Workers clean debris a day after Israeli airstrikes in Tyre on June 8, 2026. AFP
Israel and Iran traded fire early Monday in their first attacks since the U.S. struck a ceasefire two months ago, threatening to drag the Middle East back into a full-scale war.
Officials from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and Qatar have urged the Trump administration to pressure Israel to rein in its strikes on Iran and Beirut.
They have also urged Iranian officials to stop attacks on Israel, they said.
One of the officials, who is involved in mediation efforts between Iran and the U.S., said the Pakistan-led mediators were furious about the Israeli strike Sunday on Beirut’s southern suburbs, which came while Pakistan’s interior minister was in Tehran in a fresh bid to push U.S.-Iranian negotiations forward.
In his first comments since the renewed exchange of fire, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote online: “Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting.’”
The war, launched by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28 with strikes on Iran, has shaken the global economy, driven energy prices up around the world and made many basics, including food, more expensive. Officials have been unable to turn the ceasefire, agreed April 8, into a deal to permanently end the conflict.
During the truce, Iran has maintained its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz — a crucial passage for the world’s oil and natural gas and the primary reason global fuel prices skyrocketed.
Israel has continued to strike Hezbollah, Iran’s ally in Lebanon, and pushed deeper into that country.
And on Monday, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, another Iranian ally, fired at Israel and warned they would target Israel-affiliated ships in the Red Sea.
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