Trump's Unsteady Ceasefire: Israel and Iran's Uncertain Actions | Vanity Fair

Donald Trump took a victory lap overnight as he announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, following his airstrikes on the latter’s nuclear facilities over the weekend. But on Tuesday, the truce looked uncertain, as the two countries exchanged attacks. “I’m not happy about that,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn, admonishing both Israel and Iran. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long, that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

Apart from those angry remarks, Trump remained largely exultant on Tuesday, as he claimed vindication over critics who’d warned his weekend attacks on Iran risked pulling the United States into the kind of military quagmire he railed against on the campaign trail. He headed into NATO summit on Tuesday with a diplomatic victory in his pocket. “The World, and the Middle East, are the real WINNERS,” Trump posted on his Truth Social page.

But it is too early to know for sure if the agreement will hold or turns into Trump’s “Mission Accomplished” moment—a premature victory lap that distills the hubris that can frequently run through US foreign policy. “I’m glad and relieved that we’ve gotten a ceasefire,” Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, who has led the charge with Republican Thomas Massie in calling for the president to seek congressional approval for acts of war, said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Tuesday. “I hope it holds.”

“The question though,” Khanna continued, “is now, what next?”

For his and Massie’s War Powers Resolution, perhaps not much: “It might not be necessary” in light of the ceasefire, Massie told Punchbowl. For the regional conflict, it remains to be seen.

In the long term, it’s unclear what this will mean for Iran’s nuclear program, which had been Trump’s stated rationale for his weekend airstrikes. Though Vice President JD Vance told Fox News Monday night that Trump had “obliterated” Iran’s program, he also suggested that its stockpile of enriched uranium remained intact, buried underground. “That’s the real concern,” he said. The strikes, meanwhile, may have helped strengthen hardliners in Iran, as the Economist reported.

The more immediate question, of course, is whether the two sides will actually adhere to the deal Trump brokered. When he announced the truce had taken effect in the early hours Tuesday, he said to the two parties, “PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!” But the two sides continued to launch attacks, and in a series of posts, the president tried to ward off further escalation. “ISRAEL,” Trump wrote. “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS.”

This diplomacy-by-tweet highlighted the fragile state of the agreement. “ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran,” Trump wrote in a follow-up post. “All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Satisfied that situation is under control, Trump turned his attention to other matters—namely, his pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize, his effort to push his spending bill across the finish line in Washington, and his next performance on the world stage. “Now we’re going to NATO and we’ll get a new set of problems,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday, en route to the Hague. “We’ll solve a new set of problems.”

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