looks very much like the one before it, with the IAF raining down death and destruction on the world's most odious regime.
If we can't have a nice ceasefire, I suppose that will have to do.
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