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WASHINGTON — <\/span>President Donald Trump<\/a> over the course of a day went from threatening Iran with \u201cannihilation\u201d<\/a> to proclaiming that the battered Islamic Republic’s leadership had presented a \u201cworkable\u201d plan that led him to agree to a 14-day ceasefire that he expects to pave the way to end the nearly six-week-old war.<\/p>\n The dramatic shift in tenor came as intermediaries, led by Pakistan, worked feverishly to head off a further escalation of the conflict. Even China \u2014 Iran’s biggest trading partner<\/a> and the United States’ most significant economic competitor<\/a> \u2014 quietly pulled strings to find a pathway toward a ceasefire, according to two officials briefed on the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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,\u201d Trump declared in a social media post announcing the temporary ceasefire, about 90 minutes before his deadline for Tehran to open the critical Strait of Hormuz<\/a> or see its power plants and other critical infrastructure obliterated.<\/p>\n The president is set to meet at the White House on Wednesday with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte<\/a>. The emerging ceasefire and plan to reopen the strait<\/a> is expected to be at the center of talks.<\/p>\n As the deadline neared, Democratic lawmakers decried Trump’s threat to wipe away an entire civilization as \u201ca moral failure” and Pope Leo XIV warned<\/a> strikes against civilian infrastructure would violate international law, calling the president\u2019s comments \u201ctruly unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n But in the end, Trump may have ultimately backed down because of a simple truth: Escalation could risk involving the United States in the sort of \u201cforever war\u201d that had bedeviled his predecessors and that he had vowed<\/a> he’d keep the United States out of if voters sent him back to the White House.<\/p>\n As Trump boasted about U.S. and Israeli military success over the last six weeks, he appeared to be working from the premise that he could bomb Iran into capitulation. <\/p>\n Starting with the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a> in the opening salvos of the war, he seemed to discount that the Iranian leadership could opt for a long, bloody war. <\/p>\n The Islamic Republic over the last 47 years has repeatedly shown it\u2019s willing to dig in, even when it appears to America they\u2019re working against their own self-interest. <\/p>\n The clerical leadership held Americans hostages for 444 days, from late 1979 to early 1981, at the cost of the country\u2019s international standing. The mullahs allowed the ruinous Iran-Iraq war to go on for years, leaving hundreds of thousands dead. It stood by Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack that spurred a war with Israel that would defang the Iran-backed group in Gaza as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and created the conditions that led to the collapse of Tehran-backed Bashar Assad’s<\/a> authoritarian rule in Syria. <\/p>\n Iran’s leadership \u2014 battered and outgunned \u2014 exuded confidence that it could very well bog down the world’s superpower in a costly, extended conflict<\/a> even if it might not defeat a mighty U.S. military.<\/p>\n Defense analysts largely agreed that the U.S. military could quickly take control of the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, the narrow Persian Gulf waterway between Iran and Oman through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil flows on any given day. But maintaining security over the waterway would require a high-risk, resource-intensive operation that could be a years-long American commitment.<\/p>\n Ben Connable, executive director of the nonprofit Battle Research Group, said securing the strait would require the U.S. military to maintain control of about 600 kilometers (373 miles) of Iranian territory, from Kish Island in the West to Bandar Abbas in the East, to stop Iran from firing missiles at ships passing through the strait. It’s a mission that Connable said would likely require three U.S. infantry divisions, roughly 30,000 to 45,000 troops.<\/p>\n \u201cThis would be an indefinite operation \u2014 so, you know, think: be ready to do this for 20 years,\u201d said Connable, a retired Marine Corps intelligence officer. \u201cWe didn’t think we were going to be in Afghanistan for 20 years. We didn\u2019t think we\u2019re going to have to be in Vietnam as long as we were, or Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n The two-week ceasefire plan includes allowing both Iran and Oman to charge fees on ships transiting through Hormuz, a regional official said. The official said Iran would use the money it raised for reconstruction. It wasn\u2019t immediately clear what Oman would use its money for.<\/p>\n The strait is in the territorial waters of both Oman and Iran. The world had considered the passage an international waterway and never paid tolls before.<\/p>\n Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said after the ceasefire was announced that Trump was effectively giving Tehran \u201ccontrol\u201d of the strait and delivering \u201ca history-changing win for Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe level of incompetence is both stunning and heartbreaking,\u201d Murphy said.<\/p>\n The ceasefire announcement came after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif urged Trump to extend his deadline by two weeks to allow diplomacy to advance while also asking Iran to open the strait for two weeks. <\/p>\n Two weeks has become Trump\u2019s favorite interval to buy himself time when making major decisions. Last summer, the White House said he\u2019d decide about launching an initial bombing campaign against Iran<\/a> within two weeks \u2014 only to have the president order airstrikes that he said \u201cobliterated\u201d Iran\u2019s nuclear program<\/a> before that interval was up. <\/p>\n Trump has also repeatedly used two weeks to set deadlines that ultimately led to very little<\/a> during negotiations to end Russia\u2019s war with Ukraine<\/a> and even going back to his first term, suggesting he\u2019d have major policy issues like health care solved over such a timeframe. <\/p>\n Trump has repeatedly made maximalist demands throughout the first 15 months of his second White House term only to dial them back<\/a>.<\/p>\n The president backed off many of the sweeping \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariffs<\/a> he first announced in April 2025 after they caused the financial markets to go haywire. Perhaps the most spectacular example came during a January meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Trump insisted that he wanted the U.S. to take control of Greenland \u201cincluding right, title and ownership\u201d only to switch course and abandon<\/a> his threat to impose widespread tariffs on Europe to press his case. <\/p>\n