fog of war: has there really been a cease-fire in Iran?

Headline:

Iranian FM Clarifies That If Israel Holds Fire, So will Iran: Fighting 'Until The Very Last Minute'

Update(2200ET): The ceasefire is going to be shaky and likely difficult to maintain given that right up until the very moment it is to go into effect Tehran was on the receiving end of very intense Israeli warplane attacks. And Iran's Foreign Minister too said Iran hit back overnight:

"The military operations of our powerful Armed Forces to punish Israel for its aggression continued until the very last minute, at 4am. Together with all Iranians, I thank our brave Armed Forces who remain ready to defend our dear country until their last drop of blood, and who responded to any attack by the enemy until the very last minute," said FM Araghchi on X.

IRANIAN TELEVISION: ISRAEL ASSASSINATED NUCLEAR SCIENTIST MOHAMMAD REZA SIDDIQI IN ITS RECENT ATTACKS

But shortly before that above latest statement, there was this by the top Iranian diplomat:

It's anything but certain whether it will hold, but likely the White House is putting pressure on Tel Aviv to at least play nice for now, so Trump can take his 'victory lap' and declare mission accomplished. And yet, the status of Iran's uranium enrichment stockpile is unknown.

The status of the ceasefire itself may not become clear until the daylight hours...

Then this happened:

#BREAKING: The IDF has detected new Iranian missile launches toward Israel. Civilians are being told to take shelter.

Iran has violated the ceasefire set by @POTUS Trump just 13 minutes after it took effect at 7:00 a.m. local time. pic.twitter.com/E3uYCwz92P

— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) June 24, 2025

Some of the comments (edited) from Instapundit readers:

• Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who repeats his folly. Proverbs 26:11
• The cease-fire lasted just long enough for me to blink and miss it; Iran chose to violate what they agreed to.
• As if the word of the Mad Mullahs [were] to be trusted? HA!

• Muslims never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Oh, well! Take the mullahs out once and for all. Let the people put somebody else in, and if they act up, repeat.

• Iran violated the ceasefire? Right after it started? I am shocked. Shocked!

• Personally, I think the cease-fire is a negative outcome. [Keeping the mullahs in charge] is just kicking the can down the road. And not that far either, clearly.

• Iran will break up into factions. Until one leader emerges that can round up the revolutionaries, jail them, or kill them off, there is no one person to negotiate with.

• Strikes me as a huge FA on Iran’s part. And reasonable cause for a huge FO from Israel. I assume there are still a lot of targets for Israel to hit. Hope they just pick a hundred or so and get back to work.

• Israel launched the largest airstrikes of the 12 day war after Trump announced the ceasefire (but before it was supposed to take effect, so technically not violating the letter but definitely the spirit, definitely looked like they were trying more decapitation strikes in Tehran). And Iran kept launching rockets after the cease-fire timeline. But none of these recent missile attacks have been large numbers, so it's possible Iran's government is trying to cease fire but has lost comms with some rocket-launcher crews. Or it's all more of the same bullshit we've had out of the ME for most of the last century.
• Muslims use ceasefires to reorganize, re-arm, and re-position. Read the Islamic "holy books" and you will learn this is standard battle doctrine for Muslims. When you're in a war with Islamic forces, there is only one option if you're not also Muslim: complete and utter destruction of the opposing forces.

• [response to above comment] "Read the Islamic "holy books" and you will learn this is standard battle doctrine for Muslims." Which 'holy book' are you referring to?

• [another reader replies] “The duty of the jihad exists as long as the universal domination of Islam has not been attained. Peace with non-Muslim nations is, therefore, a provisional state of affairs only; the chance of circumstances alone can justify it temporarily. Furthermore, there can be no question of genuine peace treaties with these nations; only truces whose duration ought not, in principle, to exceed ten years, are authorised. But even such truces are precarious, inasmuch as they can, before they expire, be repudiated unilaterally should it appear more profitable for Islam to resume the conflict.” - Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill Online edition)

  “If I take an oath and later find something else better, I do what is better and break my oath (see Sahih Bukhari V7B67N427).” —Muhammad in the Hadith

  https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war
  

  Ibn al-Munir (d. 1333) writes, “War is deceit, i.e., the most complete and perfect war waged by a holy warrior is a war of deception, not confrontation, due to the latter’s inherent danger, and the fact that one can attain victory through treachery without harm [to oneself].” And Ibn Hajar (d. 1448) counsels Muslims “to take great caution in war, while [publicly] lamenting and mourning in order to dupe the infidels.”[14]

  “God has commanded me to equivocate among the people just as he has commanded me to establish [religious] obligations"; and “I have been sent with obfuscation"; and “whoever lives his life in dissimulation dies a martyr.” - Muhammad (Shihab ad-Din Muhammad al-Alusi al-Baghdadi, Ruh al-Ma’ani fi Tafsir al-Qur’an al-'Azim wa’ l-Saba’ al-Mithani (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiya, 2001), vol. 2, p. 118, author’s translation.)

  "By their very nature, treaties must be of temporary duration, for in Muslim legal theory, the normal relations between Muslim and non-Muslim territories are not peaceful, but warlike." - Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1955), p. 220.

  "the fuqaha [jurists] are agreed that open-ended truces are illegitimate if Muslims have the strength to renew the war against them [non-Muslims]." - Ahmad Mahmud Karima, Al-Jihad fi’l Islam: Dirasa Fiqhiya Muqarina, p. 461, author’s translation.

And it goes on and on. What's likely to happen, if Iran persists, is the US will end up bombing Iran into a cratered wasteland—at least its facilities. If Trump then advocates for regime change and occupation—a very unwise idea—he will have gone full neocon, becoming the very thing his MAGA adherents despise. If he can somehow thread the needle, though, perhaps by relying on Israel to make use of its military might to keep things calm in the region (a condition that, granted, wouldn't last given Muslim resentment of Israelis), there might be at least a temporary way out of this.

Alas, I think the only real solution is to nuke the entire region into a big, happy sheet of glass. As I said in my post about meeting Nathan, this won't be peace, per se, but it'll at least be silence from a region that never learned to shut up. Further: I'd say Islam in general needs to be cut out like a cancer. The world is better off without a culture that dresses women in bags and throws homosexuals off rooftops while lying (taqiyya—see my religion quiz) to get what it wants. Sure, it's been a source of beauty and knowledge and discipline, and I can appreciate all of that... but on the world stage, the bad outweighs the good.