President Trump said he was extending a cease-fire with Iran just hours before it was set to expire. The announcement came after Vice President JD Vance’s trip to Pakistan for a second round of peace negotiations was put on hold because, according to a U.S. official, Tehran failed to respond to American positions.
The president made the announcement on Truth Social. He said he had received a request from Pakistan, which is trying to mediate an end to the war, to hold off any attacks. Mr. Trump said a cease-fire would stay in effect until Iran’s “leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
The first response from Iran came from an adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the influential speaker of the Iranian Parliament, and he dismissed it. “The extension of the cease-fire by Donald Trump has no meaning. The losing side cannot set the terms,” Mahdi Mohammadi wrote in the social media post.
Mr. Trump’s announcement was a marked departure from his comments earlier in the day, when he told CNBC that if Iran did not agree to U.S. demands, “I expect to be bombing.”
In extending the cease-fire, the president also said the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would continue. Iran has demanded that U.S. forces allow free access to its ports, and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called the blockade “an act of war.”
Even if the two sides return to the negotiating table, many sticking points remain, chiefly on Iran’s nuclear program and on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic conduit for oil and gas. The threat of Iranian attacks has throttled shipping traffic through the strait, and the U.S. Navy says it has forced 28 ships to turn around.
Here’s what else we are covering:
Energy: Oil prices approached $100 a barrel and stocks faded on Tuesday as uncertainty clouded the possibility of peace talks.
Lebanon: Even though a separate 10-day cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon has mostly held since it went into effect last week, Israel on Tuesday blamed Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, of firing rockets toward Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military has kept up repeated strikes since the truce. Hezbollah later confirmed firing on Israel, saying it was in response to cease-fire violations.
Tanker: The U.S. military stopped and boarded a sanctioned ship in the Indo-Pacific region that was carrying oil from Iran overnight, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
- Credits: The New York Times
- Authors: Luke Broadwater, Jonathan Swan, Farnaz Fassihi and Somini Sengupta
- Photo: Arash Khamooshi
