\tPresident Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth conduct a news conference in the White House briefing room on Monday, April 6, 2026. | Tom Williams\/Getty Images\t<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s note, April 7, 7:30 pm ET: President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday evening that the US and Iran had agreed to a two-week ceasefire to negotiate a more comprehensive agreement to end the war. This news came before Trump\u2019s deadline of 8 pm ET for Iran to reach a deal or, he said, a \u201cwhole civilization will die tonight.\u201d The article below was originally published earlier Tuesday and explains how we reached this point. <\/p>\n
We\u2019re now more than five weeks into President Donald Trump\u2019s unpopular and apparently unprovoked war with Iran, and any decisive \u201cvictory\u201d still seems far off. The US and Israel have dominated the battlefield from the start. But Iran successfully brought an economic crisis to a gunfight: By closing the Strait of Hormuz, a major chokepoint in the global energy trade, it spiked the price of oil, fertilizer, and other goods and triggered rationing and curfews in dozens of countries. A gallon of gas now tops $4, on average, in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump has veered from one approach to another as he struggles to resolve this thorny situation. First he tried suggesting that the closure of the Strait was not actually a problem at all. When that failed, he said other countries would handle it. On Sunday morning, he took a very, er, different tack: \u201cOpen the Fuckin\u2019 Strait, you crazy bastards, or you\u2019ll be living in Hell,\u201d he posted on Truth Social, where he threatened to bomb Iran\u2019s power plants and bridges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The thing about Trump\u2019s threats is that he often doesn\u2019t follow through on them. Online commentators have even coined an acronym for this: TACO, or \u201cTrump always chickens out.\u201d Should Trump not chicken out, however, then the US could be bombing 93 million civilians \u201cback to the Stone Ages\u201d in a matter of hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s back up. Why is the US in Iran to begin with?<\/p>\n
The US and Israel launched surprise airstrikes against Iran on February 28. Trump has variably claimed those strikes were intended to eliminate an \u201cimminent threat,\u201d to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and\/or to oust the repressive, theocratic regime that has ruled the country for generations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You might generously assume that, in pursuing multiple and occasionally conflicting objectives, Trump is taking something of a many-birds-with-one-stone approach. But as NPR\u2019s Mara Liasson put it Monday, it certainly looks like he\u2019s making the strategy up \u201cas he goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Iranians, on the other hand, have been very strategic. Using a vast supply of small, cheap drones, the regime has brought the (asymmetric) fight to the US and Israel, forcing both countries to drain their supply of expensive interceptor missiles.<\/p>\n
They also weaponized the country\u2019s geography by blockading the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that many \u2014 dare I say most? \u2014 Americans could not name or place before last month. Reopening the Strait is now a central objective of the military action, and the Trump administration seems to understand that the war will be perceived as a loss for the US unless\/until it reopens.<\/p>\n
What will persuade Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the $200 billion question. At times, Trump has seemed determined to make the problem go away by insisting it doesn\u2019t exist. Just last week, he claimed that the Strait would \u201copen up naturally\u201d after the conflict ended and said other countries that rely on Gulf oil should take on the task of getting tankers through again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At other times, Trump has taken a starkly different approach \u2014 threatening to dramatically and aggressively escalate strikes if Iran didn\u2019t reopen the Strait. On each occasion, however, he\u2019s given the Iranian regime a deadline\u2026and then delayed. And delayed.<\/p>\n
On March 21, he threatened to \u201cobliterate\u201d Iranian power plants if the Strait was not opened within 48 hours. He then extended that timeline until March 26 to allow for negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On March 26, Trump again extended the deadline, this time until the evening of April 6. On April 5, he bumped it to 8 pm Eastern today, April 7. He also threw in a couple of well-placed profanities to signal he meant business. (Update: He agreed to a two-week cease-fire before the deadline.) <\/p>\n
How serious are Trump\u2019s threats?<\/p>\n
If you mean \u201cserious\u201d as in \u201csincere\u201d or \u201clikely,\u201d we have no earthly clue. And reasonable people can probably disagree on whether swearing makes you sound like a more or less serious person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But in terms of how significant or worrying these threats are, the answer is: incredibly. International law permits military strikes on power plants and similar infrastructure only if they contribute to military operations. Widespread strikes on civilian targets are likely \u201cillegal and unacceptable,\u201d as one high-ranking European Union official put it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
US and Israeli strikes have already killed 1,500 civilians and badly damaged infrastructure in Iran, including highway bridges, energy and industrial sites, residential neighborhoods, and school campuses. These new threats would go considerably further, potentially disrupting electricity, health care, clean water, and other critical services for millions of Iranians.<\/p>\n
Both the US and Iran have rejected ceasefire proposals that would have paused fighting for 45 days and established a path for reopening the Strait. In the absence of that kind of negotiated off-ramp, we have a surreal, uncertain countdown\u2026and Trump\u2019s Truth Social feed.<\/p>\n
This story first appeared in\u00a0Today, Explained,\u00a0a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day.\u00a0Subscribe here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth conduct a news conference in the White House briefing room on Monday, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-23517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n