Trump authorized – Pakistan says the U.S. and Iran have agreed to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz. President Donald Trump confirmed he authorized an end to the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and urged ships to “start your engines,” while full details of the agree
When President Donald Trump posted that he had authorized the end of the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, the message landed like a switch flipped in the middle of a global trade shock.
“Congratulations to all!” Trump wrote on social media, offering no details about what comes next. He added: “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”
Islamabad said the United States and Iran had reached an agreement to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. a move officials said could bring relief to the global economy more than three months after the war began. Full details of the deal were not immediately available, and the signing is set for Friday in Switzerland. Even then, it was not clear how quickly the strait might reopen to all traffic.
The U.S. had previously said it would ease its blockade of Iranian ports as the strait reopens, and it would agree to relax sanctions to allow Iran to sell more of its oil and strengthen its battered economy.
Pakistan’s statement came after a day of renewed pressure on negotiations. Iranian state media reported that Israel—sidelined from the talks—attacked Beirut’s southern suburbs and posed a threat to the discussions nearing an end.
Pakistan said both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. It said mediators this week will facilitate meetings to “lay the foundation for the technical talks.”
The deal largely returns to the status that existed before the war—yet the price of the months-long escalation is written into the facts. Thousands of people are dead. And Iran now has a new kind of leverage: its ability to influence transits through the strait that carries significant shipments of oil. natural gas. and related products like fertilizer. When that waterway was effectively closed, the global economy felt the shock.
On the battlefield and beyond it, the unresolved elements remain just as concrete. When the war began on Feb. 28, strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The target set in the early U.S. and Israel demands still hasn’t been fully answered in the information now tied to the emerging deal: Tehran still has a missile program. it continues to support armed proxies in the region like Hezbollah in Lebanon. and it has a stockpile of highly enriched uranium for its nuclear program.
Khamenei’s son is now supreme leader, though he has not been seen in public since the war began. His approval was needed for Iran to sign off on the deal.
Iran’s insistence on what the ceasefire must cover has been a recurring friction point. Tehran has wanted a ceasefire deal that includes the fighting in Lebanon. where Israel has pushed its invasion deeper than at any point in over a quarter-century as it targets Hezbollah. Iran has also sought the release of billions of dollars in frozen funds.
The emerging deal has faced sharp criticism from Israel’s government and from critics inside President Trump’s Republican Party. Some argued it does not improve on the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew the U.S. from during his first term and still describes as “bad.”
The timing of the blockade underscores how quickly leverage can shift. After the war began, Iran attacked Israel and several Arab Gulf nations with missiles and drones. A ceasefire was reached on April 7. Ten days later, the U.S. military imposed its blockade.
A historic face-to-face meeting between Vice President JD Vance and Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf ended without success. and negotiations have been shaped by threats and mistrust as much as by diplomats. Throughout the process. Trump alternately threatened to destroy Iranian infrastructure. even its civilization. and praised the relationship with Iran as “more professional” as his administration sought an exit from the war with midterm U.S. elections coming later this year.
Iran’s government, facing its own internal tensions among hardliners while it scrambled to replace several top officials killed in the war, repeatedly expressed wariness of negotiations after rounds of talks last year and early this year ended with U.S. and Israeli attacks.
Tehran emphasized it wanted a deal focused on ending the war, with discussions delayed until later on its nuclear program—the issue at the center of why the sides have never fully met on the same terms.
The nuclear details are stark. The International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60% purity. a short technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is peaceful and has not publicly committed to giving up the enriched uranium. which is believed to be buried under three nuclear sites that were badly damaged by U.S. strikes last year.
At times, the U.S. had sought the removal of the enriched uranium from Iran as part of a deal. Russia has offered to take it. At other times, Trump said he wanted the uranium destroyed.
The sequence now set in motion is clear even without the full text of the agreement: opening a critical shipping route. easing port restrictions. and tightening diplomacy around the same nuclear and regional disputes that brought the conflict to its present scale. For countries dependent on the Strait of Hormuz—where oil. natural gas. and fertilizer shipments cross in steady streams—the next question is not whether the deal exists. but how fast the world will be allowed back through.
Trump Iran deal Strait of Hormuz U.S. naval blockade sanctions relief Pakistan statement Switzerland signing Lebanon ceasefire Hezbollah enriched uranium Ayatollah Ali Khamenei