WASHINGTON/DUBAI/CAIRO — The United States and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire, reaching a deal less than two hours before President Donald J. Trump’s deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face the wiping out of “a whole civilization.”

The announcement late on Tuesday represented an abrupt turnaround from Mr. Trump’s extraordinary warning earlier, and came after mediation efforts by Pakistan’s military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and its Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Mr. Sharif later said in a post on X he had invited Iranian and US delegations to meet in Islamabad on Friday.

The eleventh-hour deal was subject to Iran’s agreement to pause its blockade of oil and gas supplies through the Strait, Mr. Trump said. The waterway typically handles about one-fifth of global oil shipments.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in a statement Tehran would cease counterattacks and provide safe passage through the waterway, if attacks against it stop.

Israel supported the decision to suspend strikes on Iran for the two-week period, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. The ceasefire does not apply to Lebanon, it added, in an apparent contradiction to comments from Mr. Sharif, who had said the agreement included a cessation of Israel’s campaign in Lebanon.

“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “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.”

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council portrayed the deal as a victory over the US, claiming Mr. Trump had accepted Iran’s conditions for ending hostilities.

Mr. Trump told the French news agency AFP that it was a “total and complete victory.”

“Total and complete victory. 100%. No question about it,” Mr. Trump said when asked if he was claiming victory with the ceasefire.

He later said on Truth Social: “A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! Likewise, so has everyone else!”

Iran could start the reconstruction process, and the US would help in traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz, he added.

The war, now in its sixth week, has claimed more than 5,000 lives in nearly a dozen countries, including more than 1,600 civilians in Iran, according to tallies from government sources and human rights groups.

A source briefed on the talks expressed wariness about the two-week ceasefire holding, saying the US side believed Iran might be trying to buy time. It was a “trust-building exercise,” the source said.

Lebanese state news agency NNA reported continued Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon, including artillery shelling and a dawn airstrike on a building near a hospital that killed four people. It also reported attacks on several other towns and on a medical point that caused injuries.

Israel’s military issued repeated urgent warnings to residents of the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, saying it would strike the area.

CONDITIONED ON STRAIT’S REOPENING
It was not immediately clear how soon the ceasefire elsewhere would take full effect. Israeli media said it would begin once Iran reopened the Strait and that Israel expected Iranian attacks to continue in the interim.

Iraq’s Islamic Resistance also said it would suspend operations in Iraq and across the region for two weeks.

More than an hour after Mr. Trump’s announcement, the Israeli military said it had identified missiles launched from Iran, and explosions from intercepted missiles could be heard in Tel Aviv. Gulf countries including Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also issued near-simultaneous alerts and activated air defenses.

Israeli media said its military was striking back at launch sites in Iran.

Mr. Trump, who has issued a series of threats in recent weeks only to back away, said progress between the two sides had prompted him to agree to the ceasefire. He said Iran had presented a 10-point proposal that was a “workable basis” for negotiations and that he expected an agreement to be “finalized and consummated” during the two-week window.

Mr. Trump later said to AFP: “We have a 15-point transaction, of which most of those things have been agreed on. We’ll see what happens. We’ll see if it gets there.”

Markets enjoyed a relief rally as oil prices dropped CLc1, stocks and bonds surged and the dollar weakened, bolstered by hope that trade through the Strait could resume.

Global leaders also welcomed the ceasefire with the Australian government saying that “the longer the war goes on, the more significant the impact on the global economy will be, and the greater the human cost.”

By agreeing to the ceasefire, Mr. Trump may be showing an awareness that the war — which is deeply unpopular in many parts of the United States — is dragging on longer than he expected, analysts said.

“In the last few days we’ve seen President Trump wanting to find a route towards a way that the US military can back out of the war with Iran, but also frame that as a kind of victory for the US,” said Jessica Genauer, academic director of the Public Policy Institute at Australia’s University of New South Wales.

ABRUPT TURNAROUND
Mr. Trump’s announcement capped a whirlwind day that was dominated by his threat to destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran unless Tehran reopened the Strait. That unnerved world leaders, rattled global markets and drew widespread condemnation, including criticism from the head of the United Nations and Pope Leo.

Some international law experts have said attacking civilian infrastructure indiscriminately could constitute a war crime.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sharply increased oil prices, escalating the chances of a global economic downturn or even recession. The US Energy Information Administration warned earlier on Tuesday that fuel prices could continue to rise for months even after the Strait reopened.

With the US midterm election campaign ramping up, Mr. Trump’s approval ratings have hit their lowest level ever, leaving his Republican Party at risk of losing its narrow majorities in Congress. Polls show sizable majorities of Americans are opposed to the war and frustrated by the rising cost of gasoline.

As the clock ticked down to Mr. Trump’s 8 p.m. EDT (0000 GMT Wednesday) deadline, US and Israeli strikes on Iran had intensified, hitting railway and road bridges, an airport and a petrochemical plant. US forces attacked targets on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil export terminal. — Reuters

BEIJING — China’s President Xi Jinping has called for a demand-driven approach coupled with reform and technological empowerment to develop the service sector, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.

China will expand and upgrade the services sector, cultivate more “China service” brands and push production-oriented services toward specialization and higher positions in the value chain, Xinhua quoted Mr. Xi as saying in a directive to a two-day national service industry conference in Beijing that began on Tuesday.

China will “emphasize demand-driven development, push forward reform breakthroughs, harness science and technology to drive growth, and expand openness and cooperation,” Mr. Xi said.

China should expand the supply of upgraded services and improve its consumption structure in line with demographic shifts to meet increasingly diverse consumer demand, Premier Li Qiang said at the meeting, according to Xinhua. He added that China should accelerate the growth of technology services by moving research and development and design toward greater specialization and higher value‑added segments.

Beijing has been signaling a policy shift to focus on services this year as it tries to redirect some stimulus from sometimes-wasteful investments on transport, housing and industrial infrastructure to potentially more productive areas.

Soft consumer demand has hobbled the economy, and Beijing’s measures so far haven’t turned it around. Per-capita services consumption was 46.1% in 2025, well below the 70% in the US.

China’s new five-year plan pledged to “significantly” raise the share of household consumption in the economy over the next five years from around 40% at present, though it stopped short of setting a specific target. — Reuters

SEOUL — North Korea fired several ballistic missiles toward the sea off its east coast on Wednesday, South Korea’s military said, following a separate launch detected a day earlier as Pyongyang doused Seoul’s hopes of an easing in tensions.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the unidentified missiles were launched at around 8:50 a.m. (2350 GMT Tuesday) from near Wonsan on the North’s east coast.

The missiles flew 240 kilometers (149 miles), the JCS said, adding that South Korean and US authorities were conducting a detailed analysis of the launch. South Korea’s military also said it had detected the launch of a suspected ballistic missile from near Pyongyang on Tuesday.

South Korea’s presidential Blue House convened an emergency National Security Council meeting on Wednesday, calling the launches a provocation that violated United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions, according to the local media reports. It urged Pyongyang to end such tests.

According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing military officials, the projectile launched on Tuesday flew eastward before showing signs of an abnormality in the early stage of flight and disappearing.

The JCS also thought it was likely to be a ballistic missile, in what could amount to a failure after launch, Yonhap reported.

South Korea typically announces North Korean ballistic missile launches promptly, as such tests violate UN Security Council resolutions against the North’s ballistic missile program.

North Korea rejects the UN ban and says it infringes its sovereign right to self-defense.

HOSTILE ENEMY
The disclosure of the latest launches came after a statement by a top North Korean official that made clear that Pyongyang saw no shift in its hostile stance toward Seoul despite hopes of a thaw in relations.

Jang Kum Chol, a senior official at North Korea’s foreign ministry, said the South was engaging in wishful thinking if it thought Pyongyang was ready to see Seoul as anything other than an enemy.

“The identity of the ROK, the enemy state most hostile to the DPRK, can never change with any words or conduct,” Mr. Jang was quoted as saying by state media KCNA late on Tuesday, using the formal acronyms for the names of South and North Korea.

The comments contrasted with a statement from North Korea on Monday, which said South Korean President Lee Jae Myung was “very fortunate and wise” to convey regret to Pyongyang for drone incursions earlier this year.

Some in Seoul saw that statement as a rare act of conciliation from the nuclear-armed North after decades of hostility. The two nations remain technically at war after their 1950-1953 conflict ended in a truce.

But Mr. Jang said the statement issued by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, amounted to a warning to Seoul, and dismissed interpretations that it reflected friendly intentions.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said Pyongyang appeared intent on quickly shutting down what it saw as overly optimistic readings in the South, while continuing weapons testing to reinforce its deterrence.

“North Korea briefly acknowledged Seoul’s tension‑easing efforts, but moved within a day to block hopeful interpretations and reassert its hostile-state framework,” Mr. Yang said. — Reuters