Iran's military has stopped striking Israel, the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday, but Tehran warned it would resume hostilities if the Israel Defense Forces continue operations in Lebanon.
Iran and Israel had traded strikes on Sunday night for the first time since a ceasefire was agreed to between the U.S. and Iran in April. Iran fired missiles toward northern Israel after accusing Jerusalem of repeatedly violating the truce through its strikes on Lebanon, which included an attack on Beirut's southern suburbs on Sunday. Israel said it carried out a "large-scale strike on strategic defense systems" in response, according to CNBC.
Earlier Monday, President Donald Trump pushed back on any suggestion that negotiations had collapsed. "Both sides, Israel and Iran, are looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE! Final negotiations on 'Peace' are proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way. The Blockade will remain in place, and in full force and effect, until a 'Final Deal' is reached. Things should move quickly," Trump wrote on Truth Social. He had earlier posted that both countries should stop "shooting."
In a phone call with the Financial Times on Sunday, Trump said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "won't have any choice" but to accept a deal that the U.S. negotiates with Iran, because the U.S. president "calls the shots."
Whether Iran still intends to reach any deal is less clear. An Iranian official linked to the talks between Washington and Tehran told MS NOW that "a deal with President Trump is no longer feasible at this stage." The official blamed Trump for the situation in Lebanon and the current escalation in hostilities.
Oil prices surged more than 5% during the session before pulling back as the immediate military exchange appeared to settle.
The flare-up comes as Trump has repeatedly defended his decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Obama-era nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. He withdrew from it in 2018. On Friday, in an NBC News interview, Trump described the agreement as disastrous. "That deal was tantamount to giving them a nuclear weapon. It was a horrible deal given by Barack Obama, and really penned by him," Trump told NBC. "It was a horrible deal."
Trump also claimed the JCPOA would have already "expired long ago." But many of its key provisions were permanent, while others were set to last 15 or 20 years or longer. Since the U.S. withdrawal, Iran has breached the deal's nuclear limitations, including by ramping up uranium enrichment and pulling back on some transparency measures the agreement had established.
Ernest Moniz, who served as U.S. energy secretary when the 2015 deal was negotiated, gave a skeptical assessment of the current situation. "I find it very hard to say how we are in a better position," he told CNBC. "Maybe there will be a rabbit pulled out of a hat. We all hope so. But right now, the conditions would certainly appear to be far less favorable than they were a decade ago," Moniz said.
Trump was also asked in the NBC interview why he did not renegotiate a better nuclear deal during his first term. "It takes years to do these things," he said. He has insisted a new deal is coming. "The DEAL that we are making with Iran will be FAR BETTER," Trump wrote on Truth Social in April, adding minutes later that such a deal will come "relatively quickly!"
The Iran conflict, which Trump initially said would last four to six weeks, has now stretched into its fourth month without a short-term peace agreement, let alone one that addresses the nuclear question.
