By Steve Holland, Parisa Hafezi and Jonathan Allen
WASHINGTON/DUBAI, April 22 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said he would indefinitely extend the ceasefire with Iran to allow for further peace talks, although it was not clear on Wednesday if Iran or Israel, the U.S. ally in the two-month war, would agree.
Trump said in a statement on social media the U.S. had agreed to a request by Pakistani mediators “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal … and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
Pakistan’s leaders have hosted peace talks in Islamabad to end a war that has killed thousands of people and shaken the global economy.
But even as he announced what appeared to be a unilateral ceasefire extension, Trump also said he would continue the U.S. Navy’s blockade of Iran’s trade by sea, considered an act of war by Iran.
There was no response early on Wednesday to Trump’s announcement from senior Iranian officials, although some initial reactions from Tehran suggested Trump’s comments were being treated skeptically.
Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said Iran had not asked for a ceasefire extension and repeated threats to break the U.S. blockade by force. An adviser to Iran’s lead negotiator, the speaker of parliament Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said Trump’s announcement carried little weight and may be a ploy.
Trump’s wartime rhetoric has veered between extremes. In an expletive-filled threat against Iran only two weeks ago he promised that a “whole civilization will die tonight”, while at other times he has appeared keen to end the violence and market uncertainty.
With his announcement, Trump again pulled back at the last moment from his threats to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres and others have condemned those threats, noting international humanitarian law forbids attacks targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.
NEXT PEACE TALKS UNCERTAIN
The U.S. and Israel began the war on February 28 with aerial bombardments of Iran. The conflict quickly spread to Gulf states that host U.S. military bases and to Lebanon once the Iran-allied militant group Hezbollah joined the fighting.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has for decades sought to oust Iran’s leadership, but Trump has given shifting and sometimes contradictory rationales for joining Israel to launch the war and how he foresees it ending, stirring confusion in global markets.
U.S. stock futures rose, the dollar wavered and oil prices turned lower on Wednesday after Trump’s announcement.
More than 5,000 civilians have been killed across the region and hundreds of thousands displaced so far, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, and the war has led to the virtual closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital chokepoint in global energy markets between Iran and Oman, sending oil prices soaring and fears that the global economy could enter a recession.
Iran has repeatedly exploited its ability to control the passage of oil tankers and other ships in the strait in response to U.S. and Israeli attacks.
Trump said in his statement he was willing to extend the ceasefire because “the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so,” a reference to U.S.-Israeli assassinations of some of the country’s leaders in the war’s first weeks, including the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been succeeded by his son.
A few hours before his announcement, Trump had told the CNBC news channel that he was not inclined to continue the temporary truce and the U.S. military was “raring to go.”
Those comments came as tentatively scheduled peace talks in Islamabad seemed on the verge of falling apart: U.S. Vice President JD Vance, whose presence has been requested by the Iranians, had planned to return to Pakistan on Tuesday but a White House official said he had not yet departed Washington and was taking part in additional policy meetings.
Before Trump’s latest announcement, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran’s negotiators had been willing to attend another round of talks if the U.S. abandoned a policy of pressure and threats, and rejected negotiations aimed at surrender.
Iran has condemned the U.S. Navy intercepting and seizing two commercial Iranian ships at sea as part of its blockade, the second earlier on Tuesday, with its foreign ministry accusing the U.S. of “piracy at sea and state terrorism.” The U.S., joined by multiple other countries, has condemned Iran for impeding freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.
Hours after extending the ceasefire, Trump doubled down on the U.S. blockade, saying in a social media post that lifting it would undermine any chance of a peace deal “unless we blow up the rest of their Country, their leaders included.”
A first session of talks 10 days ago produced no agreement, with much of the focus on Iran’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium.
Trump wants to take the uranium out of Iran in order to prevent the country from enriching it further to the point where it could develop a nuclear weapon. Iran says it has only a peaceful civilian nuclear program and a sovereign right to continue that as a signatory of the nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Jonathan Allen and Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Don Durfee and Stephen Coates)
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