Nosheen Iqbal

I'm Nosheen Iqbal.

Julian Borja, you're The Guardian's senior international correspondent, and you've reported extensively from the Middle East and Washington.

It's now been 100 days since this war with Iran began, and there's been a fragile ceasefire in place since April.

But over the last 24 hours, we've seen this dramatic escalation with missiles being launched for the first time in two months.

Direct strikes on northern Israel and with fresh explosions heard in Tehran just this morning.

Julian, what on earth is going on?

Clearly, there was a calculation that had they launched those attacks on Beirut, then Iran would have responded in the way that it did.

These attacks happened just hours after Trump made clear that he had called Netanyahu and asked him not to retaliate, presumably to demonstrate to the Iranians that there was some distance with the U.S.

between these attacks and Israel.

Trump apparently is desperate to end the war.

In a phone call with the Financial Times on Sunday, he said, I call the shots.

Netanyahu doesn't call the shots.

Julie, what do you make of these contradictions and of the state of the relationship between the two of them and, you know, what the war game really is here?

So to put it most crudely, Netanyahu needs a war to potentially win in the elections and Trump needs to end it to do well in the midterms.

What about from Iran's perspective?

You know, what do we know about the situation on the ground when it comes to their weapons capability, their military strength, their economy?

What do we know about what's going on there?

And if this wasn't already quite a complicated situation in the region, you then have the intervention of the Houthis who have also launched a missile strike on Israel and have declared that they will ban all Israeli ships from the Red Sea.

Julian, what will the ramifications of that look like?

Julian, we're now hearing reports from both sides, from Iran and Israel, that they will cease attacks.