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He always chickens out. Good.

Trump talked to some Pakistani leaders, and that was good enough. He has announced a ceasefire.

President Donald Trump said he’d agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday, less than two hours before his 8 p.m. deadline to destroy a “whole civilization.”

Trump said the ceasefire agreement was made on the condition that Iran agree to reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz.

Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!, Trump posted on Truth Social.

The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East, Trump wrote.

See? He thinks he won already. Iran said nothing.

How about if we just ignore him from now on and focus on the Epstein files and getting him out of office?

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Comments

  2. stevewatson says

    OK, so give him the Nobel Peace Prize to make him happy and distracted while serious people get on with cleaning up the mess he’s made.

  4. robro says

    And as I predicted in the earlier post today, the markets are back up sharply after hours. Real people are being killed so he and his co-conspirators can game the market, and!!! keep The Files out of the news cycle.

  6. Hemidactylus says

    I had recently fallen into darkness contemplating the potential usage of a nuke. I’m glad it apparently won’t happen (Trump’s conditional vagueness…) but putting yourself there takes a lot out of you that can’t be gotten back. I was having Thirteen Days flashbacks.

    Trump needs to have the 25th invoked and be placed in a rubber room or a home for deranged ex-presidents. Someone on a previous thread compared recent events to George HW Bush (via a Dana Carvey spoof) and the first war on Iraq. This ain’t it. He wasn’t insane and at least had more competent cabinet members (excepting Quayle at least). HW would be a RINO now.

  7. John Morales says

    Hemidactylus:
    “I had recently fallen into darkness contemplating the potential usage of a nuke. I’m glad it apparently won’t happen (Trump’s conditional vagueness…) but putting yourself there takes a lot out of you that can’t be gotten back. I was having Thirteen Days flashbacks.”

    I myself had no prob.
    No putting.

    Heck.
    This is nothing like the bad old Cold War days, worry-wise.

    —

    As Robro points out, markets kinda show the scene.
    There was no panic. Just fluctuations.
    Large-scale, they price in future expectation via the wisdom of the collective; narrow-scale, the fluctuations can be arbitraged.

    Trump says X, oil goes up. Says Y, oil goes down.

    (Many such oscillations, many market movements)

    —

    Many grifting methods, for example, I did notice big players bought up a lot of the tariff refund ‘futures’ for pennies in the dollar. All that stuff within hours. It’s been noticed, but hey.
    Profit first, then the disputation and the appeals and so forth.

    —

    And it’s always in 2-3 weeks, with Trump. The meme.

  8. Hemidactylus says

    John Morales @7
    I’m not so sure. With JFK during the Cuban missile crisis we were on the brink, but at least had competent cabinet members pushing back against Curtis LeMay and trying backchannels with the Russians. They legit brought us back from the brink.

    I’m not about to play up the Iranian regime’s side as noble, but with Trump we are far more like a bellicose unhinged Khrushchev than a reserved JFK. In a nutshell, back then we feared the Russians, though the LeMays and Goldwaters were scary too. Now it’s coming mostly from inside the house in horror movie parlance.

    I suppose the overall nuclear threat dynamic is different, but I was worried, and still am, that we will become the first use aggressor with that with an unhinged POTUS. I am not as afraid of being struck in the short term, but such usage changes the world for the worse.

  9. imback says

    I am still worried the ultraorthodox Iranian leadership will consolidate its position, the ultrarapacious US leadership will consolidate its position, the ultramalicious Israeli leadership will consolidate its position, and in a couple of weeks we’ll have circled the drain back to the same standoff but even further down the pipe.

  10. JM says

    The point of contention looks to be control of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump wants unconditional opening and that is what he has claimed. The Iranian government has said that the Strait will be under Iranian military control.
    Iran seems to be angling for getting some degree of permanent control of the Strait out of negotiations. Iran wants to charge every shit going through a fee and have some say in what and who gets through. They will probably settle for just a fee because the money would be great for propping up the government as oil becomes less valuable.
    As a side bonus having some degree of control of the Strait would give them a lot of ability to evade sanctions. It would give them lots of excuses to meet with ships in the Strait, making transfer of black market items easy.

  11. John Morales says

    “Iran wants to charge every shit going through a fee and have some say in what and who gets through.”

    :)

  12. StevoR says

    Wonder what Oman and the UAE think of Iran wanting to control the entire strait given they also have one side of it too? If Iran is getting “tolls” for allowing ships through and they aren’t and Iran is saying they control it and yet they contain its southern shores?

  13. John Morales says

    Excerpt from: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-war.html?smid=url-share

    The president opened the meeting, asking, OK, what have we got?

    Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Caine ran through the sequencing of the attacks. Then Mr. Trump said he wanted to go around the table and hear everyone’s views.

    Mr. Vance, whose disagreement with the whole premise was well established, addressed the president: You know I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I’ll support you.

    Ms. Wiles told Mr. Trump that if he felt he needed to proceed for America’s national security, then he should go ahead.

    Mr. Ratcliffe offered no opinion on whether to proceed, but he discussed the stunning new intelligence that the Iranian leadership was about to gather in the ayatollah’s compound in Tehran. The C.I.A. director told the president that regime change was possible depending on how the term was defined. “If we just mean killing the supreme leader, we can probably do that,” he said.

    When called on, Mr. Warrington, the White House counsel, said it was a legally permissible option in terms of how the plan had been conceived by U.S. officials and presented to the president. He did not offer a personal opinion, but when pressed by the president to provide one, he said that as a Marine veteran he had known an American service member killed by Iran years earlier. This issue remained deeply personal. He told the president that if Israel intended to proceed regardless, the United States should do so as well.

    Mr. Cheung laid out the likely public relations fallout: Mr. Trump had run for office opposed to further wars. People had not voted for conflict overseas. The plans ran contrary, too, to everything the administration had said after the bombing campaign against Iran in June. How would they explain away eight months of insisting that Iranian nuclear facilities had been totally obliterated? Mr. Cheung gave neither a yes nor a no, but he said that whatever decision Mr. Trump made would be the right one.

    Ms. Leavitt told the president that this was his decision and that the press team would manage it as best they could.

    Mr. Hegseth adopted a narrow position: They would have to take care of the Iranians eventually, so they might as well do it now. He offered technical assessments: They could run the campaign in a certain amount of time with a given level of forces.

    General Caine was sober, laying out the risks and what the campaign would mean for munitions depletion. He offered no opinion; his position was that if Mr. Trump ordered the operation, the military would execute. Both of the president’s top military leaders previewed how the campaign would unfold and the U.S. capacity to degrade Iran’s military capabilities.

    When it was his turn to speak, Mr. Rubio offered more clarity, telling the president: If our goal is regime change or an uprising, we shouldn’t do it. But if the goal is to destroy Iran’s missile program, that’s a goal we can achieve.

    Everyone deferred to the president’s instincts. They had seen him make bold decisions, take on unfathomable risks and somehow come out on top. No one would impede him now.

    “I think we need to do it,” the president told the room. He said they had to make sure Iran could not have a nuclear weapon, and they had to ensure that Iran could not just shoot missiles at Israel or throughout the region.

    General Caine told Mr. Trump that he had some time; he did not need to give the go-ahead until 4 p.m. the following day.

    Aboard Air Force One the next afternoon, 22 minutes before General Caine’s deadline, Mr. Trump sent the following order: “Operation Epic Fury is approved. No aborts. Good luck.”

  14. StevoR says

    PBS Newshour on this :

    President Trump is backing off, for now, from destroying Iran’s civilian infrastructure and wiping out its civilization. He also said he agreed to suspend bombing for two weeks if Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz. Trump called an Iranian proposal for a 10-point peace plan “a workable basis on which to negotiate.” Nick Schifrin reports.

    Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-agrees-to-2-week-ceasefire-backs-down-from-threats-to-destroy-irans-infrastructure

  15. StevoR says

    Also :

    Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said Wednesday it has accepted a two-week ceasefire in the war. Its statement said it would negotiate with the United States in Islamabad beginning Friday.

    “It is emphasized that this does not signify the termination of the war,” the statement said. “Our hands remain upon the trigger, and should the slightest error be committed by the enemy, it shall be met with full force.”

    Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/irans-supreme-national-security-council-says-it-has-accepted-two-week-ceasefire-in-the-war

  16. StevoR says

    There was an interiew with an Iranian on that PBS newshour ep too which I thought was there ^ but isn’t (?) & can’t seem to find..

    @ 6. Hemidactylus : “Trump needs to have the 25th invoked and be placed in a rubber room or a home for deranged ex-presidents.”

    The Fletcher Memorial Home perhaps?

    Now there’s a Pink Floyd classic song that could do with an update!

  17. StevoR says

    @ ^

    Aha! This is what iwa slooking for!

    President Trump made a violent and extraordinary threat on Tuesday, saying he would erase an entire civilization if Iran didn’t agree to his terms for a deal. He backed down from that rhetoric later in the day, agreeing to a two-week ceasefire. To discuss the reaction in Iran, Geoff Bennett spoke with special correspondent Reza Sayah in Tehran.

    Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-iran-is-reacting-as-trump-pulls-back-from-threat-to-wipe-out-civilization

    Giving at least one Iranians view on this.

  18. says

    i won’t feel safe about this until him and hegley are fucking gone, not too concerned about how that happens. nazi brownnose couchfucker would be bad, bad enough to do genocide, but not quite bad enough to nuke a city. take your pick of world ruining pieces of subhuman shit.

  19. Nick Wrathall says

    Bébé Mélange @ 18
    They all appear completely human to me. None of their behaviour diverts from the canon of our collective past atrocities.
    God-like too. You know: genocidal, murderous, a bit rapey to boot.

    Isn’t trumpy still out on bail?

  20. says

    Don’t thank the barista till you’ve tasted the coffee …..

    I wouldn’t put it past Trump and his handlers to try to use a “ceasefire” as cover for a surprise attack.

  21. says

    Watch Trump roll over and give the Iranians everything they want. That’s the Trumpian way, if bluster and bullying don’t make the other side surrender without a fight, immediately surrender everything yourself. He’s a CHEESEBURGER-EATING SURRENDER MONKEY! That’s why I’m so effin’ angry, Trump’s a coward who never follows up on threats if he has to actually put out and yet people so eagerly fall over in anticipatory obedience if he only writes a single angry tweet.
    It’s not even that the Iranian leaders are particularly brave, Trump just backed them into a corner where it was either fight or die because he’s a moron who doesn’t know a thing about negotiating.

  22. Snarki, child of Loki says

    They’ve used “negotiations” as covers for attacks….twice now?

  23. kurt1 says

    @12 StevoR
    As far as I know Iran started negotiations with Oman after the war started and they won control over the strait for Hormuz. They worked out joint control protocols with Oman and tolls will be split between Oman and Iran.

  24. submoron says

    Snarki, child of Loki, how long do you think he’ll wait before saying that Iran’s breaking the ceasefire and resuming attacks? 10days or week?

  26. seversky says

    Trump seems to be drunk on power, which is why I hope the midterms go against him and MAGA, He’s going to hate that. I’m going to love the small of lame duck in the morning.

  27. numerobis says

    The last pre-war tanker coming out from the Gulf docked recently; most had docked a couple weeks ago. Reality was setting in: sure on paper it was obvious from the start that there would be disruption from tankers not showing up anymore, but now we were at the point of oil terminals actually going idle and storages starting to drain.

    IEA recommends member states have about 3 months of storage; 6 weeks of disruption is a pretty significant chunk of that for states that import all their oil.

    Hence the US begging for a ceasefire that let ships transit the strait.

  28. cheerfulcharlie says

    Meanwhile, J. Dunce Vance is in Hungary telling Victor Orban how much the Trump regimes loves him and admires him. There have been massive demonstrations in Hungary against Orban. There will be presidential elections next week and Orban will lose very badly. What the Trump regime will do when Orban loses badly will be interesting to observe.

  30. Matthew Currie says

    I’m somehow reminded of Senator Fulbright, back in Vietnam days, who suggested that the best way to end the war would be simply to say we won and go home. Given that he has the attention span of a pithed squirrel it’s a long shot that he’ll even remember there was a cease fire a week from now, but possible as long as nobody reminds him that Fulbright was a Democrat.

  31. raven says

    I’m somehow reminded of Senator Fulbright, back in Vietnam days, who suggested that the best way to end the war would be simply to say we won and go home.

    That is what we did.

    We did something similar in Afghanistan.

  32. microraptor says

    Looks like the cease fire didn’t last, Iran’s still firing missiles: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/08/iran-missile-attacks-after-us-ceasefire-gulf-air-defenses.html

    Not a surprise. Iran has no reason to trust the US or Israel given both nations’ track record of breaking cease fire deals. Plus, the Iranian military has been compartmentalized in order to make it resistant to decapitation strikes (again a favorite tactic by the US and Israel), so rather than needing one military commander to agree to the ceasefire you need to get multiple to do so, and that’s significantly harder to pull off.

  33. raven says

    It is noteworthy how much this cease fire favors Iran.

    Trump actually had a good idea a week or so ago.
    He wanted to just forget the whole Strait of Hormuz thing and walk away from the whole war that he started.
    And then let the Europeans and Asians sort it out with the Iranians, Israel, and the Gulf Arabs.

    Why not? The Trump regime is so inept, it isn’t like we are all that capable of doing much of anything anymore.

  34. flange says

    Off-topic, mostly.
    I think “TACO” is a dumb refrain, and bad acronym. “TACO” has nothing to do with tacos. It takes several levels of thought to realize what it stands for, and then it’s a let-down. “Trump Always Chickens Out” is a long way from criticizing his most malignant qualities. It’s more of a taunt and a challenge. If true, it’s GOOD that Trump always chickens out. There’s less of a chance that he’ll blow up the whole enchilada.

  35. raven says

    Latest headline from Reuters:

    * IRAN’S TASNIM NEWS AGENCY CITING UNNAMED SOURCE: IRAN WILL WITHDRAW FROM CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT IF ATTACK ON LEBANON CONTINUES

    Israel is still occupying southern Lebanon and attacking Lebanese.

    Cease fire agreements in the Middle East tend to come and go.

    It is also obvious here that Iran is now controlled by hardliners.
    Iran thinks it can win by just managing to continue to exist.

    Which is what the North Vietnamese did during the Vietnam war.
    We lost in Vietnam because the Vietnamese lived there. They had nowhere else to go. We could just get on planes and fly back to Hawaii and California. Which is what we did.

    Iran doesn’t much care if this war continues.

  36. jenorafeuer says

    Hemidactylus@6:
    Lawyers, Guns & Money has a post called On the 25th Amendment where they point out that the 25th is essentially unusable in the current situation, because nobody who’s allowed to make use of it would actually want to; fundamentally it’s no easier to use the 25th to remove a president than it is to impeach them, and people have failed at that twice already. Without supermajorities you can’t really force the President out. It’s only really usable if the President is in a coma or so far gone he can’t even respond to the attempts at pushing him out, and even then it assumes good faith on the parts of his cabinet or Congress that they would be willing to do the right thing.

    They note that the guy who helped write the amendment is actually still alive (he’s 90), and that he speaks like a classic centrist of the ‘worshipping the process and assuming that everybody really just wants things to continue working despite any blatant evidence otherwise’ sort that have made the Democratic Party such a weak-ass mess for the last few decades.

    raven@35:
    Heck, the Revolutionary Guard in Iran probably love this war: it’s great for getting the general populace to hate the U.S. more than they hate the Revolutionary Guard.

  37. billmcd says

    So, at the intersection of current events, Trump called the Artemis II crew to congratulate them, and on-camera, we got to watch them completely cold-shoulder him for over a minute of silence before Wiseman finally took the mic and asked Mission Control if they were still there.

    This has not been a good 24h for the Dotard.

  38. John Morales says

    In the news: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/traders-place-large-950-million-bet-oil-price-falling-hours-ahead-ceasefire-2026-04-08/
    ↓
    The bet ‌follows ⁠similar moves on March 23, when investors sold $500 million in oil futures just 15 minutes before an announcement by Trump that he would delay attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure, which stunned markets and then triggered a 15% drop in the crude price.

    (Price goes up: $profit$; price goes down: $profit$ — not exactly a hidden pattern, and the basis is what Trump says)

  39. vereverum says

    @ seversky #26
    Midterms? Any trump candidate loss will be seen as prima facie evidence of massive voter fraud and that election will be reversed.

  40. John Morales says

    Price goes up, price goes down.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/trump-warns-major-war-escalation-if-iran-peace-process-fails-2026-04-09/
    ↓
    Trump warns of major war escalation if Iran peace process fails
    April 9, 20264:23 PM GMT+10Updated 7 mins ago

    U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to retain military assets in the Middle East until a peace deal with Iran is reached ​and warned of a major escalation in fighting if it failed to comply, as oil prices rose on concerns over supply and restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz.

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