From threatening a civilization to ceasefire: What we learned from a wild day in the Iran war

President Donald Trump’s fast pivot on Iran — from “a whole civilization will die tonight” to a benign return to negotiations — has a whipsawed world scratching their heads. What was he up to?

One possibility: Many Western analysts believe that Russian nuclear doctrine includes a concept called “escalate to de-escalate,” in which Moscow would use a tactical nuclear weapon early in a conflict to shock a stronger adversary into backing down from a conventional conflict. (The Russians deny this strategy exists.)

On Tuesday, Trump may have carried out a kind of Truth Social version of “escalate to de-escalate,” cranking up the rhetoric and threats to a fever pitch in order to get himself out of a war where the United States enjoyed an overwhelming military advantage, but found itself at a strategic disadvantage.

Nuclear use was never actually in play, but given Trump’s rhetoric — and the immensity of American military power — the comparison does not feel far-fetched. After Trump’s threats to destroy “a whole civilization” on Tuesday morning, speculation about how far he’d go reached the point that the White House had to deny reports it was planning to use nuclear weapons. Some of Trump’s erstwhile supporters accused him of threatening “genocide.”

Did the ploy actually work? The Russian version is supposedly intended to get a stronger enemy to back down. In this case, it’s unclear to what extent the adversary has actually surrendered.

Subsequent tick-tock reporting may later reveal just how far Trump was contemplating going, and just how close he got to carrying out his threat. But for the moment, what we can say is that the dramatic escalation in rhetoric — and some very real attacks by the US and Israel on Iran’s railways and oil infrastructure — served as a framing device, allowing Trump to take an exit ramp that was likely already available to him, and portray it as a response to his threats.

According to Trump’s Truth Social statement, posted about an hour and a half before his declared deadline, his decision to agree to a two-week ceasefire with Iran came at the urging of the government of Pakistan, which has been acting as an intermediary to the two sides. Trump said that a 10-point proposal received from the Iranian side was enough to serve as the basis for negotiations. That proposal was received yesterday, before Trump’s most dramatic threats. Iran’s government has also said it agrees to the ceasefire.

As reported by the New York Times, the Iranian proposal includes a guarantee that Iran will not be attacked again, an end to Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the lifting of sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz. It does not include Iran surrendering its remaining uranium stockpile or halting future enrichment, which had been core US demands at various points in this conflict.

Iran’s foreign minister said Iran would allow safe passage through the Strait for two weeks for international ships, so long as they coordinate with the Iranian military. Tehran, for its part, is portraying Trump’s announcement as a complete victory, saying Trump agreed to its terms in full, though it’s basically impossible to imagine the US actually agreeing to terms that would effectively give Iran carte blanche to build a nuclear bomb.

It’s also hard to imagine that an outcome in which the Iranian regime remains in place, and Iran retains its stockpile, would have been considered a victory for the US in the early days of this war, when Iran’s air defenses proved utterly unable to stop the US and Israel from devastating its infrastructure and killing its leaders. Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz changed the strategic balance in the conflict, effectively weaponizing the global economy and giving Tehran a new and potent source of leverage even as it continued absorbing blows. Even if it reopens the Strait now, it will retain the threat to close it again, potentially a more flexible and effective deterrent than its missiles and proxies.

But Iran is in a precarious position as well; its defenses are badly depleted, its senior ranks decimated by targeted strikes, and more vulnerable than ever to challenges from abroad and within. Experts and officials in Israel always suspected the war would continue only as long as Trump allowed it to, and are probably satisfied for now with the damage they’ve inflicted on Iran’s missiles and economy.

Rather than the clear win some would like, or a definitive de-escalation, this may turn out to be another episode of another, more familiar strategy in the recent history of the Middle East: “mowing the grass.”