The United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire barely an hour before US President Donald Trump’s Wednesday deadline to obliterate the country, triggering global relief alongside apprehension.
Tehran has agreed to temporarily reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s oil, gas and fertiliser passes, easing concerns for the battered global economy.
While the announcement was broadly welcomed internationally, much work remained to prevent a return to fighting, with UN chief Antonio Guterres calling for all parties to “pave the way towards a lasting and comprehensive peace”.
Underlining the precarity of the deal, there were explosions on Wednesday morning in Bahrain’s Manama, with authorities blaming “Iranian aggression”.
Tehran and Washington claimed to have won the weeks-long conflict, with Trump telling AFP the deal was a “total and complete victory” for the US.
Iran, too, cast the ceasefire as a win and said it had agreed to talks with the US beginning on Friday in Pakistan on a path to end the conflict.
“The enemy has suffered an undeniable, historic and crushing defeat in its cowardly, illegal and criminal war against the Iranian nation,” said a statement from the Iranian Supreme National Security Council.
“Iran achieved a great victory.”
The White House said Israel had also agreed to the ceasefire, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it does not include Lebanon, where Israel’s operation in response to rocket fire by Iranian-backed Hezbollah has killed more than 1500 people, according to Lebanese authorities.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military pressed on with the war in Lebanon, warning residents of one building near the southern city of Tyre to evacuate, with Lebanese state media reporting renewed strikes.
Israel had encouraged Trump to launch the war against Iran, its arch-foe, and in the first strikes killed Tehran’s long-serving Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A peace agreement would leave in place the Islamic republic despite US and Israeli hopes of toppling it. The United States and Israel said they attacked Iran to degrade its military capacity.
Trump said he had spoken to Pakistan’s leaders, who “requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran”.
He later told AFP he believed China had helped get Tehran to negotiate.
“Subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Trump had set a Wednesday deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed safe passage for two weeks for ships through the strait, which Tehran sealed off in retaliation for the war.
“If attacks against Iran are halted, our powerful armed forces will cease their defensive operations,” Araghchi said.
Later on Wednesday, Trump posted on social media that the US would “be helping with the traffic build-up in the Strait of Hormuz”.
Oil prices plunged by more than 17% after the ceasefire announcement, while European natural gas dropped 20%. Stock prices also soared in early Wednesday trade in Asia.
Trump said the United States was “very far along” in negotiating a long-term agreement with Iran, which had submitted a 10-point plan he said was “workable”.
But Iran publicly released points that took maximalist positions, including lifting long-standing US sanctions, guaranteeing its own “dominion” over the strait and removing US forces from the region.
Crucially, it also said its plan would require Washington to accept its uranium enrichment programme.
Trump has alleged Iran was near to building an atomic bomb, an assertion not backed by the UN nuclear watchdog and most observers.
He insisted the nuclear material would be covered by any peace deal.
“That will be perfectly taken care of, or I wouldn’t have settled,” Trump told AFP, without giving any specifics about what would happen to the uranium.
Trump would not say whether he would go back to his original threats to lay waste to all power plants and bridges across the country of 90 million people if the deal fell apart.
“You’re going to have to see,” he told AFP.
The US leader had made threats shocking even by his own standards when he warned “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will”.
The US and Israel struck key infrastructure before Trump’s deadline, with Netanyahu saying attacks hit railways and bridges allegedly used by the Revolutionary Guards.
Iran has retaliated with weeks of drone and missile attacks on Gulf Arab states, citing their role as hubs for US troops.
The attacks have shattered the monarchies’ hard-fought reputation for safety and stability.
On Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates, which bore the brunt of Iran’s Gulf attacks, also claimed victory.
“The UAE emerged victorious from a war we sincerely sought to avoid,” presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said in a post on X.
Much global reaction, however, focused on the need to turn the ceasefire into a workable peace deal.
Oman, which mediated unsuccessful talks between Washington and Tehran that were halted by the war, spoke of “the importance of intensifying efforts... to identify solutions capable of resolving the crisis at its roots”.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced an immediate visit to the Gulf and declared “we must do all we can to support and sustain this ceasefire, turn it into a lasting agreement and reopen the Strait of Hormuz”.
– AFP