Iran War News: How Trump went from threatening to annihilate Iran to agreeing to a two-week ceasefire with Tehran
Over the course of a single day, President Donald Trump went from threatening Iran with “annihilation” to declaring that the stricken Islamic Republic’s leadership had presented an “actionable” plan that led him to agree to a 14-day ceasefire that is expected to pave the way for an end to the nearly six-week war.
The dramatic shift in the tenor of the talks came as mediators, led by Pakistan, worked feverishly to avoid further escalation of the conflict. Even China — Iran’s largest trading partner and the United States’ most important economic rival — has quietly moved to find a path toward a ceasefire, according to two officials familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
“This is because we have already met and exceeded all military objectives, and we are still very far from reaching a final agreement on long-term peace with Iran and peace in the Middle East,” Trump declared in a social media post declaring a temporary ceasefire, about 90 minutes before his deadline for Tehran to open the vital Strait of Hormuz or see power plants and other critical infrastructure destroyed.
The president is scheduled to meet at the White House on Wednesday with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. The emerging ceasefire and plan to reopen the Strait are expected to be at the center of the talks.
As the deadline approached, Democratic lawmakers denounced Trump’s threat to wipe out an entire civilization as a “moral failure,” and Pope Leo XIV warned that strikes against civilian infrastructure would violate international law, calling the president’s comments “truly unacceptable.”
But in the end, Trump may have ultimately backed down because of a simple fact: Escalation would risk embroiling the United States in the kind of “forever war” that confounded his predecessors and which he pledged to keep the United States out of if voters returned him to the White House.
