Top Stories; Iran updates: Pakistan seeks 2-week pause after Trump warns 'whole civilization will die' if no deal by deadline
Top Stories — Wednesday, April 8, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Iran updates: Pakistan seeks 2-week pause after Trump warns 'whole civilization will die' if no deal by deadline — CNBC
- Trump’s Threat to Wipe Out a ‘Whole Civilization’ Appalls Some Conservatives — nyt News
- AWS teams working around the clock to keep Middle East services up after drone strikes, CEO says — CNBC
Iran updates: Pakistan seeks 2-week pause after Trump warns 'whole civilization will die' if no deal by deadline
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/8/2026, 2:00:56 AM
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday asked President Donald Trump for a two-week extension of his threat to wipe out the "whole civilization" of Iran unless Tehran strikes a deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Sharif in an X post also asked Iran's leadership to agree to open up the strait for two weeks "as a goodwill gesture."
"We also urge all warring parties to observe a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks to allow diplomacy to achieve conclusive termination of war, in the interest of long-term peace and stability in the region," Sharif wrote.
The public plea from the leader of Pakistan, which has acted as a mediator between the warring powers, came hours before Trump's 8 p.m. ET deadline for Iran to either cut a deal or face massive strikes on its civilian infrastructure — which could be considered a war crime.
On Tuesday morning, Trump dramatically ramped up his threats, warning on Truth Social that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" if no agreement is reached.
"However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?" he wrote.
"We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World."
Asked for comment on Sharif's request, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNBC, "The President has been made aware of the proposal, and a response will come."
Trump's threat came after U.S. forces the previous night struck military targets on Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export terminal, a White House official confirmed to CNBC.
Iran has blocked most oil transit through the Strait of Hormuz since the U.S. and Israel began the war in late February. The closure has led to a historic oil supply shock, which quickly sent global energy prices soaring.
Trump has boasted that Iran's military has been "obliterated" but acknowledged it still controls ship traffic flow through the strait, giving it key leverage.
In a belligerent Easter social media post on Sunday, he threatened to destroy Iran's bridges and power plants by Tuesday night, demanding Tehran "Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell."
Tuesday's post, and the reports of new U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian infrastructure, gave way to conflicting reports on the status of diplomatic efforts between the warring powers.
But Sharif wrote in his X post, "Diplomatic efforts for peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully with the potential to lead to substantive results in near future."
The PM's post tagged the official social media profiles of top officials including Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, as well as Iran's president, foreign minister and parliamentary speaker.
Trump's latest threat quickly drew heated reactions from his political opponents plus some who have long been aligned with his MAGA political movement.
"Congress must immediately end this reckless war of choice in Iran before Donald Trump plunges us into World War III," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said on X. "It's time for every single Republican to put patriotic duty over party and stop the madness."
Republican former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a onetime Trump loyalist who left Congress in January after publicly falling out with the president, called for his removal from office via the 25th Amendment.
Many Democratic lawmakers have since joined that call.
Pope Leo XIV also weighed in Tuesday outside the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, urging people of good will to "reject war, especially a war which many people have said is an unjust war, which is continuing to escalate and which is not resolving anything."
Great Britain, meanwhile, is not allowing the U.S. to use its bases as part of any operations targeting civilian infrastructure, U.K. news outlet The i Paper reported.
A spokesperson for the British Ministry of Defence told CNBC it has authorized the U.S. to use its bases for "specific defensive operations to prevent Iran firing missiles into the region, which is putting British lives at risk."
"We won't be providing a running commentary on our allies' operations, including their use of our bases," the spokesperson added.
Trump has frequently fumed about the reluctance of the U.K. and other allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to involve themselves in the Iran war, even as he claims the U.S. does not need any help.
The relationship between the U.S. and the alliance was deeply strained earlier this year, when Trump demanded that the U.S. must take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory ruled by NATO member Denmark.
Trump's saber-rattling toward Greenland subsided, but he signaled Monday that he remains upset with NATO over Europe's opposition to his efforts to seize the island.
"You know, it all began with, you want to know the truth, Greenland," Trump said at the end of a White House news conference on Monday. "We want Greenland. They don't want to give it to us. And I said, 'Bye, bye.'"
At that news conference, Trump said that for Iran to stave off the Tuesday deadline, it would have to agree to "a deal that's acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be, we want free traffic of oil and everything else."
Trump has criticized Iran's talk of tolling the strait and has signaled his interest in the U.S. imposing its own tolls there instead.
The U.S., Iran and regional mediators in the Middle East were reportedly discussing a 45-day ceasefire proposal as a last-ditch attempt to avoid triggering Trump's looming deadline.
But a White House official told CNBC on Monday morning that Trump has not backed that idea, and Iran has explicitly rejected any temporary ceasefire, calling instead for a deal to end the war permanently.
"The only one that's going to set a ceasefire is me," Trump told reporters at the White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday when asked about the proposal.
Trump has insisted the Iranian people want the U.S. to keep up its military operations even if it puts them at risk, because they have lived in a "violent, horrible world" under the repressive ruling regime.
"They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom," he said at Monday's news conference. "We've had numerous intercepts, 'Please keep bombing.' Bombs that are dropping near their homes. 'Please keep bombing. Do it.'"
But Trump has also argued that Iran's new regime, which replaced the many top officials killed by the U.S. and Israel during the war, is more reasonable and less radical.
Not everyone agrees. JPMorgan research analysts said in a Monday client note that the conflict has empowered the Revolutionary Guard and that Iran's strategy is based around its ability to outlast, rather than outgun, its opponents.
"Iran may have lost its supreme leader and commanders, and suffered severe damage to nuclear facilities and military assets, but there are no signs of capitulation," they wrote.
— CNBC's Jackson Peck contributed to this report.
Trump’s Threat to Wipe Out a ‘Whole Civilization’ Appalls Some Conservatives
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/8/2026, 1:51:28 AM
A growing number of prominent conservatives joined Democrats in condemning President Trump’s warning to Iran Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if the country does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The threat prompted former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, once one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters but now a vocal critic, to call for Mr. Trump’s removal from office under the provisions of the Constitution’s 25th Amendment.
“We cannot kill an entire civilization,” Ms. Greene wrote on social media. “This is evil and madness.”
Tucker Carlson, the influential conservative commentator, focused particularly on the president’s rhetoric on Easter Sunday, when he profanely threatened the country’s infrastructure and promised the Iranian people would be “living in Hell” if the strait were not reopened. On his most recent podcast, Mr. Carlson called on U.S. officials to disobey the president’s orders if he calls to attack civilians.
“Now it’s time to say no, absolutely not, and say it directly to the president, no,” Mr. Carlson said, echoing Democratic members of Congress whose similar remarks calling on members of the military to disobey illegal orders prompted Mr. Trump to demand investigations. Mr. Trump’s allies dubbed them the “seditious six.” The Justice Department tried and failed to indict the six members of Congress for their comments.
Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin and often a strong supporter of the president, has escalated his warnings to Mr. Trump against making good on his recent threats toward Iran.
“I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure,” Mr. Johnson said on Monday during a podcast interview on “John Solomon Reports.” Later, Mr. Johnson told The Wall Street Journal that such an attack would be “a huge mistake” and that the president would lose support if he followed through on his threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.”
Representative Nathaniel Moran, Republican of Texas, has supported the president’s decisions on military intervention in Iran, but drew the line at Mr. Trump’s recent comments.
“I do not support the destruction of a ‘whole civilization,’” Mr. Moran wrote on social media. “That is not who we are, and it is not consistent with the principles that have long guided America.”
At least one former administration official was also openly critical of the president.
“Trump believes he is threatening Iran with destruction, but it is America that now stands in danger,” said Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “If he attempts to eradicate Iranian civilization, the United States will no longer be viewed as a stabilizing force in the world, but as an agent of chaos — effectively ending our status as the world’s greatest superpower.”
Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who helped Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, called Mr. Trump’s comments “unmoored” in an interview with NBC News.
“This reads like a president who feels increasingly invincible — and that should concern everyone,” Ms. Ellis said. She continued: “When you pair that tone with an apparent belief that executive authority is unconstrained, it raises serious concerns about decision-making in one of the most volatile geopolitical contexts in the world.”
Also joining the criticism of the president has been a chorus of far-right commentators and conspiracy theorists, including Alex Jones and Candace Owens, who echoed the call for Mr. Trump’s removal from office under the 25th Amendment.
“He is a genocidal lunatic,” Ms. Owens wrote on social media. “Our Congress and military need to intervene. We are beyond madness.”
Others warned that the president may be alienating the base of supporters that put him in the White House.
“Trump would not have won the primary in 2016 had he run on Mitt Romney’s platform, nor would he have won the 2024 election by running on new wars,” Mike Cernovich, the conservative commentator who has promoted conspiracy theories in the past, wrote on social media on Sunday. “It’s silly to claim Trump is MAGA. He rode a cultural wave, only he had the personal will to do so, but the issues matter, too.”
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
Read the full story at nyt News.
AWS teams working around the clock to keep Middle East services up after drone strikes, CEO says
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/8/2026, 1:46:18 AM
The Iran war poses ongoing challenges for cloud provider Amazon Web Services, its chief, Matt Garman, said Tuesday.
The Amazon division said in early March that drone strikes had damaged its data centers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
"It's a really difficult situation, and we're working incredibly hard," Garman told CNBC's Kate Rooney at the HumanX conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. "In fact, we have teams, 24/7, working to make sure that we can keep our infrastructure up for our customers in that region."
Dozens of AWS services in Bahrain and United Arab Emirates continue to be unavailable, according to the company's status page.
Last week, Iran's Revolutionary Guard navy announced it had targeted Amazon data center infrastructure in Bahrain.
AWS declined to comment on the latest incident. A spokesperson pointed to a previous statement in which it said: "AWS Bahrain Region has been disrupted as a result of the ongoing conflict."
Data centers, particularly those housing chips that can handle generative artificial intelligence models, consume large amounts of energy, which has become more expensive since the conflict began in February.
On Monday, oil prices shot higher as President Donald Trump threatened attacks on civilian infrastructure if the Islamic Republic does not commit to reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
"It's obviously hugely disruptive for the global economy, as we're all very dependent on energy, and also just distracting for industry, for us," Garman said. "You know, there's not short-term, immediate things, but it really is just the drag on the global economy that we have to think about."
Amazon Web Services is the world's top supplier of cloud infrastructure that companies can rely on to run websites and applications. Google, Microsoft and Oracle are also working to build more data centers to provide cloud services worldwide.
Technology isn't the only industry seeing implications, Garman said.
"You just have to go further down the supply chain to find something, and so we're not different than that," he said.
The restriction of movement through the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up the price of helium, a key ingredient in semiconductor manufacturing. Qatar, which sits west of the strait, produced more than one-third of helium globally, according to one estimate.
Garman struck an optimistic tone about the Middle East.
"There's a fantastic entrepreneurial spirit," he said. "There's a willingness to invest. And so our and my excitement about investing long term in that region is just as strong as it's ever been."
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