Roving Periscope: Amid fragile ceasefire and ‘peace efforts,’ the West Asian war reignites
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Despite US President Donald Trump ‘urging’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off, the Jewish military attacked Iran on Monday, risking derailing the on-and-off US-Iran ‘peace talks,’ amid fragile ceasefires, as crude oil prices surged more than 3%, the media reported.
Israel said it struck military targets in western and central Iran on Monday, even after Trump reportedly told Netanyahu to refrain from further attacks.
Hours earlier, the US President, who has himself been blowing hot and cold, said new exchange of fires by Israel and Iran would not affect his administration’s peace talks with Tehran. Netanyahu, he claimed, “doesn’t call the shots.”
Trump has reportedly been trying to persuade Israel to stop its attacks in Lebanon to allow room for a deal to end the wider war with Iran. He also ‘rebuked’ Netanyahu with alleged obscenities in a phone call last week. However, Israel on Sunday launched strikes in the Beirut area for the first time since the US announced a truce plan for Lebanon last week.
Iran also fired a salvo of missiles at Israeli targets in retaliation, putting US-Iran peace talks at risk. But Trump insisted that an agreement to end the wider war remains well 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 doesn’t call the shots.”
Hours later, however, Israel’s defence forces said they had struck Iranian military targets. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said Israel had carried out attacks on targets inside Iran using air-launched ballistic missiles.
The fresh round of hostilities drove oil prices up more than 3 per cent in early trading on Monday, with benchmark Brent futures back above USD 96 a barrel.
IRGC said they had targeted Ramat David air base, near Nazareth. The Israeli military said it identified missiles launched from Iran and that its defence systems had intercepted them.
Trump-Netanyahu
The US President, who was spending the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and Netanyahu spoke by phone for nearly 30 minutes on Sunday, an Israeli official said, without giving further details.
Trump told Netanyahu to refrain from further strikes because “we are close to doing something good in terms of a deal,” according to a US official quoted by Axios.
Since the start of US-Iran talks aimed at halting the war, Israel has continued attacks in Lebanon in a conflict with Iran-backed Shia militant outfit Hezbollah that Israeli officials insist should be treated separately from any ceasefire with Iran. Tehran has long said any peace deal with the US would depend on a ceasefire also holding in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Hezbollah fighters who fired rockets and drones across the border in solidarity with Tehran.
Iran’s chief peace negotiator, parliamentary speaker Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, said the US bases and Israeli assets are legitimate targets because of hostile acts, including the “violation of agreements over Lebanon.”
Before Sunday, Iran had not attacked Israel since a ceasefire in the wider war started in April, although Hezbollah has done so.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington and Tehran were close to an agreement on ending the war.
“We’re very close to a deal, or I’m going to blow the hell out of them,” Trump told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in a prerecorded interview that aired on Sunday to mark 100 days of the conflict which started on February 28, 2026.
“No attacks in Lebanon,” says Trump
Israel has never halted its Lebanon campaign, which has killed thousands of people and driven hundreds of thousands more from their homes. Hezbollah, which did not take part in the truce talks, has also continued its attacks and says it will not give up its weapons unless Israel halts its attacks and withdraws from Lebanon.
Netanyahu said the Israeli strikes on Sunday on Beirut’s southern outskirts, a district called Dahiyeh that has long been a Hezbollah stronghold, were ordered in response to the terror group firing toward Israel.
The wider war has been stalemated since the US and Israel paused their attacks on Iran in early April, with Tehran blocking most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the main transit route for one-fifth of the world’s oil. Washington has imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports.
Though Washington and Tehran have said they are close to a preliminary agreement that would reopen the strait, they have repeatedly traded strikes, with escalations in recent days that have included attacks on nearby Arab states hosting US bases.
Trump has said any agreement to end the war must prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and he is under pressure to deliver terms tougher than those agreed in 2015 under then-President Barack Obama in a deal Trump later repudiated.
Tehran’s demands include the lifting of US and international sanctions, recognition of its sway over the strait and the release of billions of dollars in frozen assets. The US may also use these frozen funds to cover up the cost of repairs of damages caused by the Iranian attacks.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said on Sunday any such diversion of Iranian assets would be illegal, and Tehran would take measures in response.
