WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, over the course of a single day, went from threatening Iran with "annihilation" to proclaiming that the battered Islamic Republic's leadership had presented a "workable" plan that led him to agree to a 14-day ceasefire that he expects will pave the way to end the nearly six-week war.
The dramatic shift in tenor came as intermediaries led by Pakistan worked feverishly to head off a further escalation. Even China, Iran's biggest trading partner and America's most significant economic competitor, quietly pulled strings to find a path toward a ceasefire, according to two officials briefed on the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"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 social media post Tuesday announcing the temporary ceasefire. It came about 90 minutes before his deadline for Tehran to open the critical Strait of Hormuz or see its power plants and other critical infrastructure obliterated.
The president was to meet at the White House with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Wednesday, with the emerging plan to reopen the strait expected to be at the center of their talks. Trump has been angry that NATO member countries ignored his call to help reopen the vital waterway as gas prices soared during the war.
As the deadline neared, Democratic lawmakers decried Trump's threat to wipe away an entire civilization as "a moral failure." Pope Leo XIV warned that strikes against civilian infrastructure would violate international law and said the Republican president's comments were "truly unacceptable."
In the end, Trump may have backed down because of a simple truth: Escalation could risk involving the United States in the sort of "forever war" that had bedeviled his predecessors in the White House and that he had vowed he would keep the U.S. out of if voters elected him again.
Controlling the strait would have been long and costly
As Trump boasted about U.S. and Israeli military success over the past six weeks, he appeared to be working from the premise that he could bomb Iran into capitulation.
Starting with the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening salvos, he seemed to discount that the Iranian leadership could opt for a long and bloody war.
The Islamic Republic over the past 47 years has shown it is willing to dig in, even when it appears to America to be working against its own self-interest.
The clerical leadership held Americans hostages for 444 days, from late 1979 to early 1981, at the cost of the country's international standing. The mullahs allowed the Iran-Iraq war to go on for years, leaving hundreds of thousands dead. Iran stood by Hamas after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ultimately defanged the Iran-backed group in Gaza as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and created the conditions that led to the collapse of Bashar Assad's government in Syria, an authoritarian rule supported by Tehran.
Iran's leadership exuded confidence that it could bog down the world's superpower in a costly and extended conflict even if it might not defeat the U.S. military.
Defense analysts largely agreed that the U.S. military could quickly take control of the narrow Persian Gulf waterway between Iran and Oman through which roughly 20% of the world's oil flows on any given day. But maintaining security over the strait would require a high-risk, resource-intensive operation that could be a yearslong American commitment.
Ben Connable, executive director of the nonprofit Battle Research Group, said securing the strait would require the U.S. military to maintain control of about 600 kilometers (373 miles) of Iranian territory, from Kish Island in the west to Bandar Abbas in the east, in order to stop Iran from firing missiles at passing ships. It is a mission that Connable said would likely require three U.S. infantry divisions, roughly 30,000 to 45,000 troops.
“This would be an indefinite operation — so, you know, think: be ready to do this for 20 years,” said Connable, a retired Marine Corps intelligence officer. “We didn't think we were going to be in Afghanistan for 20 years. We didn’t think we’re going to have to be in Vietnam as long as we were, or Iraq.”
The two-week ceasefire includes allowing both Iran and Oman to charge fees on ships transiting through Hormuz, a regional official said. The official said Iran would use the money it raised for reconstruction.
The world had considered the passage an international waterway and never paid tolls before. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said after the ceasefire was announced that Trump was effectively delivering “a history-changing win for Iran.”
Trump has a pattern of backing down from maximalist demands
Trump has repeatedly made maximalist demands throughout the first 15 months of his second White House term only to dial them back.
The president backed off many of the sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs he first announced in April 2025 after they caused markets to go haywire. During a January meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump insisted that he wanted the U.S. to take control of Greenland — only to switch course and abandon his threat to impose widespread tariffs on Europe to press his case.
The ceasefire announcement came after Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif urged Trump to extend his deadline to allow diplomacy to advance.
Two weeks has become Trump's favorite interval to buy himself time when making major decisions on major policy issues. Last summer, the White House said he would decide about launching an initial bombing campaign against Iran within two weeks, only to have the president order airstrikes that he said "obliterated" Iran's nuclear program before that interval was up.
Vance played a bigger role close to the deadline
Trump's deadline was nearing with no resolution in sight when Vice President JD Vance, who has long pushed for restraint in U.S. military intervention overseas, got roped into the conversation, according to an official from one of the mediating countries who was briefed on the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive diplomatic discussions.
Vance, who was traveling in Hungary in support of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán before upcoming elections, said Wednesday that the agreement with Iran was “a fragile truce.”
“I think if they negotiate in good faith, we will be able to find a deal. That’s a big if. And ultimately, it’s up to the Iranians how they negotiate. I hope they make the right decision,” he said.
The vice president did not address speculation about whether he would travel to Pakistan to participate in talks with Iran.
Vance’s office has not commented on that, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said Trump would be making the call. In a New York Post interview Wednesday, Trump said his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner would be involved in talks, but that “there’s a question of safety, security” when it comes to Vance’s possible role.
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Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in Washington, Justin Spike in Budapest and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.
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