US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel on Monday, nearly two weeks after Israel launched unprecedented strikes against Iran that targeted its nuclear program and military leaders.
The two countries had been trading attacks since Israel launched “Operation Rising Lion” on June 13. The operation was aimed at stopping what Israel said was Tehran’s rapid progress in developing nuclear weapons. Its targets included Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz and what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “the heart of Iran’s ballistic missiles program.”
Several of the most important men in Iran’s military and nuclear program were killed in Israel’s initial strikes. Among them were Iran’s highest-ranking military officer and the head of its elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran, which insists its nuclear program is peaceful, began retaliatory strikes after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that Israel would face “severe punishment."
On Saturday, Trump ordered US warplanes to drop massive bombs on three nuclear sites inside Iran. “Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” Trump said during his four-minute speech from the White House Cross Hall.
Iran retaliated Monday by firing about a dozen ballistic missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest US military installation in the Middle East. But Tehran tipped both the United States and Qatar that the strike was coming, and air defenses were able to intercept all but one of the incoming Iranian missiles, according to US and Qatari officials. No deaths or injuries were reported in Qatar.
Trump announced the ceasefire deal hours later.
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