The ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump between Iran and Israel appears to be holding a day after both countries signalled that their air war had ended.
Each side claimed victory yesterday after 12 days of war, which the US joined with airstrikes in support of Israel to take out Iran's uranium-enrichment facilities.
President Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said last night that talks between the United States and Iran were "promising" and that the United States was hopeful for a long-term peace deal.
"We are already talking to each other, not just directly but also through interlocutors," Mr Witkoff said in an interview on Fox News' 'The Ingraham Angle' show.
"We are hopeful that we can have a long-term peace agreement that resurrects Iran," he added.
Israel's bombing campaign, launched with a surprise attack on 13 June, wiped out the top echelon of Iran's military leadership, killed its leading nuclear scientists and targeted nuclear sites and missiles.
Iran responded with missiles that pierced Israel's defences in large numbers for the first time.
Iranian authorities said 610 people were killed and nearly 5,000 injured in Iran, where the extent of the damage could not be independently confirmed because of tight restrictions on media.
Iran's retaliatory bombardment killed 28 people in Israel, the first time its air defences were penetrated by large numbers of Iranian missiles.
The United States joined two days before the end of the war, by dropping bunker-busting bombs on nuclear sites, including the most sensitive buried under a mountain.
Mr Trump said it had "obliterated" Iran's nuclear programme, making it impossible for Iran to make an atomic bomb, effectively sweeping the main issue of contention at talks off the table.
Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons.
But there was uncertainty over the extent to which Iran's nuclear programme had in fact been damaged.
US media cited people familiar with the Defense Intelligence Agency findings as saying the US strikes did not fully eliminate Iran's centrifuges or stockpile of enriched uranium.
President Trump called the intelligence report "inconclusive".
Still, presiding over the war's swift end after setting back Iran's nuclear programme - a concern for the West for decades - provides an opportunity for Mr Trump to bask in apparent success in front of other Western leaders at a NATO summit in The Hague.
Hours after the US president announced the ceasefire, he claimed credit for preserving it, by ordering Israel to halt further attacks with its planes already in flight.
He used an obscenity on live television to say that the enemies had been fighting so long they did not know what they were doing.
Watch: Trump uses expletive after he said both Israel and Iran violated a ceasefire
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war had removed the nuclear threat against Israel and he was determined to thwart any attempt by Tehran to revive its weapons program.
"We have removed two immediate existential threats to us: the threat of nuclear annihilation and the threat of annihilation by 20,000 ballistic missiles," he said.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country had successfully ended the war in what he called a "great victory".
Mr Pezeshkian also told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Iran was ready to resolve differences with the US ,according to official news agency IRNA.
During the war, both Mr Netanyahu and Mr Trump publicly suggested that it could end with the toppling of Iran's entire system of clerical rule if its leaders did not yield.
Israel struck sites identified with Iranian internal repression, including Evin prison in Tehran which houses political prisoners.
But after the ceasefire, Mr Trump said he did not want to see "regime change" in Iran, which he said would bring chaos at a time when he wanted the situation to settle down.
The war has hastened steps within Iran to choose a successor to 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Hassan Khomeini, a prominent reformist grandson of the father of the revolution, is emerging as one of the frontrunners, according to five sources, a choice seen as conciliatory at home and abroad.
Iran's authorities moved swiftly to demonstrate their control after a war which had revealed that Israel had deep intelligence about the location of Iran's leaders, and apparently had agents operating across the country.
Iran has executed three men, convicted of collaborating with Israel's Mossad spy agency and smuggling equipment used in an assassination, the Iranian judiciary's Mizan news agency reported.
Iran had arrested 700 people accused of ties with Israel during the 12-day conflict, the state-affiliated Nournews reported on Wednesday.
Israel's military lifted restrictions on activity across the country at 8pm local time (6pm Irish time) yesterday, and officials said Ben Gurion Airport, the country's main airport near Tel Aviv, had reopened.
Iran's airspace likewise will be reopened, state-affiliated Nournews reported.
'Terror organisations'
Meanwhile Israel's defence minister designated Iran's central bank a "terror organisation", saying the move was aimed at halting financing for Iran-backed militant groups.
Minister Israel Katz "signed a special order designating Iran's central bank, two additional Iranian banks (and) an Iranian armed forces-affiliated company ... as terror organisations", a statement from his office said.
"Part of Israel's broader campaign against Iran", the move aimed "to target the heart of the Iranian regime's terror financing system, which funds, arms and directs terror throughout the Middle East", it added.
Oil prices have edged higher, finding some respite after plummeting in the last two sessions, as investors assessed the stability of the ceasefire and the diminished prospect of an Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel's NewMed said the Leviathan natural gas field that supplies gas to Egypt and Jordan, shut down nearly two weeks ago due to the Iran-Israel conflict, would resume operations in the next few hours.
Two of Israel's three gas fields - Chevron-operated Leviathan and Energean's Karish - off its Mediterranean coast that provide the bulk of exports to Egypt and Jordan have been shut since 13 June.
That left in operation only the older Tamar field, used mainly for domestic supplies
Israel's Energy Ministry said that after a security assessment, the larger Leviathan field and smaller Karish would reopen, leading to the resumption of gas exports, a rise in state tax revenues and greater flexibility in managing the electricity and industrial sectors.
Israeli gas accounts for about 15 - 20% of Egypt's consumption, data from the Joint Organisations Data Initiative shows.
The disruption to Israel’s gas supply had led Egyptian fertiliser producers to halt operations.
Israeli armed forces chief of staff Eyal Zamir said a "significant chapter" of the conflict had concluded but the campaign against Iran was not over.
He said the military would refocus on its war in Gaza.
