U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Monday a complete ceasefire between Israel and Iran, potentially ending the 12-day war that saw millions flee Tehran and prompted fears of further escalation in the war-torn region, Reuters reported.

But there was no confirmation from Israel and the Israeli military said two volleys of missiles were launched from Iran towards Israel in the early hours of Tuesday.

Witnesses later heard explosions near Tel Aviv and Beersheba in central Israel. Israel media said a building had been struck and three people were killed in the missile strike on Beersheba.

Israel, joined by the United States on the weekend, has carried out attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, after alleging Tehran was getting close to obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, ‘THE 12 DAY WAR’,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site.

While an Iranian official earlier confirmed that Tehran had agreed to a ceasefire, the country’s foreign minister said there would be no cessation of hostilities unless Israel stopped its attacks.

Abbas Araqchi said early on Tuesday that if Israel stopped its “illegal aggression” against the Iranian people no later than 4 a.m. Tehran time (0030 GMT) on Tuesday, Iran had no intention of continuing its response afterwards, read the report.

There have been no reported Israeli attacks on Iran since that time.

“The final decision on the cessation of our military operations will be made later,” Araqchi added in a post on X.

A senior White House official said Trump had brokered the deal in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel had agreed so long as Iran did not launch further attacks.

Trump appeared to suggest that Israel and Iran would have some time to complete any missions that are underway, at which point the ceasefire would begin in a staged process.

Iran denies ever having a nuclear weapons program but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said that if it wanted to, world leaders “wouldn’t be able to stop us”.

Israel, which is not a party to the international Non-Proliferation Treaty, is the only country in the Middle East believed to have nuclear weapons. Israel does not deny or confirm that.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani secured Tehran’s agreement during a call with Iranian officials, an official briefed on the negotiations told Reuters on Tuesday.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff were in direct and indirect contact with the Iranians, a White House official said.

Neither Iran’s U.N. mission nor the Israeli embassy in Washington responded to separate requests for comment from Reuters.

Hours earlier, three Israeli officials had signaled Israel was looking to wrap up its campaign in Iran soon and had passed the message on to the United States.

Netanyahu had told government ministers whose discussions ended early on Tuesday not to speak publicly, Israel’s Channel 12 television reported.

Markets reacted favorably to the news.

S&P 500 futures rose 0.4% late on Monday, suggesting traders expect the U.S. stock market to open with gains on Tuesday.

U.S. crude futures fell in early Asian trading hours on Tuesday to their lowest level in more than a week after Trump said a ceasefire had been agreed, relieving worries of supply disruption in the region.

There did not appear to be calm yet in the region.

The Israeli military issued two evacuation warnings in less than two hours to residents of areas in the Iranian capital Tehran, one late on Monday and one early on Tuesday.

Israeli Army radio reported early on Tuesday that alarms were activated in the southern Golan Heights area due to fears of hostile aircraft intrusion.

Earlier on Monday, Trump said he would encourage Israel to proceed towards peace after dismissing Iran’s attack on an American air base that caused no injuries and thanking Tehran for the early notice of the strikes.

He said Iran fired 14 missiles at the U.S. air base, calling it “a very weak response, which we expected, and have very effectively countered.”

Iran’s handling of the attack recalled earlier clashes with the United States and Israel, with Tehran seeking a balance between saving face with a military response but without provoking a cycle of escalation it can’t afford.

Tehran appears to have achieved that goal.

Iran’s attack came after U.S. bombers dropped 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on Iranian underground nuclear facilities at the weekend, joining Israel’s air war.

Much of Tehran’s population of 10 million has fled after days of bombing, Reuters reported.

The Trump administration maintains that its aim was solely to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, not to open a wider war.

“Iran was very close to having a nuclear weapon,” Vice President JD Vance said in an interview on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

“Now Iran is incapable of building a nuclear weapon with the equipment they have because we destroyed it,” Vance said.

Trump has cited intelligence reports that Iran was close to building a nuclear weaopon, without elaborating. However, U.S. intelligence agencies said earlier this year they assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and a source with access to U.S. intelligence reports told Reuters last week that that assessment hadn’t changed.

But in a social media post on Sunday, Trump spoke of toppling the hardline clerical rulers who have been Washington’s principal foes in the Middle East since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Israel, however, had made clear that its strikes on Evin prison – a notorious jail for housing political prisoners – and other targets in Tehran were intended to hit the Iranian ruling apparatus broadly, and its ability to sustain power.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has arrived in Moscow for urgent consultations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, amid escalating tensions following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

According to Iranian state media, Araghchi is leading a senior diplomatic delegation tasked with securing Russia’s political and strategic backing as the region teeters on the brink of a broader conflict.

The visit comes as Iran’s top leadership retreats from public view and braces for further Western military action.

Sources in Moscow say Araghchi will deliver a personal message from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and brief the Kremlin on Tehran’s next steps. Talks are expected to focus on defense coordination, energy exports, and potential Russian mediation at the United Nations Security Council.

Reuters meanwhile reported that a senior source confirmed that Araghchi was due to deliver a letter from Khamenei to Putin.

Iran has not been impressed with Russia’s support so far, Iranian sources told Reuters, and the country wants Putin to do more to back it against Israel and the United States. The sources did not elaborate on what assistance Tehran wanted.

The visit underscores deepening ties between Tehran and Moscow as both countries face mounting Western pressure and seek to align their positions on regional security and global diplomacy.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday raised the question of regime change in Iran following U.S. strikes against key military sites over the weekend, as senior officials in his administration warned Tehran against retaliation, Reuters reported.

“It’s not politically correct to use the term, “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform.

Trump’s post came after officials in his administration, including U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, stressed they were not working to overthrow Iran’s government.

“This mission was not and has not been about regime change,” Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon, calling the mission “a precision operation” targeting Iran’s nuclear program.

Vance, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker,” said “our view has been very clear that we don’t want a regime change.”

“We do not want to protract this or build this out any more than it’s already been built out. We want to end their nuclear program, and then we want to talk to the Iranians about a long-term settlement here,” Vance said, adding the U.S. “had no interest in boots on the ground.”

“Operation Midnight Hammer” was known only to a small number of people in Washington and at the U.S. military’s headquarters for Middle East operations in Tampa, Florida.

Complete with deception, seven B-2 bombers flew for 18 hours from the United States into Iran to drop 14 bunker-buster bombs, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, told reporters.

In total, the U.S. launched 75 precision-guided munitions, including more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles, and more than 125 military aircraft in the operation against three nuclear sites, Caine said.

The operation pushes the Middle East to the brink of a major new conflagration in a region already aflame for more than 20 months with wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and a toppled dictator in Syria, read the report.

With the damage visible from space after 30,000-pound U.S. bunker-buster bombs crashed into the mountain above Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, experts and officials are closely watching how far the strikes might have set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Caine said initial battle damage assessments indicated all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction, but he declined to speculate whether any Iranian nuclear capabilities might still be intact.

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi was more cautious, saying while it was clear U.S. airstrikes hit Iran’s enrichment site at Fordow, it was not yet possible to assess the damage done underground.

A senior Iranian source told Reuters on Sunday that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordow, the site producing the bulk of Iran’s uranium refined to up to 60%, had been moved to an undisclosed location before the U.S. attack.

Vance told NBC the U.S. was not at war with Iran but rather its nuclear program, and he thought the strikes “really pushed their program back by a very long time.”

Trump called the damage “monumental,” in a separate social media post on Sunday, a day after saying he had “obliterated” Iran’s main nuclear sites, but gave no details, Reuters reported.

Tehran has vowed to defend itself and responded with a volley of missiles at Israel that wounded scores of people and destroyed buildings in its commercial hub Tel Aviv.

But, perhaps in an effort to avert all-out war with the superpower, it had yet to carry out its main threats of retaliation, to target U.S. bases or choke off the quarter of the world’s oil shipments that pass through its waters.

Caine said the U.S. military had increased protection of troops in the region, including in Iraq and Syria.

The United States already has a sizeable force in the Middle East, with nearly 40,000 troops in the region, including air defense systems, fighter aircraft and warships that can detect and shoot down enemy missiles.

Reuters reported last week the Pentagon had started to move some aircraft and ships from bases in the Middle East that may be vulnerable to any potential Iranian attack.

With his unprecedented decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites, directly joining Israel’s air attack on its regional arch foe, Trump has done something he had long vowed to avoid – intervene militarily in a major foreign war.

There were sporadic anti-war demonstrations on Sunday afternoon in some U.S. cities, including New York City and Washington.

It was unclear why Trump chose to act on Saturday.

At the press conference, Hegseth said there was a moment in time when Trump “realized that it had to be a certain action taken in order to minimize the threat to us and our troops.”

After Trump disputed her original assessment, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Friday said the U.S. had intelligence that should Iran decide to do so, it could build a nuclear weapon in weeks or months, an assessment disputed by some lawmakers and independent experts. U.S. officials say they do not believe Iran had decided to make a bomb, read the report.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” whether the U.S. saw intelligence that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had ordered nuclear weaponization, said: “That’s irrelevant.”

Hegseth, who said the Pentagon notified lawmakers about the operation after U.S. aircraft were out of Iran, said the strikes against Iran were not open-ended.

Rubio also said no more strikes were planned, unless Iran responded, telling CBS: “We have other targets we can hit, but we achieved our objective. There are no planned military operations right now against Iran – unless they mess around.”