In a dramatic turn of events on Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran, contingent upon the country agreeing to the “complete, immediate, and safe opening” of the Strait of Hormuz. The announcement came less than 90 minutes before the 8 p.m. deadline he had set for Iran to reopen the strategically vital waterway, which transports roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.
“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran. A two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump had issued a stark warning to Iran regarding the strait. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” he said, describing the 8 p.m. deadline as “one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”
The deadline itself was initially set on Sunday, after Trump demanded in a social media post that Iran “Open the F***** Strait.” The president had also predicted that the U.S. military campaign in Iran was close to concluding, stating last week that the U.S. was “on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” and that “we are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We are going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”
Trump added that Iranian nuclear sites had “been hit so hard that it would take months to get near the nuclear dust,” emphasizing his belief that “we have all the cards they have none.”
Amid rising tensions, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who has been mediating talks between Washington and Tehran, intervened. Sharif said he requested a two-week extension of Trump’s deadline and encouraged Iran to open the strait as “a goodwill gesture.” On his social media account X, he urged, “We also urge all warring parties to observe a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks to allow diplomacy to achieve conclusive termination of war, in the interest of long-term peace and stability in the region.”
Iran’s foreign minister confirmed that passage through the Strait of Hormuz would be allowed under Iranian military management for the next two weeks. Later, Iran’s Mehr News Agency published a statement from the secretariat of the Islamic Republic’s Supreme National Security Council, declaring, “the American side, despite all the apparent threats, has accepted these principles as the basis for negotiations and has surrendered to the will of the Iranian people.”
The statement further emphasized Iran’s stance: “If the surrender of the enemy in the field becomes a decisive political achievement in the negotiations, we will celebrate this great historical victory together, otherwise we will fight side by side in the field until all the demands of the Iranian nation are achieved.”
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