Ceasefire announced in Israel-Iran conflict in a major win for Donald Trump.

 

President Donald Trump. Fox News/Government Photo. 

A ceasefire has been announced in the Israel-Iran conflict, brokered by Donald Trump. Fox News. Trump announced the ceasefire on his social network, Truth social. He praised the cease fire and said that the "12 day war" would be over. Qatar was critical in brokering the agreement, and was able to get Iran to agree to end hostilities. This comes after Iran launched a retaliatory attack against an US base there. The attack was launched with warning and the missiles were intercepted, with no casualties being reported. Despite that, Qatar was willing to pass on the ceasefire details to Iran. 

The AP reports that Iran said they would accept a cease fire if Israel stopped their attacks no later than 4:00 am local time. No strikes have been reported since Iran made the announcement. Israel has not commented on the ceasefire as of yet, but appears to be holding to it. 

Though the ceasefire went into effect, both sides were accused of violating it. President Trump, clearly upset, put major pressure on both sides and as of this writing the fighting has stopped. 

My Comment:

I had written this post last night before the ceasefire went into effect, but I held off on publishing it as I wanted to see if the ceasefire would hold. That was clearly the right call as both Iran and Israel violated the ceasefire over night. Trump put extreme pressure on both and given that the ceasefire has held for most of a day now, I am guessing it's finally time to post what I wrote. 

If this ceasefire holds long term this will be a diplomatic coup for President Trump and a huge win for his foreign policy. I was on record on being uncomfortable with joining the war, but it appears that Trump has won again. I said that I didn't really think that Trump had a valid casus belli, I still don't believe that Iran was that close to a bomb, but perhaps his reason for joining the war was to end the fighting? If so, it worked out. 

So why did this happen? Well, it was clear that Iran was losing the war. They were able to do a little damage to Israel but they could not really respond to the attacks that Israel was sending. And they were able to do absolutely nothing when Trump bombed the nuclear sites. 

Critically, Iran had next to zero help. Their proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah were mostly destroyed and Syria was overthrown. Russia was less than useless and China pretty much vetoed Iran's effort to close the Strait of Hormuz. That left Iran with pretty much zero options, other than an attritional war with Israel they no longer could win. Is it any wonder why they agreed to diplomacy? 

Israel had good reason to stop the war as well. Iran's nuclear program has been destroyed, perhaps not completely, but enough that it won't be a threat for years. Like I have said for awhile now, Israel was at risk of biting off way more than they could chew as they were still involved in the conflicts with the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza. Iran was neutralized outside of the threat of their missiles. 

Will the cease fire hold long term? It depends. I think both Israel and Iran were humbled by this war. Iran found out they could do very little against both Israel and the United States and that their air defenses are worthless. Israel found out that their air defenses, though better than Iran's, were not perfect. And both found out that President Trump is tired of their conflict and was personally offended when they didn't listen to him about ending the war. 

But on the other hand, I don't think Israel or Iran are actually rational actors at this point. I don't think Israel was acting sane when they launched this war in the first place and I don't think Iran was sane when they refused to end it when it was clear that they lost. Israel might be worried that they missed some of Iran's nuclear tech, though so far they aren't acting like the most recent report saying the Fordo strike wasn't devastating enough. And Iran? They are radical Muslims, so who knows what they will do? 

This is a coup for Trump domestically. His critics, both on the left and the right, look incredibly foolish right now. I think Trump did make a huge gamble by joining the war but when you gamble and win you look like a genius. Could it have gone another way? Sure, and it still might backfire, but right now the Negative Nancy's on the right and the "impeach Trump" folks on the left are eating a lot of crow. It was a roller coaster of a ride, as it always is with Trump, but it absolutely showed that Trump still has the magic touch with this kind of thing. 

I also think that while joining the war was a risk, this was probably the best outcome. Not only is Iran's nuclear program is defunct, there wasn't much in the way of consequences. Iran tried to launch a counterattack but it failed, and it was also clear that it was designed to fail. You don't launch an attack with a warning unless you are trying to reduce casualties, and that is exactly what happened. Iran wanted to launch a face saving measure and they did and once that was over, so was the war. 

I will say that Trump was as mad as I have ever seen him this morning when it was unclear if the ceasefire was going to hold. It's not often that a President drops the f-bomb on live TV, but he absolutely did this morning. Indeed, Trump looked more angry this morning than he was after he got shot. All that anger was likely directed towards Benjamin Netanyahu who wisely decided that anything more than a symbolic strike on Iran would lead to a permanent damaging of his relationship with Trump. 

President Trump is furious! He said Israel and Iran have “been fighting for so long and so hard that they don’t know “what the f**k they’re doing.” pic.twitter.com/AtTc2OHoYL

— Graham Allen (@GrahamAllen_1) June 24, 2025

Finally, I have to say that this whole thing was, as I said before, a roller coaster. I went from being hopeful that Trump would stick to diplomacy, annoyed that he joined the war, surprised that the strike worked out so well, shocked when he said there was a ceasefire, and right back to annoyed when the cease fire briefly fell apart. Right now I'm just beside myself with the fact that it all somehow worked out for Trump again. The man just appears to be blessed in some way that's hard to even define. Either way, I hope that the rest of his Presidency is a bit more boring than the last couple of weeks!