During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump privately told donors about one of his favorite negotiating tactics, recounting at a New York fundraiser in May how he would deter Chinese or Russian aggression by threatening to bomb Beijing or Moscow.
“He thought I was crazy,” Trump said of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s response. “He didn’t believe me, except 10 percent. And 10 percent is all you need.”
The story, which has not been confirmed by Russian or Chinese officials, speaks to how Trump has approached foreign adversaries: using unpredictability and the threat of catastrophic escalation to gain leverage. In a twist on Richard M. Nixon’s “madman theory,” Trump has made shocking threats he believes adversaries cannot afford to dismiss; as president, he threatened to pull out of NATO in 2018, raise tariffs in 2025, and take over Greenland earlier this year.
Trump put the tactic to the riskiest test yet with Tuesday’s ultimatum that “a whole civilization will die tonight,” which yielded a two-week ceasefire in Iran and an assurance that the country’s leaders would let oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Supporters said the outcome demonstrated that Trump’s method worked.
“President Trump is doing what he does,” Andrew Kolvet, host of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” said on the air Tuesday, before Trump announced the suspension of strikes on Iran. “This is why he is the elected president. I think he’s lucid and in control.”
Trump’s threat to wipe out “a whole civilization” raised the possibility that he would go even beyond his earlier warning to attack civilian infrastructure, which violates the laws of war. His post set off nuclear panic and drew condemnation across the political spectrum and fueled open debate about his credibility, morality and sanity.
“The President’s threat that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight’ cannot be excused away as an attempt to gain leverage in negotiations with Iran,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a statement on Tuesday. “This type of rhetoric is an affront to the ideals our nation has sought to uphold and promote around the world for nearly 250 years. It undermines our long-standing role as a global beacon of freedom and directly endangers Americans both abroad and at home.”
The White House portrayed the truce as a step toward definitively ending the war within six weeks, not just a third extension of Trump’s demand to release the estimated one-fifth of the world’s energy supplies that transit the narrow waterway out of the Persian Gulf.
“From the very beginning of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump estimated this would be a 4-6 week operation,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday night. “… The success of our military created maximum leverage, allowing President Trump and the team to engage in tough negotiations that have now created an opening for a diplomatic solution and long-term peace.”
Leavitt said officials would make more details available Wednesday morning. Iran’s government also portrayed the deal as a victory and is demanding a role in supervising passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which it did not have before the war.
In a brief statement issued early Wednesday local time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he supported Trump’s “decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks subject to Iran immediately opening the straits and stopping all attacks on the U.S., Israel and countries in the region.” However, Netanyahu said the ceasefire did not include Lebanon.
U.S. officials argued that they have achieved their military objectives, one of which was ensuring Iran “can never obtain a nuclear weapon.” The country maintains its supply of enriched uranium and has not agreed to surrender it. They also said it was a victory to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. The White House no longer discusses Trump’s earlier demands for “unconditional surrender” and overthrowing the Iranian government.
“There is no military solution to the conflict right now,” Joe Kent, Trump’s counterterrorism adviser who resigned last month in protest of the war, said in an online video after the president’s announcement Tuesday night. “Every action that we’ve taken militarily has only strengthened the regime, and it’s done a lot to destabilize the entire region.”
The White House on Tuesday took the extraordinary step of specifying that the administration was not considering using nuclear weapons after Vice President JD Vance, speaking in Hungary, discussed “tools in our tool kit that we so far haven’t decided to use.”
Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) called Trump’s threat “evil and madness.” Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who maintains a large following online, accused Trump of desecrating Sunday’s Easter holiday with a profane social media post and of being willing to commit “a moral crime.”
Robert George, a Princeton University professor who was until November a trustee of the Heritage Foundation, said military officers should refuse an order to attack civilians. Prominent economist Oren Cass called the threat a strategic and moral “disaster” that would either make Trump look foolish for backing off or have “immediate, irreversible, and catastrophic” consequences if he followed through.
The pope weighed in, too. “This is truly unacceptable,” Leo XIV, born in Chicago as Robert Prevost, told reporters on Tuesday.
The war has killed 13 American service members, dozens of Israelis and thousands of Iranian civilians. It has also depleted U.S. weapons stockpiles, spiked gas prices, alienated European allies and lowered Trump’s approval ratings. Trump campaigned as a peace candidate, promising to end fighting in Gaza and Ukraine while keeping the U.S. out of open-ended commitments in the Middle East like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. On Monday, Trump repeated his desire to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, in the same briefing that he said he would bomb Iran into the “Stone Ages.”
In addition to criticism from supporters who said they voted against new wars, Trump also faced backlash from war hawks who suspect Iran of playing Trump for time.
“This offer from the Muslim country of Pakistan is another worthless, dangerous delaying tactic that Iran is famous for,” Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America and a Trump supporter, said on Tuesday. “The U.S. dare not delay any further.”
Conservative radio host Erick Erickson, who is sometimes critical of Trump, said the president had little to show for his brinkmanship.
“Credit where it is due — the President, through his outlandish tweets that absolutely are beneath the dignity of the Leader of the Free World, has a two-week ceasefire with Iran,” he wrote on social media. “Now, Iran has two weeks to get weapons and supplies from Russia and China, put in some antiaircraft batteries, and prepare for round two.”
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