The United States and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire, reaching a deal less than two hours before President Donald Trump’s deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face the wiping out of “a whole civilization”.
The announcement by Trump late on Tuesday represented an abrupt turnaround from his extraordinary warning earlier, and came after mediation efforts by Pakistan’s military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and its Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Sharif later said in a post on X he had invited Iranian and U.S. delegations to meet in Islamabad on Friday.
The eleventh-hour deal was subject to Iran’s agreement to pause its blockade of oil and gas supplies through the strait, Trump said. The waterway typically handles about one-fifth of global oil shipments.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, said in a statement Tehran would cease counter-attacks and provide safe passage through the waterway, if attacks against it stop.
Israel supported the decision to suspend strikes on Iran for the two-week period, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. The ceasefire does not apply to Lebanon, it added, in an apparent contradiction to comments from Sharif, who had said the agreement included a cessation of Israel’s campaign in Lebanon.
“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “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.”
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council portrayed the deal as a victory over the U.S., claiming Trump had accepted Iran’s conditions for ending hostilities.
Trump told the French news agency AFP that it was a “total and complete victory”.
“Total and complete victory. 100 percent. No question about it,” Trump said when asked if he was claiming victory with the ceasefire.
He later said on Truth Social: “A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! Likewise, so has everyone else!”
Iran could start the reconstruction process and the U.S. would help in traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz, he added.
The war, now in its sixth week, has claimed more than 5,000 lives in nearly a dozen countries, including more than 1,600 civilians in Iran, according to tallies from government sources and human rights groups.
A source briefed on the talks expressed wariness about the two-week ceasefire holding, saying the U.S. side believed Iran might be trying to buy time. It was a “trust-building exercise,” the source said.
Lebanese state news agency NNA reported continued Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon, including artillery shelling and a dawn air strike on a building near a hospital that killed four people. It also reported attacks on several other towns and on a medical point that caused injuries.
Israel’s military issued repeated urgent warnings to residents of the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, saying it would strike the area.
