President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday a two-week ceasefire with Iran, just hours after he’d threatened “a whole civilization will die tonight” and an hour before the deadline he had set for Tehran to reach an agreement with the U.S.
“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and 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,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Earlier in the day, Trump had warned on social media that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if there was no deal between the two countries.
The threat, Trump’s most extreme public rhetoric in the war to date, had included a vow to launch attacks on Iran’s infrastructure over its continued disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
After extending the deadline for Iran to reopen the crucial shipping route, which accounts for approximately a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas, Trump has set a final deadline of 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday for Iran to reach an agreement.
In a post on Sunday, Trump threatened Iran’s power plants and bridges if it did not reopen the strait by the Tuesday deadline, using expletives and invoking Islam.
Trump’s threat on Tuesday morning elicited a wave of vehement and immediate condemnations from Democrats, who argued that such strikes on infrastructure would constitute war crimes.
“Donald Trump is completely unhinged. His statement threatening to eradicate an entire civilization shocks the conscience and requires a decisive congressional response,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement with his leadership team. “The House must come back into session immediately and vote to end this reckless war of choice in the Middle East before Donald Trump plunges our country into World War III.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and a group of Democratic ranking members of key Senate committees issued a rare joint statement warning Trump that he “must not follow through on this threat.”
“We speak today with one voice and one purpose: to condemn President Trump’s threat to extinguish an entire civilization,” the senators said. “Intentionally destroying the power, water, or basic infrastructure upon which tens of millions of civilians depend to punish the very civilians who suffer at the hands of the Iranian regime would constitute a war crime, a betrayal of the values this nation was founded on, and a moral failure.”
The official Senate Republican X account published an unsigned post saying: “Iran would be wise to take President Trump at his word. They can choose the easy way or the hard way.”
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, called for Trump to be removed through the 25th Amendment.
“25TH AMENDMENT!!!” she posted on X before the ceasefire announcement. “Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.”
The 25th Amendment lays out the presidential succession plan, as well as a process for the vice president and members of the Cabinet to remove the president from office, potentially with the involvement of Congress, if the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
