President Trump said in a social media post Tuesday evening that he had agreed to a Pakistani proposal for a two-week ceasefire in the war with Iran. The apparent deal, which the president said is subject to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, comes ahead of the 8 p.m. ET deadline Trump had set for Iran to reopen the strait or see much of its civilian infrastructure demolished.
“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “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 added that he had received a 10-point proposal from Iran that he sees as “a workable basis on which to negotiate.” He said that agreement had been reached on “almost all” points of contention between the U.S. and Iran, and that the ceasefire will allow time for a deal to be finalized.
The announcement came after Trump issued a shocking threat Tuesday morning.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”
Even after more than a month of war in Iran — and weeks of Trump threats of escalation and conflicting claims about the status of the military campaign and diplomatic efforts — it was hard to simply shrug off the president’s latest post as just another example of Trumpian menacing, just another attempt to build leverage toward a last-minute deal or even just another set-up for a TACO moment. The threat by a president of the United States to exterminate “a whole civilization” landed as an extraordinarily unusual, unsettling and unpresidential one.
Trump had already threatened to unleash “Hell” on Iran and said the whole country “could be taken out in one night.” Experts had already warned that his threatened strikes against Iranian civilian energy infrastructure and bridges would likely constitute war crimes, placing military leaders and members at legal risk. But the commander-in-chief’s new threat raised the alarm level even higher. One human rights lawyer and Columbia University lecturer reportedly told The Washington Post that Trump’s latest threat meets the “very definition of terrorism — to seek to achieve political ends through violence or threats of violence directed at civilians.”
Trump’s rhetoric drew sharp criticism from a broad range of political figures. “This is an extremely sick person,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a post on X. “Each Republican who refuses to join us in voting against this wanton war of choice owns every consequence of whatever the hell this is.”
House Democratic leaders called for Congress to return from its recess to vote to end the war before Trump “plunges the country into World War III.” They called the president “completely unhinged.”
On the Republican side, some lawmakers defended or downplayed Trump’s remarks while others condemned them. Sen. Ron Johnson, a stalwart Trump supporter, said “it would be a huge mistake” to strike the infrastructure Trump has threatened. “He loses me if he attacks civilian targets. Whatever we do has to be within the laws of warfare," Johnson said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a critic of Trump’s war, suggested that Trump was unfit for office and the 25th Amendment should be invoked to remove him. “25TH AMENDMENT!!! Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization,” Greene said in a post on X. “This is evil and madness.”
Pope Leo XIV also criticized Trump’s post, calling the threat “truly unacceptable.”
What’s next: It’s not entirely clear. Trump seemed to have boxed himself in, but the Pakistani proposal may have given him a face-saving way to back away from his war. Trump’s announced ceasefire now raises hopes that the war might come to an end and Trump won’t have to act on his extraordinary ultimatum.