After mounting fears of regional spillover, the international community breathed a sigh of relief at the apparent Iran-Israel truce. Trump, who had previously toyed with “regime change” in Iran, rejected the idea en route to a NATO summit in the Netherlands. “If there was, there was, but no I don’t want it. I’d like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Meeting Trump on the sidelines of the summit on Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “expressed his satisfaction with the ceasefire achieved between Israel and Iran through President Trump’s efforts, hoping it would be permanent,” his office said.

In a national address Netanyahu vowed to thwart “any attempt” by Iran to rebuild its nuclear programme, which armed forces chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said Israeli strikes had set back “by years”.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian hailed his nation’s “heroic resistance” in a message carried by the official IRNA news agency.

Pezeshkian has said Iran will respect the ceasefire as long as Israel holds to its terms, adding that Tehran will continue to “assert its legitimate rights” to the peaceful use of atomic power but was “ready to resolve the issues… at the negotiating table”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a “historic victory” against Iran despite a US intelligence report concluding that American strikes set back Tehran’s nuclear program by just a few months. In an address to the nation after the ceasefire announcement, Netanyahu said “Iran will not have a nuclear weapon”.

“We have thwarted Iran’s nuclear project,” he said. “And if anyone in Iran tries to rebuild it, we will act with the same determination, with the same intensity, to foil any attempt.” A major question is what happens with negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. It is not entirely clear who in Iran has the authority to make a deal or even agree to reenter talks. Ray Takeyh, a former State Department official and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Iranian leadership is at a moment of disarray — making it difficult to return to the table.

“The country’s leadership and the regime is not cohesive enough to be able to come to some sort of negotiations at this point, especially negotiations from the American perspective, whose conclusion is predetermined, namely, zero enrichment,” he said. Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agreed, saying the biggest challenge right now is who is in charge in Tehran.”

“Is there an Iranian negotiation team empowered to make consequential decisions?” he said. “The issue is that (Trump) is dealing with an Iranian government whose longtime identity has been based on hostility toward the the United States.”

Witkoff said the U.S. and Iran are already in early discussions, both directly and through intermediaries, about resuming negotiations. “The conversations are promising. We’re hopeful.”

At the U.N. on Tuesday, Iranian Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani told the Security Council that “diplomacy and dialogue are the only path to resolving the unnecessary crisis over Iran’s peaceful program.”

In the aftermath of the U.S. strikes, Vice President JD Vance stressed that diplomacy is still Trump’s preferred method for ending the conflict permanently. “We didn’t blow up the diplomacy,” Vance told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “The diplomacy never was given a real chance by the Iranians. And our hope … is that this maybe can reset here.”

France and its European partners are still prepared to reactivate sanctions on Iran if an agreement is not reached soon on its nuclear program, the French ambassador to the UN warned Tuesday.

“Time is running out,” said Jerome Bonnnafont at a UN Security Council meeting, in reference to the October expiration of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

“We expect Iran to return to talks without delay in order to achieve a robust, verifiable and lasting diplomatic solution,” he added.

Bonnafont said negotiations were the only way to “guarantee the impossibility of an Iranian military nuclear program,” days after the United States conducted strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok produced inaccurate and contradictory responses when users sought to fact-check the Israel-Iran conflict, a study said Tuesday, raising fresh doubts about its reliability as a debunking tool.

With tech platforms reducing their reliance on human fact-checkers, users are increasingly utilizing AI-powered chatbots — including xAI’s Grok — in search of reliable information, but their responses are often themselves prone to misinformation.

“The investigation into Grok’s performance during the first days of the Israel-Iran conflict exposes significant flaws and limitations in the AI chatbot’s ability to provide accurate, reliable, and consistent information during times of crisis,” said the study from the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) of the Atlantic Council, an American think tank.

“Grok demonstrated that it struggles with verifying already-confirmed facts, analyzing fake visuals, and avoiding unsubstantiated claims.”

Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed the Iran-Israel ceasefire and urged “close dialogue” to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as he held talks with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of a NATO summit late Tuesday.

The Turkish president “expressed his satisfaction with the ceasefire achieved between Israel and Iran through President Trump’s efforts, hoping it would be permanent,” his office said.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Trump announced that Iran and Israel had agreed to a staggered ceasefire that would bring about an “official end” to their 11 day conflict.

The move came after the US joined Israel’s campaign on Sunday, striking key nuclear sites, prompting a carefully-coordinated Iranian retaliation against a US base in Qatar late Monday — which appeared to bring the confrontation to a close.

Oil prices sank for a second straight day and stock markets mostly rose Tuesday as a ceasefire between Iran and Israel appeared to be holding firm. Crude futures slumped in volatile trading after US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, extending Monday’s steep losses in oil after Iran’s response to the US attack did not hit energy infrastructure.

The main international and US oil contracts briefly bounced off their lows as Israel and Iran accused each other of breaking the ceasefire, but then resumed their fall after Trump berated the two countries in an expletive-laced outburst.

Prices were also brought down by Trump saying that China could continue to buy oil from Iran, in what appeared to be relief from sanctions Washington had previously imposed.

Brent futures finished the day at $67.14 down nearly seven percent after dropping by a similar percent on Monday.

Iran, Israel, and the United States all declared victory on Tuesday after 12 days of conflict that culminated in US President Donald Trump declaring a ceasefire between the two arch enemies in the Middle East. However, the uncertainty continued in West Asia, as a classified preliminary US intelligence report claimed that American strikes on Iran’s nuclear program set back Tehran’s nuclear program by just a few months — rather than destroying it as declared by President Trump.

US media on Tuesday cited people familiar with the Defence Intelligence Agency findings as saying the weekend strikes did not fully eliminate Iran’s centrifuges or stockpile of enriched uranium and just sealed off entrances to some facilities without destroying underground buildings.

White House Press Secretary Karline Leavitt confirmed the authenticity of the assessment but said it was “flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked.”

“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” Leavitt posted on X.

“Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration,” she added.