Israel and Iran Halt Strikes After Trump Phones Netanyahu to Stand Down

Israel and Iran both pledged Monday to stop attacking one another, pulling back from the brink only hours after exchanging the most intense missile fire the region has seen since a fragile ceasefire took hold in April. The reversal followed a late-night phone call in which President Donald Trump pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on a significant retaliatory strike that Israel was preparing to launch against Tehran.

The latest flare-up began Sunday evening, when Iran launched its first attack on Israel in several weeks. Tehran said the barrage — nearly 30 ballistic missiles, according to the Israeli military — was retaliation for Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Israel has continued to target Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. In the early hours of Monday, Israel answered with missile strikes of its own, sending dozens of warplanes against Iranian air defenses that had been rebuilt since the previous round of fighting.

According to multiple sources, Israel was preparing a far larger operation aimed at Tehran when Trump telephoned Netanyahu and urged him to stand down. The intervention appeared to work. Netanyahu announced afterward that Israel had halted its attacks on Iran "for now," stopping short of acknowledging a formal ceasefire and warning that the military remained ready to respond "with force" to any further provocation.

Iran, for its part, said Monday afternoon that it was ending its attacks but cautioned that they would resume if Israel carried out new "aggression and hostility," explicitly including any further strikes in Lebanon. The conditional language from both capitals underscored how brittle the pause is: the April ceasefire that this weekend's exchange shattered had been the longest stretch of calm since the two countries began trading direct blows, and neither side has renounced the option of striking again.

The weekend's escalation rippled well beyond Israel and Iran. A U.S. Army Apache helicopter went down near the coast of Oman on Monday night; its two crew members were rescued safely. Oil markets and regional airlines braced for disruption near the Strait of Hormuz, and Lebanese officials warned that continued Israeli operations around Tyre and Beirut risked dragging the country deeper into a conflict it has struggled to stay out of. For now, an uneasy quiet has returned — held together, by Washington's own account, largely by a single phone call.