Fragile ceasefire holding, Trump envoy says peace talks with Iran 'promising'

WASHINGTON/TEL AVIV/ISTANBUL :The ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump between Iran and Israel appeared to be holding on Wednesday a day after both countries signalled that their air war had ended, at least for now.Each side claimed victory on Tuesday after 12 days of war, which the US joined with airstrikes in support of Israel to take out Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities.
On Tuesday, explosions rang out in Tehran from Israeli airstrikes despite President Trump saying Israel had called off strikes at his command to preserve an hours-old ceasefire.Two witnesses reached by telephone in the Iranian capital said they heard two loud explosions.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office acknowledged that Israel had struck a radar site near Tehran in what it said was retaliation for Iranian missiles fired three-and-a-half hours after the ceasefire had been due to begin.
It said Israel had decided to refrain from further attacks following a call between Netanyahu and Trump but did not explicitly say whether the strike on the radar site took place before or after they spoke.Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said late on Tuesday that talks between the United States and Iran were “promising” and that Washington was hopeful for a long-term peace deal.
“We are already talking to each other, not just directly but also through interlocutors. I think that the conversations are promising. We are hopeful that we can have a long-term peace agreement that resurrects Iran,” Witkoff said in an interview on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” show.”Now it’s for us to sit down with the Iranians and get to a comprehensive peace agreement, and I am very confident that we are going to achieve that,” he added.
Trump, en route to a NATO summit in the Netherlands, had rebuked Israel with an obscenity in an extraordinary outburst at an ally whose military campaign he had joined two days earlier.”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!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.