President Donald Trump pauses after speaking about the Iran war in Cross Hall at the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026 in Washington.
Alex Brandon | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Tuesday withdrew his shocking threat to order the imminent destruction of Iran’s “entire civilization,” saying he had agreed to halt plans to attack Iran’s infrastructure for two weeks.
The move, which came more than five weeks after the U.S. and Israel began a war, “was conditioned on the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the full, immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote on Truth Social.
The decision was “based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir,” Trump wrote.
“This is a truce on both sides!” he declared.
Oil prices fell by as much as 16% following the announcement, but U.S. stock futures soared.
In a separate statement, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said ships could safely transit the strait at two-week intervals “in coordination with the Iranian Armed Forces and with full consideration of technical limitations.”
President Trump’s announcement came two hours before a deadline for Iran to strike a deal that includes opening the strait, a critical artery for global oil transport, or face major attacks on civilian infrastructure.
The 8 p.m. ET deadline was set on Sunday after President Trump called on Iran in a bellicose social media post to “open the fucking straits,” causing panic in the United States and around the world.
President Trump escalated the situation dramatically on Tuesday morning, writing in another post that “the entire civilization will perish tonight, never to rise again.”
Sharif on Tuesday afternoon asked President Trump to extend the deadline on Iran by two weeks. He also called on Iranian leaders to agree to open the strait for two weeks “as a gesture of goodwill.”
“We also call on all warring parties to observe a two-week ceasefire everywhere so that diplomacy can achieve a decisive end to the war for the long-term peace and stability of the region,” Sharif wrote on XPost.
Both the United States and Iran saw this development as a victory.
In a post announcing the two-week postponement, President Trump claimed that he agreed to halt the U.S. planned attack because “we have already met and exceeded all military goals and are well on our way to a final agreement on long-term peace with Iran and peace in the Middle East.”
“We have received a 10-point proposal from Iran that we believe provides a viable basis for negotiations,” Trump wrote.
“Almost all of the various issues in the past have been agreed upon between the United States and Iran, and the agreement will be finalized and signed over a two-week period,” he said.
Iran’s Mehr News Agency late Tuesday carried a statement from the Islamic Republic’s Supreme National Security Council Secretariat, declaring that the United States “accepted these principles as the basis for negotiations and surrendered to the will of the Iranian people.”
“If the surrender of the enemy in the field becomes a decisive political outcome in the negotiations, we will celebrate together this great historic victory. Otherwise, we will fight together in the field until all the demands of the Iranian nation are achieved,” a translation of the statement said.
According to the statement, Iran will hold negotiations with the United States over the next few days to two weeks in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
Iran’s 10-point proposal includes the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from all regional bases, the lifting of all sanctions, the release of Iranian assets frozen abroad, and full payment of Iran’s war-related damages. A protocol for controlled passage of the Strait of Hormuz will also be established.
President Trump said on Monday that the ceasefire proposal offered by Iran was “not good enough.” It was not immediately clear what prompted him in the preceding hours to accept Iran’s offer as a “viable basis” for negotiations.
