A ceasefire within a ceasefire.

That’s what The White House wants from Israel and Iran, who exchanged attacks late Sunday and early Monday, endangering Donald Trump’s fraught efforts to talk his way out of the war he started in February.

“Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting’,” Trump insisted, employing his trademark superfluous scare quotes. “Both sides are looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE!” he claimed, about 20 minutes later, in a separate social media post.

Never a state to turn the other cheek — and indicative of the IDF’s penchant for deliberately misinterpreting lex talionis which, though thrice-mentioned in the Torah, was actually meant to limit retaliatory violence on the relatively rare occasions it was taken literally — Israel bombed multiple sites in Iran on Monday, including the Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex, the country’s largest such facility, in Mahshahr.

The strikes came hours after Iran fired missiles into Israel in retaliation for the ceaseless bombing of Dahiya, the Beirut suburb that serves as Hezbollah’s political and military powerbase.

An IDF spokesperson described a “large-scale” attack on Iranian “strategic defense systems,” involving dozens of Israeli warplanes. The targeting of air defenses raised concerns that Israel isn’t done. In the past, these sorts of bombing runs were a precursor to wider strikes.

“Recently, defense systems were deployed across Iran to restore the regime’s capabilities,” the IDF said. Monday’s strikes “led to the dismantling of these systems.”

Later, the IRGC said an additional Iranian missile volley targeting an industrial complex in Haifa was retribution for the IDF strike on Mahshahr, where Karun — a petrochemical plant within the larger complex — sustained significant structural damage, according to local officials. Some strategically important chemicals could now be subject to supply disruptions in Iran.

Israel said the plant and related facilities “were used by the Iranian terror regime to produce and export raw materials for weapons production.” Specifically, the IDF described Karun as the source of “unique materials that serve as critical components for the development of ballistic missiles.”

The larger complex was also targeted earlier in the war, prior to the April ceasefire. Those strikes were criticized in some corners as an illegal attack on Iran’s civilian infrastructure.

Both sides — the IDF and its detractors — are correct. The Bandar Imam complex is a dual-use facility. It produces products for civilian and military applications. As such, it isn’t off limits in wartime under international law. That said, the Geneva Conventions contain stipulations for targeting such facilities. The Israel military isn’t what I’d call a stickler for the laws of war.

In a stereotypically overwrought statement, the Guards said the Israeli strikes “initiated a dangerous game whose scope will encompass all energy-related targets in the region.” Israel also hit Iranian military sites across the country.

Trump, desperate to extinguish the figurative and literal flames, claimed early Monday that “final negotiations on ‘Peace’ are proceeding.” He added an amusing caveat. The success of the peace process, he chided, hinges on “ignorance [and] stupidity [not] getting in its way.”