Donald Trump lauded a ‘big day for world peace’ as the US and Iran agreed a two-week ceasefire just hours after he threatened to wipe out ‘a whole civilisation’.
The US President said he received a 10-point proposal from Iran which he described as ‘a workable basis on which to negotiate’ and declared the fighting would temporarily stop.
But just a day later the shaky ceasefire looks on the verge of collapse, with major disagreements over the terms of a deal and Mr Trump warning of ‘bigger, and better, and stronger’ strikes as Israel continues to pummel Lebanon.
Some of Mr Trump’s key advisers remain sceptical a deal will hold, according to the New York Times.
Vice President JD Vance branded it a ‘fragile truce’ before last night claiming Iran sent three versions of its 10-point plans, the first of which he claimed was ‘probably written by ChatGPT’. He also questioned whether Iran’s parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, a key negotiator, understood English.
He said: ‘The first 10-point proposal was something that was submitted, and we think, frankly, was probably written by ChatGPT, that was submitted to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner that immediately went in the garbage and was rejected.
‘There was a second 10-point proposal that was much more reasonable that was based on some back and forth between us, between the Pakistanis and between the Iranians. That is the 10-point proposal that the president was referencing in his Truth yesterday.’
He added the third proposal was more ‘maximalist’ and he found out about it through social media.
The US and Iran struck a deal late on Tuesday night after Mr Trump set a deadline after which he said Iranians would be ‘living in hell’. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the Islamic Republic ‘begged’ for a pause in fighting.
Both sides claimed military triumph, with Mr Trump hailing a ‘total and complete victory’ and Iran boasting of a ‘victory in the field’.
Yet disagreements over the terms of the deal began immediately. Mr Trump has referred to a 15-point plan while the White House has added to confusion by suggesting the plan being discussed is not the ‘working framework’ received by the US.
One of Iran’s proposals ‘was literally thrown in the garbage by President Trump and his negotiating team,’ Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary said.
On Wednesday morning, Mr Trump said Iran had agreed to hand over its enriched uranium and there would be ‘no enrichment’ in the future.
‘There will be no enrichment of Uranium, and the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried (B-2 Bombers) nuclear dust, he wrote.
But Iran’s supreme national security council swiftly announced its own interpretation of the 10-point peace plan, which explicitly demanded the right to enrich uranium.
The US and Israel have claimed the ceasfire does not include Lebanon, where Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a major ground and air invasion.
But Iran and mediators Pakistan said the peace plan included the ‘complete cessation of war in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen’.
On Wednesday, Israel intensified its bombing campaign over Lebanon, killing 182 people as it claimed to hit more than 100 Hezbollah sites in some of the heaviest strikes of the war yet.
Israel shows no sign of stopping its campaign and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) promised a ‘regret-inducing response’ if strikes on Lebanon continue.
Tehran dubbed the attack a ‘massacre’ and said it represented a ‘grave violation of the ceasefire’, heightening fears that the regime may back out of the peace process.
Iran’s 10-point plan, published by state-run Tasnim news agency, demands the US accept Tehran’s continued control over the strait, lift all sanctions, pay compensation and withdraw all troops from the region.
‘If attacks against Iran are halted, our Powerful Armed Forces will cease their defensive operations,’ Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.
‘For a period of two weeks, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via the coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces.’
But the regime halted oil tankers passing through the strait and launched a drone strike on a key Saudi oil pipeline on Wednesday.
Iran said the passageway had been halted ‘simultaneous with Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.’
The Islamic Republic also threatened to destroy oil tankers if they try to travel through the Strait without permission, as the regime has imposed a toll of up to $2million per vessel.
It prompted Trump to unleash a new warning that he would green-light ‘bigger, and better and stronger’ attacks on Iran if a deal isn’t reached.
Mr Trump also threatened to take even more aggressive action as he announced that US forces will remain in the area amid negotiations.
‘All US Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal persecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT is fully complied with,’ he wrote in a Truth Social post late Wednesday night.
Meanwhile, Iranian strikes continued on Wednesday as Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline, a critical artery routing crude from the Gulf to the Red Sea, came under drone attack at 1pm local time.
Kuwait’s air defenses intercepted 28 drones in sustained attacks targeting oil facilities, power plants and water desalination infrastructure from 8am Wednesday, the country’s army said, adding that strikes were still ongoing.
Mr Trump is facing a furious backlash from his most fervent supporters over the ceasefire and ten-point peace plan, amid fears it concedes too much to Tehran – with even his own White House forced to clarify his claims about the terms of the deal.
Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said Mr Trump had secured ‘significant victories’ but expressed skepticism over the peace talks and the President’s claims of ‘total victory.’
‘The government’s still in place and we should be negotiating from a position of strength, not a position that’s good for them,’ he told CNN.
‘They will work with Russia and China as soon as they can to start rebuilding their military. And they will be a threat five, six, seven, eight years down the road. And so, as long as this government’s in place, total victory has not been earned.’
Amid the backlash, the president walked back his statement that the 10-point plan was a ‘workable basis on which to negotiate.’
A White House official has since claimed the points in the released plan did not match what Trump had in mind.
But Trump later seemed to contradict his own team, saying most points had ‘been fully negotiated’ while leaving the door open to resuming strikes if the deal fell apart as the ceasefire began with a rocky start.
