Top Stories — Wednesday, April 8, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- U.S. Treasury yields plunge 10 basis points as Iran war ceasefire lifts sentiment — CNBC
- Lebanon's economy minister seeks clarity on ceasefire 'mixed signals' as Israeli strikes continue — CNBC
- Here’s the latest. — nyt News
U.S. Treasury yields plunge 10 basis points as Iran war ceasefire lifts sentiment
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/8/2026, 1:26:44 PM
U.S. Treasury yields were down sharply early Wednesday following the announcement of a two-week ceasefire in the Middle East conflict.
Yields on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note — the benchmark for government borrowing —plummeted more than 10 basis points to 4.2399%
Shorter- and longer-dated yields were also scythed as investors piled into U.S. bonds. The yield on the 2-year Treasury note, which more closely follows short-term Federal Reserve rate moves, was down 11 basis points at 3.7193% by 3:35 a.m. E.T. The 30-year Treasury note yield dropped 7 basis points to 4.8482%.
One basis point equals 0.01%, or 1/100th of 1%, and yields and prices move inversely to one another.
The slide in borrowing costs come as concerns over inflationary pressures created by the five-week conflict ease.
Energy prices rapidly reversed course following the suspension of hostilities. Under the terms of the agreement, President Donald Trump has agreed to halt attacks on Iranian infrastructure, while Tehran will allow the safe passage of ships through the critical Strait of Hormuz waterway "via coordination with Iran's Armed Forces", Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a statement.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell below $100 a barrel in early dealmaking, reaching $94.49 — a 13.5% slide. U.S. West Texas Intermediate dropped almost 15% to $96.20 a barrel.
The Federal Open Market Committee's March meeting minutes will be released later on Wednesday, as investors recalibrate bets on further Fed interest cuts. Markets will also closely watch the Mortgage Bankers' Association's latest 30-year fixed rate — a key barometer of U.S. housing affordability — due out later.
Core monthly and yearly inflation data for March is due out Friday.
Lebanon's economy minister seeks clarity on ceasefire 'mixed signals' as Israeli strikes continue
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/8/2026, 1:04:10 PM
Lebanon is seeking urgent clarity on whether it's part of the ceasefire pausing the Iran war, its economy minister told CNBC, adding it was getting "mixed signals."
Israel, which has been striking Iranian-allied Hezbollah targets within Lebanon, has said the two-week truce does not apply to the country and on Wednesday issued an evacuation order for the southern city of Tyre ahead of potential strikes.
"We're getting mixed signals, or mixed reports," Amer Bisat, Lebanese economy minister, told CNBC on Wednesday.
"Some are suggesting that Lebanon is part of a ceasefire, others, including from Israel, are suggesting that it's not. This is something we need to be confirming over the next few hours. Obviously, our hope, our demand, has always been to end hostilities," he told CNBC's Dan Murphy.
Lebanon's status in the ceasefire seems uncertain after the deal was announced late on Tuesday.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped to broker the agreement, announced on social media platform X overnight that the U.S., Iran and their regional allies "have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere."
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office contradicted that statement, with a post on X earlier Wednesday claiming "the two-week ceasefire does not include Lebanon."
Lebanon and its capital Beirut have been the target of Israeli-led attacks against Iranian proxy Hezbollah over the last five weeks. Israeli ground forces have invaded the south of the country as part of a parallel campaign against Tehran.
Hezbollah reportedly halted fire against northern Israel and Israeli troops in Lebanon early on Wednesday. The group is expected to issue a formal statement on the ceasefire in due course, according to Reuters. French President Emmanuel Macron joined calls for Lebanon to be included in the ceasefire deal.
The United Nations says over 1.1 million people have been displaced in Lebanon attempting to flee Israeli attacks, which have killed over 1,200 people in the country.
Minister Bisat told CNBC that Beirut felt like it was "forced into this war by parties that are outside of its control" and that while "the end of this war is obviously extremely positive ... the hope is that at some point soon, Lebanon will be part of it."
The economy minister said the conflict had been a "huge setback" for Lebanon and its already-struggling economy, with his country paying a "devastating price for this war."
"In 2025, we started seeing a bit of a recovery, a bit of a resuscitation after years of a crisis. But then this was a huge setback. The setback was on both levels. At the humanitarian level, with 1.2 million displaced in a country of five million people ... but also an economic hit the GDP of the country has taken," Bisat said, estimating that five weeks of war have cost Lebanon "around 5-7% of GDP in that very short period of time."
"All the recovery that we saw last year has disappeared in less than a month," he added.
Global markets were on a tear following news of the deal, which came after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to obliterate Iran unless it reopened the Strait of Hormuz oil passage. Oil prices also fell below $100 a barrel in welcome relief for consumers and businesses worldwide.
Questions remain over whether the ceasefire can hold, however, with Israel and several Gulf countries already reporting incoming missiles and drones on Wednesday.
For its part, Iran's foreign minister said in a statement posted on X early Wednesday that "if attacks against Iran are halted, our Powerful Armed Forces will cease their defensive operations."
Tehran added that safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz "will be possible through coordination with Iran's Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations," signaling there could be some caveats to the deal.
Here’s the latest.
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/8/2026, 12:35:19 PM
Beirut/Tel Aviv11:37 a.m. April 8
The United States and Iran announced a two-week cease-fire on Tuesday evening, shortly before President Trump’s deadline for Iran to unblock the Strait of Hormuz or to see its “whole civilization” destroyed.
But on Wednesday morning, it was unclear whether word of the nascent deal had reached Iranian local commanders, as fresh missile and drone attacks were reported across the Persian Gulf. And even though the news sent the international oil price benchmark down 15 percent, to $93 a barrel, it remained unclear whether ship operators considered the strait — a critical passage for the world’s oil and gas — safe for transit.
After Mr. Trump said on Tuesday night that he had agreed to the cease-fire proposed by Pakistan, a U.S. official said American military strikes against Iran had stopped. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the country’s armed forces would “cease their defensive operation,” and that safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible for two weeks if it was coordinated with Iran’s military.
But early on Wednesday, emergency sirens in Israel warned of incoming Iranian ballistic missiles. Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates reported missile and drone attacks. Bahrain’s interior ministry sounded warning sirens and reported a fire started by an Iranian attack. Iranian local commanders are allowed to make their own strike decisions under a decentralized control system.
Last year, Israel and Iran continued to launch attacks after agreeing to a cease-fire in their 12-day war, prompting Mr. Trump to lash out at both sides before the suspension of hostilities took hold.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel introduced a further complication on Wednesday by saying that, while his country supported Mr. Trump’s decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks, the deal did not extent to the fighting in Lebanon. An Israeli effort to stop the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah from launching missiles at northern Israel has turned into a massive ground invasion of Lebanon’s south.
Mr. Netanyahu’s statement contradicted an earlier one by Prime Minister Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, who said that the cease-fire applied everywhere, including Lebanon.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Further talks: President Trump said the two-week cease-fire will give the United States and Iran time to finalize a peace agreement. Mr. Sharif said he had invited U.S. and Iranian delegations for talks in Islamabad on Friday, and Iran’s National Security Council said in a statement that Iran would attend. The United States said that it was in discussions about holding in-person talks with Iran, but that “nothing is final” until it is announced by the president or the White House.
Markets respond: The Nikkei 225 in Japan jumped 5.4 percent and stocks in South Korea surged nearly 7 percent, the most in the region. S&P 500 stock futures pointed to a nearly 3 percent jump when trading resumes in the U.S.
Papal rebuke: Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pontiff, said Mr. Trump’s threat to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” was “truly unacceptable.” He did not mention the president by name, but it was clear to whom he was referring.
Congress reacts: Members of Congress in both parties welcomed the cease-fire, but Democrats continued to raise grave questions about Mr. Trump’s decision to wage war without congressional authorization and his threat to wipe out Iranian civilization.
A timeline: The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran raged for more than five weeks before a cease-fire was announced on the 39th day. It was the second time in less than a year that President Trump directly involved the United States in a military conflict with Tehran. Read through some of the key moments of the war so far here.
Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,665 civilians, including 244 children, had been killed in Iran as of Monday. Lebanon’s health ministry on Monday said more than 1,500 people had been killed in the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. In attacks blamed on Iran, at least 32 people have been killed in Gulf nations. In Israel, at least 20 people had been killed as of Monday. The American death toll stands at 13 service members, with hundreds of others wounded.
An alliance of Iraqi militias aligned to Iran announced in a statement that they will abide by the temporary cease-fire between Iran and the United States. The groups had been firing missiles and drones almost daily at U.S. targets inside Iraq, as well as at neighboring Gulf countries.
Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who has long mediated between Iran and the United States, said in a statement that the temporary cease-fire means that “for now the world has stepped back from disaster. But there’s no room for complacency. Serious negotiations now required for lasting peace. Oman will support this work for the vital and urgent purpose of strong and enduring regional security.”
Iraq’s airspace and airports will reopen today after being closed when the war started, the country’s civil aviation authority announced on Wednesday. The war has severely affected air travel across the Middle East, with multiple countries restricting or closing their airspace to civilian flights.
Nima, a Tehran resident, said Wednesday morning was the first time in around 40 days that he was not worried that his colleagues might be killed in an airstrike. It was a good feeling, he said — the latest in a swirl of emotions that Iranians like him have experienced while waiting to see what would come of President Trump’s threat to wipe out their civilization and reports of a flurry of negotiations to pause the war.
“Last night was a really frightening evening,” he said, declining to be fully named for fear of government reprisal.
He opposed the war, and worried about what might come next for the country, given the damage to Iranian infrastructure and key economic players.
“Economically speaking, the country has seen a lot of damage,” he said. “The country is truly poor.”
In an apparent reference to the cease-fire deal, Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in Israel, accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of overseeing “a diplomatic disaster” and of failing to meet the war’s goals. “It will take us years to repair the diplomatic and strategic damage that Netanyahu inflicted due to arrogance, negligence, and a lack of strategic planning,” Lapid said on social media on Wednesday.
The shipping giant Maersk said on Wednesday that it welcomed the cease-fire announcement and the statements that commercial passage through the Strait of Hormuz may be possible again. It said it was working urgently to get more information and was not making specific changes yet. “The cease-fire may create transit opportunities, but it does not yet provide full maritime certainty and we need to understand all potential conditions attached,” the company said in a statement.
A man in Tehran, who is in his 20s and insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisals, said that the cease-fire left him with mixed feelings. There was a quiet in the city that he hadn’t experienced in more than a month and he was relieved not to face the prospect of total annihilation, he said. But he worried about the confidence he said the regime would have as a result of surviving the war, and how it might further crush domestic opposition. He said he would use whatever stability the cease-fire provided to make plans to leave Iran.
Confusion is swirling in Lebanon over whether the country was included in the cease-fire deal. Pakistan said it was, but Israel said it wasn’t. As attacks inside Lebanon continued on Wednesday, the Lebanese military warned displaced civilians to postpone their return to southern towns and villages, warning that doing so could expose them to ongoing Israeli attacks.
Rebecca Elliott reported from Houston and New York, and Ivan Penn from Los Angeles.
in these structures is an
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Reopening the Strait of Hormuz — a central aim for the United States when it agreed to a cease-fire with Iran — would be the first step toward getting more energy flowing through the Persian Gulf.
That is because dozens of refineries, storage facilities, and oil and gas fields in at least nine countries, from Iran to the United Arab Emirates and beyond, have been targeted in strikes. All told, 10 percent or more of the world’s oil supply has been turned off. Restarting those operations will require not only safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, but also inspecting pumps, replacing bespoke processing equipment and recalling employees and ships that have scattered across the globe.
“It’s not a case of you just flick a switch and everything’s back up again,” said Martin Houston, a longtime oil and gas executive who now serves as board member for several energy companies.
The timeline for bringing the Gulf energy system back to some semblance of normal is highly uncertain. For one thing, the war has been paused for only two weeks.
In the cease-fire deal, which President Trump announced on Tuesday evening, Iran agreed to allow ships to pass through the strait without being attacked. Earlier that day, Mr. Trump said that if the waterway remained closed, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” He has also repeatedly threatened to strike Iranian power plants and other critical infrastructure if Iran does not allow vessels to pass through the strait — acts that could be considered war crimes.
Attacks on energy facilities continued in the days leading up to the cease-fire, including on an oil refinery in Kuwait and petrochemical complexes in Iran. How much damage has already been done to the region’s infrastructure is difficult to know because many countries have shared little information.
Once companies regain confidence that their ships can transit the narrow waterway that runs between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, the first order of business is likely to be shipping out the oil and other fuels that countries close to the strait stockpiled in storage tanks. Then, as long as hostilities do not resume, some wells are likely to flow again within days or weeks, industry analysts and Gulf oil executives say.
But a fuller recovery will be a monthslong process, they cautioned. And even then, some infrastructure that has sustained extensive damage is expected to take years to repair.
For consumers, this means that gasoline prices at the pump — which recently topped $4 a gallon, on average, in the United States — are unlikely to return to their prewar levels any time soon, even though international oil prices fell considerably late Tuesday. Countries are using up stores of energy they had before the war, so the longer the war drags on, the stickier those high prices are likely to be.
The shuttering of oil wells has other consequences. Once idled, oil and gas wells can be difficult to restart, and the longer they remain closed, the more trouble companies may have turning them back on.
The pressure underground can get out of whack while wells are closed; water can build up. If the shutdowns last a long time, equipment might corrode after being exposed to hydrogen sulfide for too long. The toxic gas, which smells like rotten eggs, is often found mixed in with oil and natural gas. Saudi Arabia and Iraq inject gas or water into many of their wells to coax out more oil, adding another layer of complexity to re-establishing the correct pressure when the time comes to reopen, the research firm BloombergNEF wrote recently.
Kuwait, which is sandwiched between Saudi Arabia and Iraq at the tip of the Persian Gulf, is the world’s 10th-largest oil producer. Before Friday, when its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by a drone, the chief executive of the state-owned oil company Kuwait Petroleum said he expected to be able to “bring out quite a bit of production immediately, within a few days” of the war’s ending. Sheikh Nawaf Al Sabah, the chief executive, added during remarks late last month at an energy conference, CERAWeek by S&P Global, in Houston that “the full production will come within three or four months.”
The big question is how much damage has been sustained by all the infrastructure needed to get oil and gas from wellheads to world markets. Analysts say few installations appear to have suffered catastrophic harm, but they are working with limited information about most facilities.
One of the most important energy assets in the region is Qatar’s natural-gas export plant, Ras Laffan. The site, which spans at least three square miles in a large industrial city, supplies countries throughout Asia and Europe with natural gas that people use for cooking, heating homes and generating electricity.
Before it can be loaded on a ship, natural gas must be turned into a liquid by cooling it at about minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 degrees Celsius). Qatar stopped making this liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., during the early days of the war. Missiles later took out 17 percent of the site’s capacity.
The undamaged parts of the facility would be restarted first, likely over a period of weeks or months. Steps include reopening the offshore gas wells that feed the export terminal; restarting any utilities that had been turned off; restocking the inventory of fuels used to cool the gas, known as refrigerants; and then actually cooling the gas, said Mehdy Touil, who spent more than a decade at Ras Laffan and is now the lead L.N.G. specialist at Calypso Commodities, a Berlin company.
The damaged portions are another matter. QatarEnergy, which operates Ras Laffan, has said it will take several years to repair those areas and bring them online. (The company did not respond to requests for comment.) Ras Laffan has 14 L.N.G.-producing units. The strikes last month took out the heart of two of them — the mammoth structures in which gas is cooled — QatarEnergy’s chief executive told Reuters. That equipment can be as tall as an 18-story building, and the lead time for a new one can run two years or more, industry officials said.
“These facilities were custom‑engineered and integrated into the broader Ras Laffan complex, making them substantially more difficult to replace” than simpler kinds of energy infrastructure, said Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California.
Less is known about the extent of the damage to oil-processing facilities throughout the region. A refinery on the west coast of Saudi Arabia had been operating at much lower levels after a drone strike in mid-March, according to Rystad Energy, an Oslo-based consulting firm. Rystad estimated that the refinery most likely could be fully restored within a year.
Iran has also suffered attacks on its energy infrastructure, including strikes on oil depots in Tehran that turned the sky over the capital city black.
One concern for rebuilding is that supply chains for some specialized parts have already been stretched thin. The rush to build data centers for artificial intelligence has created a demand for gas-fired power plants and other energy infrastructure. Many of those facilities rely on equipment, like gas turbines, that may also be needed to make repairs in the Gulf.
“If you have the right supply chain, you can get things built back pretty quickly,” said Mike Stice, a University of Oklahoma professor who serves on the board of energy companies including the U.S. refining giant Marathon Petroleum. But, he added, timelines will depend a lot on what has been damaged. “All it takes is one critical piece of equipment that has a two-year delivery date.”
In the end, however the conflict plays out, analysts expect energy prices to eventually fall from wartime levels, but remain higher than they would have been in the absence of war.
Analysts at the French bank Société Générale recently said they expected oil to trade around $80 a barrel at the end of 2026, up from their earlier forecast of $65. Traders will be pricing in a greater risk of geopolitical disruption in the future.
Investors are so far betting the cease-fire deal will lead to a reopening of critical energy supplies from the Persian Gulf. Stock markets across Asia soared on Wednesday: The Nikkei 225 in Japan jumped 5.4 percent and stocks in South Korea surged nearly 7 percent, the most in the region. S&P 500 stock futures pointed to a nearly 3 percent jump when trading resumes in the U.S. And the global oil benchmark plunged 15 percent, to $93 a barrel.
The Israeli military issued an evacuation order on Wednesday for residents of the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, saying it would be acting against Hezbollah in the area. Earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had said that the cease-fire announced by President Trump did not extend to Lebanon.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain is traveling to the Persian Gulf today to meet with allies and discuss how to ensure the Strait of Hormuz remains permanently open to international shipping, government officials said Wednesday. Starmer’s trip was planned before the cease-fire was announced and follows discussions hosted by Britain among diplomats and military planners from more than 40 countries about how to keep the strait open.
President Trump said on social media that the United States would be “helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz,” the strategic waterway that Iran has agreed to reopen under threat of devastating U.S. attacks. “We’ll be loading up with supplies of all kinds, and just ‘hangin’ around” in order to make sure that everything goes well,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He also said Iran could “start the reconstruction process” — a sharp contrast to his earlier threats to wipe out Iranian civilization.
It will take months for global jet fuel supplies to return to normal even after the Strait of Hormuz reopens because of the disruptions to refineries in the Middle East, said Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, which represents more than 360 airlines. He told reporters in Singapore on Wednesday that because of the refinery issues, he expected crude oil prices to fall but jet fuel costs to remain elevated.
Oil prices plunged and stocks surged on Wednesday as investors cheered a last-minute cease-fire agreement in the war on Iran that offered hope that energy shipments from the Persian Gulf would resume soon.
The cease-fire deal came 90 minutes before a deadline set by President Trump for Iran to accede to his demands or risk widespread devastation. The deal calls for a two-week period when the United States would suspend strikes on Iran, and Tehran would allow vessels and tankers carrying oil, gas and other commodities to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for transit of oil and gas.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, traded at about $95 a barrel, plunging 13 percent after the cease-fire news. The price remained about 30 percent higher than they were before the war.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, fell to around $96 a barrel, down about 15 percent. The price of this grade of oil is more than 40 percent up since the start of the war.
For the past five and a half weeks, investors and analysts have been focused on the strait of Hormuz, which normally carries as much as one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. Shipping traffic exiting the Persian Gulf through the strait has been effectively halted since the war began, and restoring the flow of energy via the waterway could take time.
Stocks rose around the world on Wednesday. The Stoxx 600, a broad European index, bounced 3.5 percent. Futures on the S&P 500 were 2.5 percent higher, pointing to a strong open when stocks resume trading in the United States.
Stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas, posted big gains. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 5.4 percent, while South Korea’s benchmark Kospi Index rose nearly 7 percent. Markets in Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China all posted significant increases.
U.S. gas prices rose again on Wednesday, jumping to a national average of $4.16 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. The increase has raised the cost for drivers by 40 percent since the war began.
Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days.
Diesel prices have increased even more quickly and stood at $5.67 on Wednesday, up 51 percent since the start of the war.
Here is a county-level look at where drivers are facing the highest costs.
President Trump said the two-week cease-fire will give the United States and Iran time to finalize a peace agreement. This raises the question of where, and when, the two sides could meet for further negotiations. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan — a key mediator — said he had invited U.S. and Iranian delegations for talks in Islamabad on Friday.
Pakistan has been trying for weeks to arrange a meeting. Pakistani officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sharif’s invitation on Tuesday.
Israel supports President Trump’s decision to stop attacking Iran for two weeks subject to the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the cessation of Iran attacks against the United States, Israel and other countries in the region, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. But it said the cease-fire did not include Lebanon, contradicting an earlier statement from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan.
Members of Congress in both parties welcomed President Trump’s announcement Tuesday night of cease-fire between the United States and Iran, but Democrats continued to raise grave questions about the path forward after weeks of war without congressional authorization.
“I’m glad Trump backed off his threat to wipe out a whole civilization and is searching for an offramp from his ridiculous bluster,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said in a statement late Tuesday.
Republican leaders, who have proceeded with a two-week congressional recess despite the war and a partial government shutdown, were mostly mum on Mr. Trump’s abrupt de-escalation, as they were about a social media post Tuesday morning in which he had threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not accede to his demands by nightfall.
House Speaker Mike Johnson reposted the president’s social media message announcing the cease-fire Tuesday night without commenting on it.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of the most outspoken supporters of the war effort, praised the diplomatic agreement, though he also appeared to lay out conditions for a U.S. withdrawal.
“Every ounce of the approximately 900 lbs. of highly enriched uranium has to be controlled by the U.S. and removed from Iran to prevent them in the future from having a dirty bomb or returning to the enrichment business,” he said in a social media post. “Like everyone, I hope we can end the reign of terror of the Iranian regime through diplomacy.”
Democrats, however, raised concerns about what would happen next.
“De-escalation is a long-overdue step after over a month of war without a clear purpose and with mounting costs for the American people,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
“I remain deeply concerned that U.S. actions may have incentivized Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon,” she added. “None of this makes Americans safer or our people better off.”
Other Democrats were sharply critical.
“This statement changes nothing,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said in a statement. “The president has threatened a genocide against the Iranian people and is continuing to leverage that threat. He has launched a massive war of enormous risk and of catastrophic consequence without reason, rationale, nor congressional authorization — which is as clear a violation of the Constitution as any.”
Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had been among the only Republicans in the Senate to criticize the president’s threat of wiping out Iranian civilization ahead of the cease-fire. A handful more in the House raised concerns about the possibility that the United States would carry out escalating strikes against civilian infrastructure targets.
But after Mr. Trump’s announcement, more G.O.P. lawmakers surfaced to cheer the turnabout.
Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, called it an example of Mr. Trump’s “peace through strength” approach.
“I’m grateful for President Trump’s unwavering dedication to defending our country and holding our adversaries accountable,” Mr. Cramer said.
Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, said the cease-fire announcement was “a strong first step toward holding Iran accountable” and presented leaders in Tehran with a chance to “do the right thing.”
Pope Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pontiff, issued a rare rebuke of President Trump on Tuesday, saying it was “truly unacceptable” to threaten to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization.”
He did not mention the president by name, but it was clear whom he was referring to.
“Today, as we all know, there has also been this threat against the entire people of Iran. And this is truly unacceptable,” the pope told reporters Tuesday evening in Italy, hours before an announcement by Mr. Trump that a two-week cease-fire had been reached. “There are certainly issues of international law here, but even more, it is a moral question concerning the good of the people as a whole, in its entirety.”
Mr. Trump had earlier threatened to destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran if Tehran did not allow commercial ships to pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz. The deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure is forbidden under international law. Mr. Trump’s threat drew widespread condemnation from Democratic and Republican lawmakers, as well as United Nations officials and others around the world.
In his first year as pontiff, Leo has largely avoided wading directly into U.S. politics, but he has consistently called for an end to the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and a return to dialogue to resolve the conflict. He has also pointedly rejected efforts by some in the Trump administration to frame the war in Christian terms.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in March called on Americans to pray for victory in battle and the safety of their troops “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
The pope soon after warned against invoking the name of Jesus for battle, saying that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
In a homily during a Mass before Easter last week, Leo said that the Christian mission had been “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.”
Then, on Easter Sunday, he renewed his call for peace. “On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars,” Leo told tens of thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
Mr. Trump had imposed a Tuesday evening deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face devastation. Leo pressed for diplomacy. “Come back to the table. Let’s talk,” Leo said Tuesday evening. “Let’s look for solutions in a peaceful way.”
Hours later, shortly before his 8 p.m. deadline, Mr. Trump made the announcement about the cease-fire agreement. In a post on social media, Mr. Trump also claimed to be “very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”
Elisabetta Povoledo and Motoko Rich contributed reporting.
President Trump made two calls shortly before he announced a two-week cease-fire with Iran: one with Asim Munir, the chief of the army staff of Pakistan, and one with Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, two U.S. officials said. The president made the calls after 5 p.m.
Munir has ties to the Iranian military and has been a mediator, passing messages between the warring parties. In a series of meetings and calls over the winter, Netanyahu pushed Trump to attack Iran with Israel.
Israel’s emergency rescue service said that following a missile fired toward the country, its teams were treating two 15-year-old boys with mild blast injuries in Tel Sheva, a Bedouin town in southern Israel, as well as several people suffering from anxiety.
In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the authorities said they were dealing with a fire at the Habshan gas facility. The announcement came shortly after the Emirati defense ministry said it was dealing with missile attacks and incoming drones from Iran.
Countries around the Persian Gulf, including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, reported missile and drone attacks shortly after Iran and the United States announced the cease-fire deal. The U.A.E. defense ministry and the Israeli military said they were countering attacks from Iran. The Kuwaiti army said its air defenses were detecting missile and drone attacks, while the Qatari defense ministry said it had intercepted a missile attack. It remains unclear if word of a cease-fire deal is taking time to filter down to Iranian forces.
David E. Sanger has covered five American presidents in more than four decades at The Times. He has written extensively for the past 20 years on successive efforts to negotiate with Iran, sabotage its nuclear program and impose sanctions to contain its actions.
At 8:06 a.m. on Tuesday, President Trump delivered an apocalyptic threat to Iran, declaring that unless his demand to open the Strait of Hormuz was fulfilled by nightfall, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
Ten hours and 26 minutes later, at 6:32 p.m. Eastern time, he lifted the threat, for now. He said an intervention by the Pakistani government had led to a two-week cease-fire in a war that has wracked the world economy and showed off American technological dominance and unexpected Iranian resilience.
Mr. Trump’s tactic of escalating his rhetoric to astronomical levels certainly helped him find an offramp he had been seeking for weeks. That success alone may fuel his belief that the tactics he learned in the New York real estate world — ignore old conventions, make maximalist demands — works in geopolitics as well.
Without question, it was a down-to-the-wire tactical victory, one that should, at least temporarily, get oil, fertilizer and helium flowing again through the Strait of Hormuz, and calm markets that feared a global energy shock would lead to a global recession.
But it resolved none of the fundamental issues that led to the war.
It leaves a theocratic government, backed by the vicious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in charge of a cowed population that has been pummeled by missiles and bombs, and finds itself still under the thumb of a familiar regime, even if under new management. It leaves Iran’s nuclear stockpile in place, including the 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade material that was, in theory, the casus belli of this war.
It left Gulf allies reeling, with the discovery that the glass skyscrapers of Dubai and the desalination plants that make wealthy enclaves in Kuwait livable can be taken out by Iranian missiles and drones. Gas prices have soared, and are about to test Mr. Trump’s promise that they will fall again to old levels as soon as the fighting stops.
And it has left Mr. Trump’s political base fractured, with onetime supporters now accusing the president and his loyalists, starting with Vice President JD Vance, with violating their promise not to get America tied up in unwinnable wars in the Middle East.
It all happened at a moment when Iran has demonstrated that it can absorb 13,000 targeted strikes and still conduct an impressive asymmetric war, choking off oil supplies and sending its cyber army to attack American infrastructure.
Now Mr. Trump faces the challenge not only of reaching a more permanent settlement but proving to the United States and the world that this conflict was worth flighting in the first place. And to do so, he will have to demonstrate that he has removed Iran’s death-grip on the 21-mile channel that makes up the strait, and its chances of ever building a nuclear weapon.
On that point there was an ominous-sounding element buried in the Iranian description of the deal. Shipping would proceed, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote, but under the control of “Iran’s Armed Forces,” who would determine who passes, and when.
“Iran remains in the control of the Strait, which was not the case before the war,” said Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. “I find it hard to believe that the United States and the world could accept a situation in which Iran remains in control of a key energy checkpoint indefinitely. That would be a materially worse outcome than existed before the war.”
So might a final agreement. Four weeks ago Mr. Trump was demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender,’’ saying he would determine when the country had been completely defeated. On Tuesday evening his tone was different. He agreed to base the next two weeks of talks on a 10-point plan Iran submitted to the Pakistanis. Mr. Trump called it “a workable basis on which to negotiate.”
“Have you looked at Iran’s plan?” asked Mr. Fontaine. “It reads like a Tehran wish list from before the war, calling for a global recognition of Iran’s right to enrich uranium, the removal of all American forces from the region and a lifting of economic sanctions. And it calls for the payment of reparations to Iran for damage caused in the war.”
Of course, that is just the starting point for the negotiation. But the gap between the Iranian view of a final peace agreement and the American view is so wide that imagining a settlement in two years, much less two weeks, requires some diplomatic jujitsu. It took two-and-a-half years for the Obama administration to negotiate the 2015 nuclear accord, which Mr. Trump dispensed with in 2018, and that was in peacetime. This negotiation will be held under the sword of a possible resumption of hostilities.
Presidents have been negotiating with Iran, sanctioning Iran and sabotaging Iran for 20 years. Now Mr. Trump faces the challenge of showing that warring with Iran achieves better results. It will not be easy.
If he fails to get the 970 pounds of 60-percent enriched uranium out of the country, along with far larger quantities of lower-enriched nuclear fuel, he will have accomplished less in the billion-dollar-a-day war than Mr. Obama accomplished 11 years ago. In that agreement, Iran shipped 97 percent of its nuclear stockpile out of the country.
If he fails to win agreement that Iran will limit the size of its battered arsenal of missiles, or the distance they can travel, he will have fallen short on one of his top objectives.
And if his talks with a government led by the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who is believed to be recovering from injuries in the bombing that killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, end up cementing the new government’s authority, he risks selling out the Iranian people.
It was only a little more than five weeks ago that Mr. Trump was urging the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government. Now he is doing business with that government. On Tuesday he repeated his claim that the new Supreme Leader is part of a generation of “different, smarter, and less radicalized” leaders. American intelligence agencies have their doubts.
“Maybe this will work out,” said Mr. Fontaine, a former aide to the late Senator John McCain. “But there is a chance that this ends with the U.S. and the world in a worse situation than when it started.”
Farnaz Fassihi and Anton Troianovski contributed reporting.
The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran raged for more than five weeks before a cease-fire was announced on the 39th day. It was the second time in less than a year that President Trump directly involved the United States in a military conflict with Tehran.
Cast by Mr. Trump in part as an effort to spur Iranians to topple their theocratic leadership, the conflict soon became a regional war that resulted in thousands of deaths, mostly in Iran and Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes, and the global economy has been badly rattled.
Here are some key moments in the war:
Feb. 28: The United States and Israel launched strikes across Iran, hitting a government compound in Tehran and military targets. The blasts killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s supreme leader for almost 37 years, as well as other high-level military and intelligence leaders.
At least 175 people, most of them likely children, were killed in a strike on a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, health officials and Iranian state media said. The strike was a targeting mistake by the U.S. military, according to U.S. officials familiar with a military investigation.
Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones at Israel and at U.S. military bases in the region, including in Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
March 1: An Iranian drone attack killed six U.S. soldiers in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, the first Americans to die in the war.
Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group, dragged Lebanon into the conflict, firing rockets toward Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader.
In a brief telephone interview with The New York Times, Mr. Trump offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how a new government could take shape in Iran and how the conflict would unfold. Asked how long the United States and Israel intended to sustain its assault on Iran, Mr. Trump said “four to five weeks.”
March 8: With several top Iranian leaders killed in airstrikes, Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the slain supreme leader, as his father’s successor. Mr. Khamenei, 56, was appointed by a committee of senior Shiite clerics, signaling continuity and defiance after Mr. Trump called him an “unacceptable” choice. But it would be several days before Iran would hear from its new supreme leader, who U.S. officials said had been injured in the war’s initial days.
March 11: Iran escalated its attacks in and around the Strait of Hormuz, through which passes a significant portion of the world’s oil and natural gas supply, striking at least three ships, according to a British maritime agency. Iran claimed responsibility for one assault on a bulk carrier from Thailand. The attacks sent oil prices surging and the Trump administration scrambling to pacify global markets.
March 12: Mojtaba Khamenei issued his first written statement as supreme leader, directing the military to continue choking off the Strait of Hormuz.
Six American crew members died after a KC-135 military refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq, bringing the number of U.S. service members killed in the war to at least 13.
March 13: The U.S. military conducted a large bombing raid on Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub. Mr. Trump said the raid had targeted military infrastructure but did not hit oil facilities on the island, which is responsible for about 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports.
March 17: The Israeli military killed two of Iran’s top leaders: Ali Larijani, the head of the country’s National Security Council, and Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij, a militia aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The deaths represented the biggest blows to Iran’s leadership since Feb. 28.
March 18: Iran and U.S. allies traded attacks on key energy infrastructure in the Gulf. Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field, which accounts for about 70 to 75 percent of its natural gas production. Qatar, a U.S. ally, said Iran had struck its Ras Laffan Industrial City, which is the world’s largest liquefied natural gas export plant.
March 23: Mr. Trump said that the United States and Iran were discussing an end to the war. It was the first public indication of diplomatic talks since the war began.
March 27: An Iranian strike injured 12 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia on the Prince Sultan Air Base, one of the most serious breaches of U.S. air defenses since the start of the war.
March 28: The Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group in Yemen, joined the war by launching a ballistic missile at Israel that was intercepted.
April 3: Iran shot down a U.S. Air Force F-15E fighter jet carrying two crew members, one of whom was recovered safely that day. The risky search-and-rescue operation for the second airman lasted two days and took commandos deep inside Iran. The downing of the F-15E was the first time that a U.S. combat aircraft was shot down in the war.
April 7: Mr. Trump announced a two-week cease-fire with Iran. Iran’s national security council confirmed the agreement, casting it as a victory.
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