Iran launched a barrage of more than 90 missiles and drones at Israeli targets in the predawn hours Tuesday, drawing a sweeping Israeli air response that included a strike on a hardened uranium-enrichment facility south of Natanz, in what officials on both sides described as a final exchange of blows before a ceasefire scheduled to take effect at midnight Wednesday GMT.

The Israel Defense Forces said its air-defense network intercepted the bulk of the incoming fire over a 40-minute window beginning at 3:12 a.m. local time. Sirens sounded across Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Negev and parts of the occupied West Bank. Two ballistic missiles penetrated defenses near Beersheba, damaging a power substation and a logistics warehouse but causing no fatalities, the IDF said. Eleven civilians were treated for shrapnel injuries and shock.

Within hours, Israeli aircraft, supported by aerial refueling tankers operating over Jordanian and Saudi airspace under a quiet arrangement reached last week, hit at least four sites in central and western Iran. The most significant target was a fortified annex at the Pickaxe Mountain complex near Natanz, which Israeli officials have long described as a backup enrichment hall buried under reinforced rock. Iranian state media confirmed strikes at Natanz and at facilities in Khorramabad and Isfahan but disputed the scope of the damage.

“This was not a continuation of the war. This was the closing of an account,” Brigadier General Yair Ben-David, an IDF spokesman, said in a televised briefing in Tel Aviv. “Every target struck tonight was selected months ago. We will honor the ceasefire that takes effect tomorrow.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking at a Tehran press conference shortly after midday, framed the country’s missile salvo as a “measured and lawful response” to weeks of Israeli bombing and said Iran remained committed to the Islamabad framework. “We will not be the side that breaks the peace,” he said. “But we will not enter a ceasefire on our knees.”

The dual strikes capped a tense 48 hours since Saturday’s announcement in Islamabad that mediators from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt had brokered a halt to roughly six weeks of open conflict between Iran and Israel that has drawn in U.S. forces, Houthi militants in Yemen and Iran-aligned factions in Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon has confirmed approximately 350 American casualties since the war’s outset in early March, the bulk from drone and missile attacks on bases in the Gulf and from the USS Stennis strike group operating in the Arabian Sea.

President Donald Trump, traveling to Mar-a-Lago Monday evening, told reporters on the South Lawn that he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during the day and was “satisfied that everyone understands the deal.” Asked whether Tuesday’s exchange threatened the agreement, Mr. Trump said, “It’s loud, but it’s over. They got their last shots in. Now we move on.”

At the United Nations, where the Security Council met in an emergency session called by Russia, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Washington had received advance, channel-level notification of Israel’s intended targets and had urged restraint. She declined to say whether the United States had consented to the Natanz strike. Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia called the Israeli operation “a reckless provocation hours before a hard-won truce.”

Public anxiety has been sharp on both sides. In Tehran, residents who had begun returning to the city over the weekend after weeks of evacuation north to Caspian provinces faced renewed power outages and air-raid sirens. In Israel, schools in the south remained closed Tuesday and the Home Front Command kept shelter directives in place through the afternoon. Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, which had reopened to limited service on Sunday, again diverted incoming flights to Larnaca and Athens.

Markets, which had rallied on Friday’s ceasefire announcement, gave back part of those gains. Brent crude, which had eased to around $103 a barrel last week after OPEC+’s 1.5-million-barrel-per-day production hike, climbed to $108.40 by midmorning London trade before settling near $106. The S&P 500 opened down 0.6 percent and the VIX volatility index moved back above 28.

“The market is doing what the market always does in the last 24 hours of a war: it overreacts in both directions,” said John Reilly, a geopolitical risk analyst at Citi in New York. “If the ceasefire holds tomorrow, we’ll be back at $100 Brent by Friday. If it doesn’t, we are looking at a very different conversation.”

Analysts in the region cautioned that the Natanz strike, in particular, could complicate the political afterlife of the agreement, even if the guns fall silent on schedule. The site has been a fixture of Israeli targeting lists for more than a decade, and Iranian hardliners are likely to demand a reconstitution effort that could test the ceasefire’s longer terms, which include unspecified “verification and de-escalation steps” on the nuclear file.

“The ceasefire ends the shooting. It does not end the standoff,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst at the Levant Policy Institute. “Both governments needed to walk into Wednesday able to tell their publics that they hit the other one last. That part is now done. The harder part starts at one minute past midnight.”

Mediators in Islamabad released a brief joint statement Tuesday afternoon, signed by Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, urging both governments to “refrain from any further kinetic action” in the remaining hours and confirming that United Nations monitors will deploy to the Strait of Hormuz beginning Thursday morning.

Israeli defense officials said no further offensive operations were planned. An Iranian official, briefing reporters in Tehran on condition of anonymity in line with ministry practice, said the country’s missile forces had been ordered to stand down through the ceasefire window but would “respond proportionately” to any Israeli action after 00:00 GMT Wednesday.

Officials on both sides said further announcements on prisoner exchanges, humanitarian access and the deployment of observers would be made in the coming days.