Do not drop those bombs, Trump tells Israel

The European Union called on Iran "to engage seriously in a credible diplomatic process", an EU spokesperson Anouar El Anouni said on Tuesday.

"This escalation benefits no one, and everybody is concerned by the same thing, which is the spillover effect," El Anouni said.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said both Israel and Iran violated the ceasefire agreement, and claimed that Tehran’s nuclear program had been eliminated during the latest round of hostilities.

“Both sides broke the ceasefire,” Trump told reporters before leaving for the NATO summit in The Hague, referring to the US-brokered truce that was announced hours earlier and confirmed by both governments.

He did not specify which side acted first but added, “I didn’t like that Israel unloaded right after we agreed to a ceasefire.”

The remarks follow conflicting reports from Tel Aviv and Tehran over who initiated strikes after the ceasefire took effect. Israel said Iran launched ballistic missiles toward its territory, while Iran denied the accusation and said Israel continued to fire on its positions for more than an hour after the truce was supposed to begin.

Trump, who has taken credit for brokering the ceasefire, also made claims about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. “Iran will never rebuild its nuclear program,” he said. “Their nuclear capacities are gone.”

Iran likely hid hundreds or thousands of advanced centrifuges and enriched uranium before US and Israeli strikes, former Israeli intelligence official Sima Shine told The Telegraph, warning Tehran can quickly rebuild its nuclear program.

The United Nations has decided to temporarily move some international personnel and their dependents out of Iran, a UN spokesperson said in Geneva on Tuesday.

Iran will not renounce its right to peaceful nuclear energy, its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, said on Tuesday during a session of the UN Conference on Disarmament.

Bahreini accused the United States and Israel of launching a “criminal” attack on Iran, based on what he called a distorted report by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He said the attack targeted not only Iran but also the global non-proliferation regime.