Senior Republicans are turning a blind eye to the truth about Trump's Iran ceasefire... but there's no denying how this now ends: MARK HALPERIN
You call this a ceasefire?
Since President Donald Trump's Tuesday night announcement of a two-week truce with Iran and a promised opening of the Strait of Hormuz, the US leader has been on his Truth Social perch, selling the deal, including a promise that any final agreement will secure Iran's nuclear material.
Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have struck a more cautious tone - trust a little, verify a lot.
Strip away the digital bravado and the cable chatter and what we are left with, at least for now, is both murky and fragile.
Some Republicans, mindful of political crosswinds and the gravitational pull of Trump's MAGA base, are inclined to embrace the deal's promise rather than interrogate its particulars.
It is Washington's way to declare 'so far, so good' and attempt to move on. But beneath the choppy waters, unanswered questions surface like massive icebergs, peaking just above the surface, revealing a hint of the 100,000-ton behemoth beneath.
A battered Iran still stands, governed by the same theocratic system, sustained by the same hard men in uniform, presiding over a population that has absorbed weeks of punishment. It now seems that the war has not delivered – and may not even be capable of bringing about – the political transformation in Tehran that some in Washington once whispered about.
The regime remains. So what, if anything, has changed?
Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on April 6
In choosing to negotiate with the current leadership, Washington risks, at least in perception, stabilizing a regime it only recently suggested the Iranian people should fight to cast off.
Axios reports that – for the first time since the war began – new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was personally involved in negotiations to reach this tentative 'pause' in hostilities. Up until this point, many in security circles were speculating that Khamenei was dead. Perhaps he is.
Who, exactly, will sit across the table when the real negotiations, reportedly in Islamabad on Friday, begin?
Incredibly, on Wednesday Trump floated a proposal to establish a 'joint venture' with Tehran to manage traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, like cars through the Midtown tunnel.
'It's a way of securing it - also securing it from lots of other people. It's a beautiful thing,' the president reportedly told ABC News.
Is this a solution that will reassure insurers, shippers and energy markets? What mechanisms will enforce compliance - and what happens when, not if, those mechanisms are tested? Is it even feasible?
Most crucially, Iran's nuclear capacity - both the physical uranium stockpile and the intellectual infrastructure - appears not to have been decisively eliminated.
The war's implicit casus belli was fear of an Iranian sprint to a bomb. Yet if that material remains inside the country, even under some future monitoring regime, then the central problem persists, merely delayed, perhaps even hardened by experience.
Wars that begin with clarity can end in ambiguity. This one is flirting with that fate at this point.
Most immediately, Iran's missile program - range, payload, precision - remains a core concern for the region. New Iranian missile and drone attacks on Israel and the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, in the hours immediately after the ceasefire was announced, are a testament to that ongoing threat.
If a final deal does not meaningfully constrain those Iranian capabilities, then another one of the war's principal objectives will have gone unmet.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to pound Hezbollah-targets in Lebanon, launching – what it calls – its largest coordinated strike against the Iranian-aligned proxy since the start of the war.
Pakistan, which has been central to US-Iranian negotiations, claimed Israel was in violation of the ceasefire. Israel says it isn't. Iran has threatened to scrap the whole deal if the bombing continues.
And so, it goes.
There is, to be fair, a plausible case for optimism. It is possible that the United States and Israel have, through a combination of force and signaling, degraded Iran's capabilities and impressed upon its leadership the costs of escalation or bad behavior.
It is possible that a new generation of Iranian decision-makers - however one defines 'new' - calculates that survival requires a different course. It is possible that what looks like a muddle today resolves into a strategic success tomorrow.
It is also conceivable that Iran emerges from this episode with much of what matters most still in hand: its nuclear know-how, its missile arsenal, its regional networks.
Mark Halperin is the editor-in-chief and host of the interactive live video platform 2WAY and the host of the video podcast 'Next Up' on the Megyn Kelly network
In that scenario, the war will have been a costly demonstration rather than a decisive turning point. The Israelis, in the end, will insist on their security. The Iranians, by all available evidence, will not easily yield on what they consider sovereign rights. And the American public, distracted by nearer concerns, will register all of this only faintly, if at all.
No one really knows what happened on Tuesday - honestly, even those, like the president, who made the deal. The possible outlines are visible; the final substance is not.
The president has set a high bar. He has suggested that any resulting agreement will comprehensively address Iran's nuclear materials - that it will be, in his words, 'perfectly taken care of,' or else he would not have agreed to the ceasefire. Big, if true. Enormous, if achieved. Politically and strategically transformative.
But, at this hour, Iran has demonstrated an ability to inflict economic anxiety even as it absorbs military blows. The lesson others may draw - friends and adversaries alike -is not yet settled. Moscow and Beijing will study this carefully, looking for signs of American resolve or vulnerability. Tehran will approach any direct talks not as a defeated actor but as one that has endured and adapted.
If there is a Trump masterstroke coming, it lies somewhere beyond the visible horizon, in details not yet disclosed and leverage not yet deployed. The burden of proof now rests squarely on the president and his partners. They must show that this ceasefire was not merely a pause, not merely a performance, but the opening act of something more durable and more consequential.
Until then, we are left with that essential question, hanging in the air, unanswered and unavoidable: What kind of agreement is this?
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