Will Donald Trump stick with his Iran truce?

Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump pulled back from the brink on Tuesday, his truce with Iran has begun to fray — undermined by conflicting versions of what exactly was agreed.

The US president’s plan for vice-president JD Vance to lead talks in Pakistan points to the urgency, but the faultlines are vast, from Israel’s strikes on Lebanon to Iran’s enriched uranium and willingness — or not — to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“It’s one thing to declare a ceasefire on social media and it’s another thing to actually have an agreement where people have a shared understanding of the terms,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute think-tank in Washington.

It leaves the rest of the world waiting to see if the two warring parties are genuine in their efforts to end a conflict that is sending shockwaves through the global economy. Or whether Trump, under pressure from hawks at home, is using the pause as anything more than a chance to rearm.

“The president has an approach to brinksmanship. The Iranians have an approach to brinkmanship. And they both think they’re really good at it,” said Jon Alterman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But, Alterman said: “They have different approaches.”

Trump’s pivot to negotiations on Tuesday marked a sharp turn for a man who just hours earlier had threatened to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” unless it capitulated to US demands.

But $4-a-gallon petrol is hard even for Trump to dismiss. The war has helped push his approval ratings to fresh lows, just months before his Republicans face voters in midterm elections.

Trump’s peace overture secured him a sharp sell-off in oil prices on Wednesday. But if he is to stick with it, he will now need to show results and quell a backlash from Israeli officials and Iran hawks among his allies.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, among the most vocal, was critical — and singled out the vice-president for leading Trump into talks with Iran.

“The supposed negotiating document, in my view, has some troubling aspects, but time will tell,” he wrote on X. “I look forward to the architects of this proposal, the Vice President and others, coming forward to Congress and explaining how a negotiated deal meets our national security objectives in Iran.”

Graham had previously told reporters that he didn’t see a need to authorise Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, but Congress would need to authorise a deal with the regime to end it.

The hawks could hold out hope that talks for now are also just a pause, not an end to hostilities — a reading that could be parsed from Pentagon officials’ comments on Wednesday.

While declaring triumph in a morning press conference, defence secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that there was “a chance at real peace and a real deal” as the US military “for now, has done its part”.

US forces remained “ready” to resume the war at short notice, Hegseth added. “We’ll be hanging around. We’re not going anywhere,” he said of the 50,000 or so US troops deployed to the Middle East.

And the 4,500 other Marines and sailors now en route to the region? Hegseth had no comment.

The US has not ruled out a ground offensive in Iran, or taken its threat to bomb civilian infrastructure — a potential war crime — off the table. “It was not an empty threat by any means,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday. “The Pentagon had a target list that it was ready to hit go on.”

After six weeks of war and the loss of some combat aircraft last weekend, the two-week pause in hostilities could help the US military re-arm.

The gaps between the two sides also remain far larger than Trump implied on Tuesday when he said “almost all” points of contention between them had been agreed.

Officials in Washington and Tehran lashed out at the other side on Wednesday over alleged ceasefire violations, lies and the substance of the “10-point” Iranian proposal that both camps said would form the basis of negotiations.

Iran said the points included its continued control and regulation of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of compensation to Iran, the lifting of sanctions and the withdrawal of US combat troops from the Middle East.

The right-wing podcast host Mark Levin, a Trump ally and proponent of the war, said the plan was “an absolute disaster”.

In a sign of frustration, Trump said on social media: “There is only one group of meaningful “POINTS” that are acceptable to the United States, and we will be discussing them behind closed doors during these Negotiations.”

“President Trump listens to a host of opinions on any given topic. He is the final decisionmaker, and always acts based on what is best for our country and US national security,” said White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly.

The White House did not elaborate on how its understanding of the 10-point proposal differed. But Vance lamented the disconnect during a trip to Hungary — and blamed rogue elements in Tehran.

“What’s happening on the ground in Iran is that you have clearly the position of the government, which is to negotiate with the United States of America,” he said. “And then, yes, you have some crazy people at the fringes of the Iranian system who are leaking anonymously, either for propaganda purposes or because they’re embarrassed or because they don’t like what happened.”

But some alarming differences were visible to global investors and governments.

Trump had conditioned his deal on Tuesday on a “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING” of the Strait of Hormuz, the vital oil waterway whose near-total closure since the US and Israel began bombing Iran has triggered a global energy crisis.

But on Wednesday just a few vessels — compared with more than 100 before the war — had sailed through it. The FT reported that Iran would now formally institute a $1 a barrel fee on oil tankers passing through the strait.

Another significant point of friction is that Pakistan and Iran both said on Tuesday night that Lebanon, where Israel is waging a fierce war on Iran-backed Hizbollah, was part of the ceasefire.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had “insisted” to Washington that Lebanon be excluded. The White House said it supported that decision.

“I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn’t,” Vance said. “We never made that promise.”

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is expected to lead Iran’s side in the talks, on Wednesday said the US was reneging on some pledges. Under these circumstances, he said, a ceasefire was “unreasonable”.

Vance, who is considered the most sceptical of the US war on Iran within Trump’s inner circle, said a collapse of the diplomacy and return to conflict remained possible.

“Fundamentally, the Iranians have got to take the next step, or the president has a lot of options to go back to the war,” the vice-president said.

The Middle East Institute’s Katulis said predicting Trump’s willingness to stick with his latest move was difficult.

“I think Trump was sounding increasingly desperate over the last three or four days — he knew on some level he had painted himself into a corner, both in the Middle East and around the world, but also at home,” he said.

“He sounded like a guy who really didn’t know where he was going.”