CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Trump Announces Iran Ceasefire: US Offramp or Just Another Deception?

Bombed apartment building in Tehran. Photo: Avash. CC BY 4.0

After threatening to destroy Iran’s civilization ‘for now and ever’, Trump announced a tentative ceasefire with Iran and temporary ceasefire of mutual hostilities for another two weeks. In the interim the parties—US and Iran (Israel notably excluded)—will reportedly attempt to negotiate a permanent agreement in negotiations to be held in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Trump and his supporters will no doubt declare the ceasefire represents a victory for the US. They’ll argue the military actions by the US the past six weeks has forced Iran to ask for negotiations and sue for peace. As Trump has bragged repeatedly in recent days, the US has destroyed the Iranian air force and navy so the war’s essentially over. He’ll cite that Iran has agreed to a ceasefire and in the meantime to open the straits of Hormuz to shipping.

The Iranians will say they did not request the ceasefire; Trump did. They’ll point out that the strait of Hormuz has been open to shipping all along—i.e. to those nations not at war with Iran as well as to Iran’s own shipping. More important, Iran will point out that their opening of the strait will be according to their rules, administered by them, and ships will have to pay a $2 million dollar transit fee for passage now.

The most important question, however, is whether the negotiations over the next two weeks represents a solution by Trump to provide an ‘offramp’ for the US from a war it realizes it can’t win without destroying the US and global economies—or whether it’s just another US negotiation deception and tactic to buy time to restore US and Israel military resources.

The US and especially Israel need a respite from the conflict. The US has seriously depleted its store of Patriot, Thaad, Tomahawk and other missiles. It has begun losing aircraft as well. This past week independent observers have indicated that Israel’s vaunted ‘iron dome’ air defense has been seriously compromised and 80% of Iranian missiles have been penetrating it now.

Trump claims that Iran’s air force and navy have been destroyed, which ignores the indisputable fact that Iran’s missile force has been steadily destroying military and other sites on a daily basis in Israel as well as throughout the Gulf countries—Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and Oman. Iran never had an air force to speak of; nor a major surface ship navy. But it did, and still does, have thousands of ballistic missiles, tens of thousands of drones, and a navy of fast boats, autonomous underwater drones, and sea mines not yet committed.

The next two weeks will tell if the ceasefire announced yesterdaty is just another negotiation deception that seems to have become standard practice in Israeli—and now US—military operations. Last June 2025, Trump and the Israelis lured the Iranians into negotiations and then bombed Iran while talks were in progress. And then did it again on February 27-28 while negotiations were also underway.  Should the Iranians think it will be any different this third time?

Negotiations have become a military tactic in the Trump administration. They’ve been so by the Israelis for some time—along with decapitation of government leaders and mass bombing of civilian sites. The US military seems to have adopted the same under the Trump administration, quite contrary to American military doctrine for decades before.

But it’s standard practice for the Israelis. The Israelis scuttled the negotiations that were held with Hamas in Qatar. They likely also had a role in the still unresolved murder of Iran’s former president whose helicopters mysteriously exploded in mid air returning from a meeting in Azerbaijan a few years back.

 Positions of US and Iran on March 25

What Trump and the US legacy media won’t say or report about much is the actual terms of the ceasefire suspending hostilities the next two weeks.

So what have the two parties—US and Iran—actually agreed to as part of the ceasefire? What have they agreed to discuss in upcoming negotiations? What’s off the table compared with when the war began last February 28? Which party has perhaps retreated from its initial demands?

At four weeks into the war—i.e. two weeks ago on March 25—Trump and the US had five basic demands:

Regime change. The government had to go and Iran revolutionary guard dissolved Iran had to end and dismantle its ballistic missile and drone programs Iran had to turn over all its nuclear material—for civilian as well as military use It had to abandon all support for allies in Yemen, Hezbollah, Hamas And open the strait of Hormuz unconditionally to all shipping traffic

Regime change. The government had to go and Iran revolutionary guard........

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