U.S. Reaches Last-Minute Ceasefire With Iran Before Trump Deadline

President Trump agreed to suspend U.S. bombing of Iran for two weeks, with the condition that Tehran immediately and completely reopen the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping traffic, announcing the deal just hours before his 8 p.m. ET deadline. The agreement, brokered by Pakistan after 40 days of U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that had pushed the region to the brink of wider war, pulled back from the most extreme military scenario Trump had threatened.

Trump cited conversations with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir as the basis for the pause. Earlier on Tuesday, Trump had issued an apocalyptic warning, threatening that "a whole civilization will die tonight" if Iran failed to make a deal. Iran had staged human chains in front of the Kazerun combined cycle power plant in Fars province, one of the facilities Trump had threatened to destroy.

In his social media post announcing the truce, Trump wrote that "almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran," citing a 10-point proposal from Tehran that he called "a workable basis on which to negotiate." Iran's Supreme National Security Council accepted the ceasefire on the condition that U.S. and Israeli attacks stop, agreeing to pause its own retaliatory strikes during the two-week window. Iran, however, made clear that its missile programme is not on the table in any negotiations.

Verification of the Strait's reopening has already begun. At least two vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz after the ceasefire was announced: a Greek-owned bulk carrier, the NJ Earth, crossed on Wednesday morning, followed roughly two hours earlier by the Liberia-flagged Daytona Beach into the Gulf of Oman. However, hundreds of vessels remain backlogged in the Persian Gulf, including 426 tankers, 34 liquefied petroleum gas carriers, and 19 liquefied natural gas vessels.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif invited delegations from both Iran and the United States to Islamabad on Friday, April 10, for further talks aimed at a conclusive agreement. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the ceasefire as "a workable basis to negotiate," adding that "there are discussions about in-person talks, but nothing is final until announced by the President."

While the ceasefire dominated Tuesday's news, a separate political test played out in northwestern Georgia. Republican district attorney Clay Fuller won the special election runoff in Georgia's 14th Congressional District, defeating Democrat Shawn Harris, a retired Army brigadier general and cattle producer, in the seat vacated when Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned in January.

Fuller won by roughly 12 points with nearly all votes counted, in a district Trump had carried by almost 37 points and Greene had won by 29 points in 2024. The margin reflected a significant Democratic surge: Harris outperformed the Democratic 2024 presidential results in the district by 25 points, marking the largest Democratic overperformance in a House special election since Trump took office. Democratic turnout exceeded expectations, extending a pattern of overperformance that the party hopes to carry into November's midterms, when control of Congress is at stake.

The two results together crystallize the political tension of this moment: Trump's endorsement remains powerful enough to hold deep-red turf, but the margin of that hold is shrinking precisely as his administration navigates the most consequential foreign-policy gamble of his second term.