The U.S. and Iran said they are prepared to hold talks to end the war in the Middle East during a proposed two-week pause in hostilities, even as Israeli strikes on Lebanon threatened to derail the fragile truce.
Further adding uncertainty, sporadic fighting continued throughout the region and the Strait of Hormuz remained largely blocked. President Donald Trump has said that reopening the strait was a condition for halting the fighting.
Trump’s announced ceasefire Tuesday night was a retreat from threats to unleash massive devastation on Iran, easing fears of a protracted global energy crisis. Mediator Pakistan has floated negotiations later this week in Islamabad, and Trump said they could start very soon, according to the New York Post.
Yet there were already signs that the agreement was buckling. Iran said it would withdraw from the deal if Israel kept up attacks in Lebanon, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency. Passage of oil tankers through the strait were halted after Israel’s attacks, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the president views the war front in Lebanon as included in the ceasefire.
Trump made a series of dubious claims about the terms of the agreement in a social media post on Wednesday morning. He said the Islamic Republic has gone through a “regime change,” even though there have been no signs this week that new leadership had taken hold.
He also indicated the U.S. would use its own 15-point plan as the basis of negotiations with Tehran, after saying Tuesday the sides would begin discussions off of Iran’s 10-point proposal. Nonetheless, he said the U.S. was prepared to discuss with Iran much-desired sanctions relief.
The shift to diplomacy came as countries including Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Israel, reported ongoing missile attacks into Wednesday, sewing confusion about when and how the ceasefire would be enforced. Saudi Arabia’s oil pipeline to the Red Sea was hit by a drone strike, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Further uncertainty surrounded whether the ceasefire includes Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, where the country is waging a parallel war against the Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key mediator, said the truce included Lebanon, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disagreed. The Israeli military on Wednesday said it had carried out its largest operation against Hezbollah since the start of the Iran war, targeting more than 100 of the militia’s command centers and military sites within 10 minutes.
Still, oil and gas prices plummeted on news of the ceasefire, which paves the way for a potential resumption of energy supplies via the Strait of Hormuz — through which about fifth of oil and liquefied natural gas supplies typically flows.
Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi pledged to reopen the critical chokepoint as part of the ceasefire agreement, albeit in coordination with Tehran’s military. Hormuz appeared to remain largely blocked in the early hours of the agreement on Wednesday, as shipowners struggled to understand if they can safely transit the vital waterway.
Brent crude fell as much as 17% to $92 a barrel, while European natural gas futures posted their biggest decline in more than two years, shedding as much as 20%.
Trump’s ceasefire announcement represented a dramatic climb-down from an warning earlier Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if Iran didn’t give in. His threatened attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants, may have been considered war crimes if they were carried out. More than 5,300 people have died in the near six-week war.
In a posting on Truth Social, Trump said “there will be no enrichment of uranium” — a reference to longstanding efforts by Washington and Israel to curb Iran’s nuclear program. He also announced plans to impose 50% tariffs on U.S. imports from any country that sold weapons to Iran. It’s unclear how he would follow through on that threat, since the Supreme Court curbed his authority to impose certain levies unilaterally.
Kuwait’s army on Wednesday said it’s still dealing with “intense” attacks. The U.S. expected orders to stand down from strikes would take time to reach Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Axios reported. Such lags are typical in conflicts, with hostilities often continuing before gradually tapering off.
Explosions occurred at Iran’s Lavan Refinery after the start of the truce, the semi-official Mehr reported, without saying where it got the information.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance said at an event in Budapest that Trump has achieved Washington’s military objectives in Iran, having set out to “decimate” Iran’s ability to wage conventional war, while describing the truce as “fragile.”
Both the U.S. and Iran are portraying the ceasefire as a “victory,” but significant differences remain between their demands to bring the war to a complete end, according to Mona Yacoubian, a senior adviser with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Iran says it will allow free passage for the next two weeks through the Strait of Hormuz, but in coordination with Iran’s armed forces. If the U.S. agrees to that, that is a huge concession to Iran,” she said on Bloomberg Television.
While markets breathed a sigh of relief, the ceasefire addressed a crisis Trump helped create when the U.S. and Israel launched the war in late February. Although Trump claimed to have stopped Iran’s nuclear program, there’s been no mention of its missile or drone programs or support for proxy groups.
Pakistani PM Sharif invited all sides to Islamabad to continue negotiations. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian confirmed the Islamic Republic would participate, according to a statement by the Pakistan prime minister’s office.
Vance, U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to attend potential in-person negotiations between U.S. and Iranian officials in the coming days, CNN reported, citing U.S. officials.
The complete terms of a possible pact weren’t disclosed. Trump only said the U.S. had received a 10-point proposal from Iran, describing it as “a workable basis on which to negotiate.”
Iran’s demands include its continued control of the Strait of Hormuz, acceptance of its nuclear-enrichment activities, the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions, and a withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region, according to a statement by its Supreme National Security Council carried by state media.
The two-week ceasefire can be extended by mutual agreement, though Iran will enter talks with “complete distrust,” its state media said.
The focus will be on Hormuz and whether ships can pass safely through the vital waterway. While some vessels have made it through the strait in recent weeks, they’ve generally not been from countries Iran views as hostile or having at least tacitly supported the U.S. and Israeli strikes.
More than 800 freighters are stuck inside the Gulf, mostly waiting to leave, and shipowners and insurer groups have warned that more details will be needed to determine if safe transit is possible.
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—With assistance from Dana Khraiche, Eric Martin, Tooba Khan, Carla Canivete, Michelle Jamrisko and Jordan Fabian.
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