U.S. President Donald Trump held a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday following the first direct exchange of fire between Israel and Iran since a cease-fire took effect in April, according to a White House official.
The call came amid reports of an increasingly testy relationship between the U.S. leader and Netanyahu, with Trump calling his ally “crazy” during another recent phone call between the two.
Iran fired missiles at Israel overnight and Israel responded by targeting military sites in Iran, sparking fears of a new full-scale conflict.
“Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting’,” Trump wrote earlier Monday on social media.
A White House official confirmed Trump and Netanyahu spoke on Monday without giving further details.
After Trump’s call, Iran and Israel said they had halted attacks on each other, though Tehran said it would resume strikes if Israel continued to hit Hezbollah in Lebanon.
A source briefed on the matter said Israel had also decided to halt its attacks on Iran.
Tehran fired missiles towards Israeli territory late on Sunday, calling them retaliation for Israeli attacks on strongholds of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia on the outskirts of Beirut.
Israel then hit a petrochemical plant in southwest Iran that it said was used to produce ballistic missiles. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had retaliated with a strike aimed at a similar Israeli plant in the city of Haifa.
