Instant Reaction: Trump Announces Tentative Israel-Iran Ceasefire
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. This is a breaking news update from Bloomberg. Instant reaction and analysis from our 3,000 journalists and analysts around the world.

From Bloomberg World Headquarters in New York, I'm Doug Krisner. There has been a stunning announcement from President Trump on Truth Social. The president saying that Israel and Iran have agreed to a complete and total ceasefire beginning in approximately six hours. That would be around midnight Wall Street time.

Now, Trump said an official end to this 12-day war will be saluted by the world. Earlier in the day, to provide a bit of context, we had Iran retaliating for those U.S. airstrikes over the weekend by attacking a U.S. airbase in Qatar. Now, the Qatari government intercepted this attack.

There were no casualties. That may have helped to defuse a lot of concern about an immediate disruption of oil from the Middle East. Now, in New York trading, we had crude oil falling pretty dramatically. We were down more than 7%. And those declines are accelerating here in the electronic session, with WTI down 4% now at 65.75%.

Let's get to Joe Matthew. He's on the line from Washington, D.C. Joe is host of the Bloomberg Balance of Power radio and TV program. Joe, give me your perspective on what we're learning. Well, it's just fast and furious today. Pretty remarkable to think about the distance of time, just mere hours between Israel and

watching Iran respond to U.S. attacks on its nuclear sites, as you just described, Doug, to emerge with a ceasefire. We were asking just a short time ago if the tit for tat between the U.S. and Iran was over. I guess we can answer that now and, in fact, put at least a bookend on what's been going on between Israel and Iran for the better part of the year.

of 12 days. We need to learn a lot here. We're working on very few headlines. As you know, the president likes to announce things on social media, and there's typically a lot of other news behind the headline. He's on his way to the NATO summit tomorrow. As far as we know, he's still on track with that plan. And this is going to be a fascinating conversation when he joins other world leaders in

overseas. And I suspect we'll use this as a platform to send a big message after what's happened in the last 48 hours. So I was listening to your special coverage earlier today. And among the many topics that you were trying to cover this notion of regime change in Iran, no indication that that's a factor at all in this, right? Well, if you ask the White House, no, save for a stray, once again, social media post by the president in which he seemed to embrace this idea for a moment saying, why is this considered politically correct?

to bump up against the idea of regime change. But all of his lieutenants, every Republican lawmaker on Capitol Hill has gone out of their way to say that that's not what this is about, that we're only at war with the nuclear program, not with the country or the people of Iran. And that's a message as well, Doug, to the MAGA constituents who were very opposed to this idea of striking Iran. The president trying to keep this into an isolated strike situation

to the benefit of our national security. If the MAGA base follows it that way, this will be seen politically as a win for him as well. To what extent do you think there were conversations between Israel and the U.S. trying to put or set the table for something like this before the attacks occurred over the weekend? To set the table for a ceasefire, you mean, or the U.S. strikes themselves? Yeah, I think a little bit of both, don't you think? Yes, and they've been talking a lot. And we do have a lot of reporting on that.

I'd bring you back to April when Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Trump, who reportedly waved off on the idea of an Israeli invasion or series of strikes at that point. But clearly that was the beginning of a conversation. And whether there was some sort of collusion when it came to the deception of Israel launching its first attacks might take some time to unfold in a story that will be told later.

But indeed, the president's been in touch with Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly here. Our advisors on both sides have been. And as we understand more about the way this unfolded with the decoys, for instance, and the way that they used media together, this was clearly something that they were talking about. And the United States showed up on Israel's behalf to try to close the deal.

on this attacking or elimination of Iran's nuclear sites. The president says it's obliterated. Doug, it's difficult to know if we'll ever have the evidence to prove that for a fact.

Joe, stand by because I'm going to bring in Jonathan Panikoff. He is the director of the Scowcraw Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council's Middle East Program. Jonathan, thank you for making time to chat with us. Kind of a remarkable series of events today that has unfolded. And now this idea we are being told by President Trump that Israel and Iran have agreed to a complete and total ceasefire. Give me your reaction.

Well, good evening. Thanks for having me. Look, I think if it ends up being accurate, then it's obviously going to be a huge deal because in the end, President Trump stuck to the narrow window that he had discussed originally.

discussion of regime change, and that one tweet seems to go out the window, perhaps to the Israelis' dismay. But Iran's reaction today demonstrated that they wanted de-escalation. It was very intentional about how they retaliated on al-Huday, the fact that they weren't ahead of time. And so I think this is an indication that Iran was willing to have an off-ramp. They wanted one. And I think what's going to be a real question is, did the

Did the U.S. then pressure Israel to make a deal to end the hostilities, or did Israel decide on its own? And my guess is it may be a little bit of both, frankly. Israel was running out of targets. Trump probably pushed them, but we're going to find out in the coming hours and days. Jonathan, it's great to have you with us as we consider the way this all unfolded over the past couple of days. There was a time when Iran was considered a global military power.

What do we call it now? A certainly diminished one. Look, Iran had three major parts of its defense triad and its power projections in the region. One was its proxy network, which has been incredibly diminished. Hezbollah, Hamas, even the Houthis have been relatively quiet, probably having run out or running low on ballistic missiles. The second

Second part was its ballistic missile program, which they probably have the ballistic missiles still in storage, quite a few of them. But it's the launchers that the Israelis very smartly went after and the actual production assembly that the Israelis went after. And so it set back the ballistic missile program and, of course, the nuclear program. And I think we're still waiting to see what the actual nuclear –

the impact on the nuclear program is going to be. At the end of the day, look, if it's true that a lot of the highly enriched uranium was moved out of Fordow and the Iranians have secret sites, as they very well may, then we could still be faced with a challenge of a nuclear Iran. But even in that case, the weaponization part of this has almost certainly been set back as the

major sites have been destroyed. And so with nothing else, maybe things haven't been completely obliterated and ended in the nuclear program, but it's certainly been significantly set back that it's not going to serve as the same existential threat to Israel today as it did even a week and a half

ago. We're speaking with Jonathan Panikoff from the Atlantic Council's Middle East program, helping us understand the headlines of the hour. President Trump announcing that Israel and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire in their conflict that will begin at around midnight U.S. time this evening. Jonathan, earlier in the day, we obviously had the retaliation by Iran for those U.S. airstrikes over the weekend, the attack on the U.S. airbase in Qatar.

Now, from what we know, Qatar was actively involved in trying to play a diplomatic role. And our Jumana Bersetchi in Dubai was saying that the Qatari government was pretty angry at the Iranian regime today for this strike. Can you give me a sense of the role that Qatar may have played in bringing about this development?

Well, I'm certainly not surprised that Qataris were angry. Look, this is a violation of their sovereign territories, what they're going to say. But I also think they probably were not completely surprised by it. Ali Dade in Qatar is the biggest U.S. base that the U.S. has. Look, Qatar has tried to play an intermediary in a negotiated peacemaking role.

on a host of conflicts. Obviously, most prominently, we know about it from Gaza, but they've also been heavily involved in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They've been heavily involved in parts in East Africa. So I think it fits with Qatar's

default efforts to be a peacemaker. Clearly, they are trusted a little bit more by the Trump administration and by Steve Witkoff than the Israelis trust them. They've long viewed Qatar as a hostile state. I think we'll find out how much of a role they ultimately played, but I don't think it should be a surprise to anybody to see that Qatar was trying to at least serve as an intermediary, regardless of whether or not they were successful here.

Jonathan, thank you so much for being with us and offering your perspective on the developments. President Trump a short while ago announcing that Israel and Iran have agreed to a tentative ceasefire. Jonathan Panikoff from the Atlantic Council's Middle East program. Let's go back to Joe Matthew in Washington. He is host of Bloomberg's Balance of Power. He has been tracking developments on this story.

I guess the weekend through all day today, and now we are at this moment, crude oil prices, Joe, are just collapsing even further. We saw WTI down quite a bit today in New York. I think collectively a sigh of relief in markets, given the degree of tension that there has been, it's been palpable. That's right. President Trump, by the way, just posted as you were speaking, trust in Trump. That's all it says with an American flag emoji. And that is the idea here that the White House is trying to reinforce, right?

If you just had faith in the boss, you wouldn't have been nervous here in the markets to begin with. But

There has been a narrative in the markets broadly for stocks and commodities that the great existential threat that's been hanging over our heads for decades has suddenly been eliminated. Now, that's before we were talking about a ceasefire. There were still missiles in the air, Doug, and stocks were going up today. Oil was going down. This is not the scenario that we ever envisioned at a time like this. But the idea that the nuclear threat has dissipated, save all the rest of it, and there could be further conflict

in the Middle East. But that single item was a massive risk-off moment for investors in both spaces simultaneously. And I'm still struck by that moment today, sitting here in our bureau in Washington, knowing that missiles were on their way from Iran to U.S. installations, suddenly intercepted,

And markets begin to rally without the president even speaking. I'm not sure we've seen something like that before. So what do you think this does for the president? We've talked about his approval rating being underwater recently, and I'm wondering whether or not this gives him a big boost. Well, it might, and we'll have to give that a minute. You know, we were talking earlier about the split in the MAGA community, and that might speak a lot to this. Democrats are not going to give the president a lot of credit for what's going on here. I don't suspect that'll happen, even if

This ceasefire holds. And we were speaking with Democratic lawmakers earlier today who are signing on to a War Powers Act that they want to put guardrails on this president and believe that he acted unconstitutionally by ordering this strike. But keeping his own base together is going to be the object here, whether it's Steve Bannon or Tucker Carlson or anyone else who opposed this idea.

Looking up at this post, trust in Trump. Maybe they should have will be his suggestion because he managed to keep this to an isolated event. Iran's foreign minister was in Russia over the weekend. I think there may have been some conversations happening early on Monday. Hmm.

We know that Russia was pretty critical of the U.S. move on those nuclear sites. And at the same time, Beijing seemed to be very, very disapproving. We know the relationship on the oil side between Tehran and Beijing. The Chinese are very, very dependent on crude oil coming out of Iran. And I'm wondering how...

those two countries, Russia and China, may have put a little bit of pressure on the Iranian regime to try to come to a resolution. Well, that could be, and that's a great question to ask in a narrative that we're going to be...

following here or pursuing at Bloomberg. This could all take an interesting turn as well tomorrow when the president gets to the NATO summit, when, of course, Ukraine was supposed to be on the menu here. We didn't think we'd be talking about a ceasefire, never mind the U.S. striking Iran. But knowing, of course, that Russia is already deeply involved in its war against Ukraine to watch this unfold in the Middle East,

It's a very dangerous moment and a curious one as President Trump demands more spending from our European allies in NATO. And I suspect that he's going to speak to all of these. If there's a news conference where he's taking questions from reporters, we could advance all of these storylines online.

with a single visit to that summit. Well, you mentioned the fact that the president is on his way to the Netherlands for the NATO summit. How do you think this development is going to change the conversation there? It's a great question. I suspect that he's going to be asked a lot about this instead of Ukraine. And if you're President Zelensky, that's probably not

a winning formula for you this week. The fact of the matter is Vladimir Putin continues to bomb civilians, striking. We've seen horrifying videos of drones striking apartment buildings. And this is something that may not get the attention that it would have otherwise. The president's going to be there coming off of what he sees as a massive victory, though, and he's going to claim victory for European nations that increase spending to 5% of GDP. They're going to be lined up

to get a handshake and a photo opportunity with him about that. Even though he doesn't have a lot of nice things to say about our European allies, he made this week, this whole summit was kind of orchestrated for him to celebrate the push for our NATO allies to spend more. He's going to have a lot more to talk about now when it comes to Iran. And he's going to project himself, Doug, as a peacemaker. When he goes to this military alliance and a summit of world leaders, a peacemaker who is reportedly interested in winning the Nobel Peace Prize,

which is something that Pakistan suggested might happen today. Joe, I'm going to let you go. You're going to probably have a meeting right after we wrap here to start producing tomorrow's radio program, radio and TV. It's the Balance of Power show. Co-host Joe Matthew joining us from Washington, D.C., helping us understand headlines of the day. President Trump announcing a short while ago on Truth Social that Israel and Iran...

have agreed to a ceasefire in their conflict. It will begin at around midnight Wall Street time, which is in about five and a half hours from now. Trump saying on Truth Social, the official end of this 12-day war will be saluted by the world.

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