President Donald Trump said on Monday that Israel and Iran are seeking an immediate ceasefire while talks on a broader peace deal continue.
“Final negotiations on “Peace” are proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way,” Trump wrote on social media platform Truth Social.
Earlier on Monday, Trump said that "Israel and Iran must immediately stop 'shooting'" in a social media post.
Israel earlier said it hit a petrochemical plant in Iran's southwest, along with strikes elsewhere on military targets, after Trump reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from further attacks.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that in retaliation, they had launched a missile attack on a similar plant in the Israeli city of Haifa.
In the first hit on an energy site inside Iran since the April 8 ceasefire, Israel said it struck targets at the Mahshahr petrochemical complex, while a provincial official told Iran's semi-official Fars news agency parts of the plant were damaged.
The Israeli military later said it had also carried out a large-scale strike on Iranian defense systems to dismantle air defense capabilities that Tehran had been deploying.
Iranian media reported the sound of explosions in Tehran on Monday, and the semi-official Mehr news agency said air defenses had shot down a drone over the capital. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Trump: 'I Call the Shots'
Trump said on Sunday the new strikes by Israel and Iran would not affect the U.S. peace talks with Tehran.Trump has leaned on Israel to stop its attacks on Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon to allow room for a deal to end the wider war with Iran.
However, earlier on Sunday Israel launched strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in the Beirut area for the first time since the U.S. announced a truce plan for Lebanon last week.
Iran fired salvos of missiles at Israeli targets in retaliation, but Trump insisted that an agreement to end the wider war remained within reach.
"It’s not going to have any impact on the deal," Trump told the Financial Times. "I call the shots. I call all the shots. He (Netanyahu) doesn’t call the shots."
A few hours later, Israel's defense forces said they had struck Iranian military targets.
Iran had fired 11 ballistic missiles at Israel, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, said on X, adding, "Everyone has had enough of this maniacal Iranian regime."
Israel was targeting Iran's surface-to-surface missile launch sites and infrastructure facilities, he added.
In a brief statement, Israel's defense forces said they struck several targets at Mahshahr.
Authorities there ordered all employees to evacuate, but there were no injuries and damage was being assessed, Iran's state media reported, adding that five production lines at the complex had been hit since the Iran war began on February 28.
Trump Urged Netanyahu to Hold Off Further Strikes
Trump spoke with Netanyahu by telephone from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for a little less than half an hour on Sunday, an Israeli official said, without giving details.The White House and the Israeli prime minister's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump told Netanyahu during the call to refrain from further strikes because "we are close to doing something good in terms of a deal," according to a U.S. official quoted by Axios.
Since the start of the talks, Israel has kept up attacks in Lebanon in a conflict with Hezbollah that Israeli officials insist should be treated separately from any Iran ceasefire.