Chapter 1: What led to the U.S.-Iran ceasefire announcement?
This morning, the clock starting on a two-week ceasefire announced by President Trump, a last-minute reversal on his threat to take the entire country out. The U.S. has, quote, received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believes, quote, it is a workable basis on which to negotiate.
Iran's foreign minister confirming the reopening of the critical Strait of Hormuz during this ceasefire period.
After days of escalating tensions in the war between Iran and the U.S., The two countries announced a ceasefire last night. It was an off-ramp right at a moment of crisis. Here's the Journal's Washington bureau chief, Damian Paletta.
For the U.S., it's not going to do what President Trump threatened to do, which was to blow up all their bridges, power plants, and things like that. So for the next two weeks, the U.S. has essentially said they're going to stand back. They'll still have the military there and be ready, but they're not going to continue bombing Iran.
Now, one of the big questions is, is Iran going to reopen this kind of waterway that is along its shore, the Strait of Hormuz, where a lot of commercial traffic goes through, including a lot of traffic that carries oil, but also other things, too.
While the U.S. and Iran have agreed to stop fighting for now, Damian says this ceasefire is fragile.
These are two countries that have a long history of hating each other and not trusting each other. Can they get to a place where they might see a mutually beneficial off-ramp? I'm not sure, but it's where we are right now.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Wednesday, April 8th. Coming up on the show, Iran and the U.S. have reached a ceasefire. Can it hold? The terms of the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran are still very unclear. Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that the U.S.
had received a 10-point proposal from Iran that was a, quote, workable basis on which to negotiate. A public version of Iran's 10-point plan calls for, among other things, a removal of sanctions and acceptance for Iran to enrich uranium.
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Chapter 2: What are the conditions surrounding the ceasefire and the Strait of Hormuz?
And just to be clear, I mean, opening up the Strait is different than Iran giving up control of it, right?
There's no sign that Iran in perpetuity has any plans to give up its control or its ability to kind of manage what goes through the Strait of Hormuz. They have not agreed to that. And I can't imagine they ever will because that's their leverage. They can just shut it down if they don't think things are going well. And it's not easy, as we've learned, for the U.S. to just bomb it and reopen it.
So Iran wants to be able to kind of charge a toll. They want to make money off the Strait of Hormuz. That could drive up costs for everyone around the world because you're having to pay higher prices. The whole dynamic has changed now. And Iran realizes they have leverage in places they didn't before. Somehow a version of the regime still exists.
And they might use this two weeks to try to come up with things that they kind of demand on behalf of the United States.
The U.S. and Iran used intermediaries to negotiate the ceasefire. Pakistan's prime minister was a key mediator in brokering the deal. How did this plan come together? I mean, can you tell me about Pakistan's role in this?
Great question. I was kind of asking my team that Tuesday morning. How did Pakistan, of all places, get in the middle of this? President Trump has a good relationship with Pakistan. Pakistan is trusted by the Iranians. So somehow they became the intermediary that was, you know, very involved in shuttling proposals back and forth.
And we'll find out in the next two weeks or maybe even sooner than that whether they're good at, you know, appeasing both sides and kind of keeping that, continuing that trust. Because like I said, there's a long history of bad blood between these two countries, the U.S. and Iran.
After the ceasefire was announced, both the U.S. and Iran declared victory.
Operation Epic Fury was a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield. A capital V military victory.
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Chapter 3: What does Iran's 10-point proposal entail?
Across the Middle East, battles rage on. The ceasefire agreement doesn't impact Israel's ongoing conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israeli military said it carried out strikes on more than 100 targets in Lebanon on Wednesday. And Iran has continued to fire missiles and drones at neighboring countries. Not to mention, there are tens of thousands of U.S.
troops in the region, and there are no immediate plans to pull them back. After the break, the ramifications of Trump's strategy. In the lead up to the ceasefire, Trump made several threats against Iran. It started on Easter Sunday when he said the U.S. would bomb civilian infrastructure, power plants and bridges.
And it escalated on Tuesday when he posted on social media that, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight if Iran didn't agree to a deal by his 8 p.m. deadline.
Well, it's a real challenge in terms of following the reporting because there's been many times in his second term when, whether it's tariffs or other foreign policy matters, he'll threaten something and then oftentimes look for an off-ramp right at the last minute. So, you know, his critics call this the taco. Trump always chickens out. And their theory is...
The markets shouldn't get too worried because he's not going to end up doing something that's going to have dramatic impacts on, you know, the stock prices or gas prices. But there are times when he does it, when he does go into Venezuela, when he does bomb Iran. And so he always does have this element of keeping people, everyone off guard and on their toes. And so here we were again.
So was this taco, you know, Trump chickening out or was it a negotiating tactic that succeeded?
Great question, and you'll get a different answer based on who you ask. So in the White House's view and in the view of President Trump's supporters, you have to speak the Iranians' language, right? You have to threaten to destroy their civilization because that's the language they speak. They're always threatening to destroy Israel or death to the United States.
So if you want to get their attention, you have to speak their language. So that's what he did on Tuesday morning. He said he would destroy their civilization. It caused panic, you know, through Washington and New York and global capitals and even got people in the Republican Party to say he's gone too far. But in their view, it finally got Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Now, we haven't seen them reopen it yet, but that's what allegedly has been agreed to. So, on the other hand— He's done this so many times where he's threatened incredibly painful things, unilateral things, whether it's this wiping out a civilization of 93 million people or, you know, unilaterally imposing tariffs and this and that, where he'll back out at the last minute.
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