By Steve Holland, Parisa Hafezi, Enas Alashray, Ahmed Tolba and Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON/DUBAI/CAIRO, April 8 (Reuters) – The United States and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire, reaching a deal less than two hours before President Donald Trump’s deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face the wiping out of “a whole civilization”.
The announcement by Trump late on Tuesday represented an abrupt turnaround from his extraordinary warning earlier, and came after mediation efforts by Pakistan’s military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and its Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Sharif later said in a post on X he had invited Iranian and U.S. delegations to meet in Islamabad on Friday.
The eleventh-hour deal was subject to Iran’s agreement to pause its blockade of oil and gas supplies through the strait, Trump said. The waterway typically handles about one-fifth of global oil shipments.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, said in a statement Tehran would cease counter-attacks and provide safe passage through the waterway, if attacks against it stop.
Israel supported the decision to suspend strikes on Iran for the two-week period, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. The ceasefire does not apply to Lebanon, it added, in an apparent contradiction to comments from Sharif, who had said the agreement included a cessation of Israel’s campaign in Lebanon.
“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council portrayed the deal as a victory over the U.S., claiming Trump had accepted Iran’s conditions for ending hostilities.
Trump told the French news agency AFP that it was a “total and complete victory”.
“Total and complete victory. 100 percent. No question about it,” Trump said when asked if he was claiming victory with the ceasefire.
He later said on Truth Social: “A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! Likewise, so has everyone else!”
Iran could start the reconstruction process and the U.S. would help in traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz, he added.
The war, now in its sixth week, has claimed more than 5,000 lives in nearly a dozen countries, including more than 1,600 civilians in Iran, according to tallies from government sources and human rights groups.
A source briefed on the talks expressed wariness about the two-week ceasefire holding, saying the U.S. side believed Iran might be trying to buy time. It was a “trust-building exercise,” the source said.
Lebanese state news agency NNA reported continued Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon, including artillery shelling and a dawn air strike on a building near a hospital that killed four people. It also reported attacks on several other towns and on a medical point that caused injuries.
Israel’s military issued repeated urgent warnings to residents of the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, saying it would strike the area.
CONDITIONED ON STRAIT’S REOPENING
It was not immediately clear how soon the ceasefire elsewhere would take full effect. Israeli media said it would begin once Iran reopened the strait and that Israel expected Iranian attacks to continue in the interim.
Iraq’s Islamic Resistance also said it would suspend operations in Iraq and across the region for two weeks.
More than an hour after Trump’s announcement, the Israeli military said it had identified missiles launched from Iran, and explosions from intercepted missiles could be heard in Tel Aviv. Gulf countries including Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also issued near-simultaneous alerts and activated air defences.
Israeli media said its military was striking back at launch sites in Iran.
Trump, who has issued a series of threats in recent weeks only to back away, said progress between the two sides had prompted him to agree to the ceasefire. He said Iran had presented a 10-point proposal that was a “workable basis” for negotiations and that he expected an agreement to be “finalised and consummated” during the two-week window.
Trump later said to AFP: “We have a 15 point transaction, of which most of those things have been agreed on. We’ll see what happens. We’ll see if it gets there,”
Markets enjoyed a relief rally as oil prices dropped, stocks and bonds surged and the dollar weakened, bolstered by hope that trade through the strait could resume.
Global leaders also welcomed the ceasefire with the Australian government saying that “the longer the war goes on, the more significant the impact on the global economy will be, and the greater the human cost”.
By agreeing to the ceasefire, Trump may be showing an awareness that the war – which is deeply unpopular in many parts of the United States – is dragging on longer than he expected, analysts said.
“In the last few days we’ve seen President Trump wanting to find a route towards a way that the U.S. military can back out of the war with Iran, but also frame that as a kind of victory for the U.S.,” said Jessica Genauer, academic director of the Public Policy Institute at Australia’s University of New South Wales.
ABRUPT TURNAROUND
Trump’s announcement capped a whirlwind day that was dominated by his threat to destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran unless Tehran reopened the strait. That unnerved world leaders, rattled global markets and drew widespread condemnation, including criticism from the head of the United Nations and Pope Leo.
Some international law experts have said attacking civilian infrastructure indiscriminately could constitute a war crime.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sharply increased oil prices, escalating the chances of a global economic downturn or even recession. The U.S. Energy Information Administration warned earlier on Tuesday that fuel prices could continue to rise for months even after the strait reopened.
With the U.S. midterm election campaign ramping up, Trump’s approval ratings have hit their lowest level ever, leaving his Republican Party at risk of losing its narrow majorities in Congress. Polls show sizable majorities of Americans are opposed to the war and frustrated by the rising cost of gasoline.
As the clock ticked down to Trump’s 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT Wednesday) deadline, U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran had intensified, hitting railway and road bridges, an airport and a petrochemical plant. U.S. forces attacked targets on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil export terminal.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus worldwide; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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