Mirage Factory: Trump’s ceasefire unraveled before it started
In the Oval Office, a man who mistakes social media outbursts for statecraft declares victory while the desert wind carries cordite and scorched uranium, a metallic stench clinging to the ruins of Natanz and the shattered mountains of Fordow.
“THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT,” he bellows into the digital void, as if shouting at a hurricane to change course.
Eleven minutes later, Iranian missiles tear through the skies toward Beersheba. Five civilians die in the rubble of an apartment block.
There are no known details about the agreement that Trump suddenly announced, but Israel and Iran have each cast it as a victory to their people.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had accused Iran of firing a wave of missiles toward Israel and said he instructed the military to “respond forcefully to Iran’s violation of the ceasefire.”
A message posted on the Telegram channel of Iran’s state broadcaster denied the claim of a missile launch. Iran then accused Israel of launching three waves of attacks shortly after Trump said the truce had gone into effect. Israel said it destroyed a radar installation near Tehran as retaliation for Iran’s alleged missile launch after the ceasefire had begun.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will refrain from additional attacks.
Israel and Iran launched blistering attacks on each other overnight as a deadline for the truce loomed. At least four people were killed in Israel in an Iranian missile barrage.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it dropped more than 100 munitions on the Iranian capital of Tehran, with massive attacks reported in cities across the country.
The 12-day war has cost at least 610 lives in Iran, according to figures released Tuesday by the country’s Health Ministry. The Human Rights Activists News Agency, a Washington-based rights group that monitors Iran, says the death toll is at least 974.
In Israel, 28 people were killed in total, the prime minister’s office said in a statement Tuesday.
History will record this not as diplomacy, but as delusion metastasizing into geopolitical arson. If nothing else, America’s tyrant Donald Trump certainly convinced Iran that it needs a nuclear weapon, now more than ever.
Let us be precise: Trump did not broker peace. He lit a match in a fireworks factory and called the inferno a light show.
When Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 13, it was the culmination of a chain reaction Trump ignited seven years ago by shredding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. That accord—forged by five nations and the European Union —restrained Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Tehran complied. Inspectors verified. Then Trump torched it, howling about technical clauses while incinerating stability itself.
The autopsy of this crisis reads plainly: Withdrew from agreement. Reimposed sanctions. Watched Iran enrich uranium to near-weapons grade. Provoked a war. Declared ceasefire. Watched it implode.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gifted Trump an opportunity to back away from the ledge and promote de-escalation but the United States does not speak for Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial for crimes such as fraud, breach of trust, and bribery.
Netanyahu has been on trial since May 2020, but it is a slow moving affair where witness testimony only started in April 2021, and the October 7 Hamas attack, a subsequent genocide in Gaza, and now this unprovoked strike at Iran, have all considerably distracted the country’s justice system.
In addition to rushing off to slaughter children, Netanyahu’s government — the most right-wing in Israel’s history — has attempted to hijack the Israeli judicial system and undermine the independence of the courts.
In 2023, Netanyahu’s administration introduced comprehensive judicial reforms aimed at significantly reducing the authority of the Supreme Court, increasing the executive branch’s control over judicial appointments, and posing a serious threat to democratic checks and balances.
Observe the farce: At 1:00 a.m. ET, Trump posts his ceasefire decree. By 3:30 a.m., sirens wail across northern Israel. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps claims it fired 14 missiles in the final hours before the truce—a parting gift wrapped in shrapnel.
Trump, airborne to a NATO summit, erupts: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION.”
Israeli jets reportedly streak toward Tehran. Minutes later, explosions rock Babol. Iranian media blames Israel.
Trump insists the planes turned back for a friendly aerial salute. This is not diplomacy. This is a man trying to defuse a grenade with slogans.
Trump has faced protests of his own, and while he dismissed several dozen charges after he returned to power, he came back to the White House a convicted felon.
The collateral damage is concrete.
In Gilan, nine Iranians lie dead from Israeli strikes hours before the ceasefire. In Beersheba, a mother clutches the dust-coated doll of a child crushed by retaliation. Evin Prison—Tehran’s fortress for dissidents—stands bombed-out and empty, its political prisoners vanished into darkness.
And Trump? He calls Iran’s strike on Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base weak, thanking them for advance notice that prevented American casualties. The message echoes: Only American blood matters. The rest is scenery.
Meanwhile, the opportunists circle. Russia whispers of nations ready to gift Tehran nuclear weapons, a serpent’s promise coiled in Kremlin language. China condemns U.S. strikes while funneling investments through cracks in Iran’s sanctions wall. Qatar, hosting 10,000 U.S. troops, files a UN complaint over Iran’s missile attack while pleading for Gaza’s inclusion in any truce—a cry drowned by jet engines.
The core failure festers in Washington. Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear accord was not sovereignty. It was myopia. The deal had extended Iran’s bomb development timeline by years. By pulverizing its constraints, Trump gifted hardliners the pretext to enrich uranium at levels nearing weapons-grade—precisely the nightmare he claimed to prevent. When international inspectors now beg to examine Iran’s surviving uranium stockpile—hidden before U.S. bunker busters struck—they meet radioactive silence. The monsters Trump swore to slay now feast on the carcass of his own making.
Tonight, as NATO leaders shift uneasily in The Hague, Trump lands to hollow applause. The ceasefire? It lives only in his digital fantasy. Iran vows to keep hands on the trigger. Israel’s cabinet demands all strength to Gaza. And the uranium? Still buried. Still unaccounted for. Still counting down.
Final bulletin: Peace requires coherence. Coherence requires comprehension. Donald Trump, thrashing in a quicksand of his own creation, lacks the capacity to grasp either. The nuclear accord was not flawless. It was merely the final barrier between order and chaos. Now we inhabit the wasteland beyond it—a land where ceasefires are digital specters, diplomacy is ash, and the only deal left is the one we make with oblivion. God help us all.