By Nandita Bose and Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump sharply rebuked Israel on Tuesday for its military response following a ceasefire deal, and accused both Israel and Iran of violating the agreement just hours after he announced it.
“I didn’t like the fact that Israel unloaded right after we made the deal. They didn’t have to unload and I didn’t like the fact that the retaliation was very strong,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday.
“In all fairness, Israel unloaded a lot, and now I hear Israel just went out because they felt it was violated by one rocket that didn’t land anywhere. That’s not what we want,” Trump said.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz had said he had ordered the military to mount new strikes on targets in Tehran in response to what he said were Iranian missiles fired in a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire.
Iran denied launching any missiles and said Israel’s attacks had continued for an hour and a half beyond the time the ceasefire was meant to start.
Trump had announced the ceasefire earlier on Tuesday with a post on Truth Social: “THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!”
Later in the day, Trump told reporters Israel launched its strikes almost immediately after the agreement was reached.
“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before. The biggest load that we’ve seen. I’m not happy with Israel,” he said.
Iran and Israel, he added, had been fighting “so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”
Asked whether he wanted a regime change in Iran, Trump said he did not. “No. If there was, there was but no, I don’t want it. I’d like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible,” he said.
“Regime change takes chaos and ideally we don’t want to see so much chaos. So we’ll see how it goes.”
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Katharine Jackson and Chizu Nomiyama)
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