US, Iran agree to 2-week ceasefire hours before deadline for US attack
Less than two hours before his stated deadline for when he said “A whole civilization will die tonight,” President Donald Trump announced Tuesday night that he had accepted a temporary ceasefire offered by Pakistani leadership. Iran and Israel later indicated that they would also abide by the deal.
Trump said in a Truth Social post that Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir facilitated the deal that requires American forces to temporarily stand down. In exchange, Iran must immediately withdraw any forces blocking ships from passing through the Strait of Hormuz. He described a “10 point proposal” from Iranian leaders and said many of the details had already been agreed upon.
Trump said the deal amounted to a “double sided CEASEFIRE!”
In the hours before the president’s announcement, Sharif described not only the terms of the two-week truce, but also urged “all warring parties to observe a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks to allow diplomacy to achieve conclusive termination of war.”
CNN reported that Israel had also accepted the terms. Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said that Iran had also signed onto the ceasefire.
An earlier version of Sharif’s tweet had a heading that read, “*Draft – Pakistan’s PM Message on X*.” Whether it implies the post’s author was someone outside the country’s government is unclear.
Heated rhetoric
Trump had described an escalation of the war on a scale not seen in nearly a century. He described total war tactics targeting civilian infrastructure on a broad scale.
His early Tuesday social media post threatening not just Iran’s leadership but the “whole civilization” set off a flurry of bipartisan criticism that the president’s rhetoric had gone too far.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer described the president as a “very sick person,” and said any Republican who didn’t join Democrats in voting against allowing the war “owns every consequence of whatever the hell this is.”
Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, struck a more measured tone but maintained his displeasure with Trump’s statement.
“So, let me be clear: I do not support the destruction of a ‘whole civilization,’” he said. “That is not who we are, and it is not consistent with the principles that have long guided America.”
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
