Iran has agreed to restore safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz and halt its counter-attacks under a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, reached less than two hours before Donald Trump’s deadline for devastating strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure was set to expire.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tehran would cease hostilities and guarantee passage through the waterway — which normally carries around a fifth of global oil supplies — on condition that attacks against Iran stopped. Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said Iranian and US delegations had been invited to meet in Islamabad on Friday to advance talks toward a permanent settlement.
Oil prices fell, stocks surged and the dollar weakened in Asian trade as markets registered relief that the strait — closed for weeks by Iranian action that had sent energy prices soaring and threatened a global recession — was set to reopen.
The ceasefire capped a day of extraordinary brinkmanship. US and Israeli strikes on Iran had intensified throughout Tuesday, hitting railway and road bridges, an airport, a petrochemical plant and targets on Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal. Trump had threatened to destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran within four hours if the deadline passed without agreement.
Trump claimed the outcome as an outright victory. “Total and complete victory. 100 percent. No question about it,” he told AFP. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council offered the opposite reading, saying Trump had accepted Iran’s conditions for ending hostilities.
Ceasefire fragile from the outset
A source briefed on the talks said the US side believed Iran might be using the truce to buy time, describing it as a “trust-building exercise.” Trump acknowledged the wariness, saying he expected a definitive agreement to be “finalised and consummated” within the two-week window, and that Iran had presented a 10-point proposal he considered a “workable basis” for negotiations.
Israel said it supported the suspension of strikes on Iran for the two-week period, but Netanyahu’s office stressed the ceasefire did not apply to Lebanon — an apparent contradiction of statements from Pakistan’s Sharif, who said the agreement covered Lebanon as well. Lebanese state media reported continued Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon, including a dawn air strike near a hospital that killed four people.
More than an hour after Trump’s announcement, the Israeli military reported missiles launched from Iran, with explosions from intercepted projectiles heard in Tel Aviv. Gulf states including Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE activated air defences near-simultaneously. Israeli media said its military was striking back at launch sites inside Iran.
Iraq’s Islamic Resistance separately said it would suspend operations across the region for two weeks.
Political pressure at home
Analysts said Trump’s decision to accept a ceasefire reflected awareness that a war deeply unpopular across much of the United States was dragging on longer than anticipated. His approval ratings have fallen to their lowest level, leaving the Republican Party at risk of losing its narrow congressional majorities ahead of the midterm elections.
“In the last few days we’ve seen President Trump wanting to find a route towards a way that the US military can back out of the war with Iran, but also frame that as a kind of victory,” said Jessica Genauer, academic director of the Public Policy Institute at the University of New South Wales.
The war, now in its sixth week, has claimed more than 5,000 lives across nearly a dozen countries, including more than 1,600 civilians in Iran, according to tallies from government sources and human rights groups. The US Energy Information Administration warned on Tuesday that fuel prices could continue rising for months even after the strait fully reopened.
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