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- [00:06]
Jessica Mendoza
This morning, the clock starting on a two week ceasefire announced by President Trump, a last minute reversal on his threat to take the entire country out.
- [00:15]
Damian Poletta
The U.S. has, quote, received a 10 point proposal from Iran and believes, quote, it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Iran's foreign minister confirming the reopening of the critical Strait of Hormuz during this ceasefire period.
- [00:28]
Jessica Mendoza
After days of escalating tensions in the war between Iran and the. The two countries announced a ceasefire last night. It was an off ramp right at a moment of crisis. Here's the Journal's Washington bureau chief, Damian Poletta.
- [00:42]
Damian Poletta
For the U.S. it's not going to do what President Trump threatened to do, which was to blow up all their bridges, power plants and things like that. So for the next two weeks, the US has essentially said they're going to stand back, they'll still have the military there and be ready, but they're not going to continue bombing Iran. Now one of the big questions is, is Iran go reopen this kind of waterway that is along its shore, the Strait of Hormuz, where a lot of commercial traffic goes through, including a lot of traffic that carries oil, but also other things too.
- [01:21]
Jessica Mendoza
While the US and Iran have agreed to stop fighting for now, Damian says this ceasefire is fragile.
- [01:28]
Damian Poletta
These are two countries that have a long history of hating each other and not trusting each other. Can they get to a place where they might see a mutually beneficial off ramp? I'm not sure, but it's where we are right now.
- [01:43]
Jessica Mendoza
Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Wednesday, April 8th. Coming up on the show, Iran and the US have reached a ceasefire. Can it hold.
- [02:08]
Damian Poletta
Foreign.
- [02:13]
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- [02:47]
Jessica Mendoza
The terms of the ceasefire between the US and Iran are still very unclear. Trump said in a truth social post on Tuesday that the U.S. had received a 10 point proposal from Iran that was a workable basis on which to negotiate. A public version of Iran's 10 point plan calls for, among other things, a removal of sanctions and acceptance for Iran to enrich uranium.
- [03:12]
Damian Poletta
They want the US to leave Iran alone and Iran's proxies alone. Iran also wants to be compensated for all the things the US has blown up. Okay, we've blown up a lot of things in Iran, and so I don't know how they think they're going to be compensated for that. You know, a lot of their ships have been sunk, a lot of their leaders are dead. I don't really know what that looks like. There's not a lot of precedent for the US Just writing a check for the things that it has destroyed with its military. So that's going to be an interesting conversation or clause there if Iran's really going to stick to that.
- [03:46]
Jessica Mendoza
But there's another plan. The US has floated a 15 point plan. And earlier today, Trump said in another Truth Social post that there's only one set of points that are acceptable to the United States. He added, quote, these are the points that are the basis on which we agreed to a ceasefire. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt has called Iran's ten point plan, quote, deeply unserious and said there's no way Trump would agree to it. This afternoon, a high level Iranian official said on x that the US had already violated his country's 10 point framework to end the war and that because of that, a ceasefire and negotiations would be effectively meaningless. Even with this confusion and with parties seemingly disagreeing on a lot, peace negotiations are still planned in Pakistan for this weekend. In the meantime, the current ceasefire is focused on access to the Strait of Hormuz, a major waterway for much of the world's oil that Iran took control over. What did Iran actually agree to? Is it currently open?
- [04:49]
Damian Poletta
I mean, it's not like there's a piece of paper where they signed something that says, here's what we've agreed to. They have not reopened the Strait of Hormuz. Iranians have, just like they have for the past few weeks. There are certain ships they will allow to go through with their permission, almost like with their military's consent. That has not changed. It's possible later this week that they open up the number of ships, the kind of ships, the origin of the ships that are allowed to go through for the next two weeks. There is such a huge traffic jam in the Strait of Hormuz that it's impossible to think that in the next two weeks they're going to be able to get everything through. And obviously, if you're a company that owns a big ship, you might think twice about whether you want to get in that queue anyway.
- [05:27]
Jessica Mendoza
Right? And just to be clear, I mean, opening up the Strait is different than Iran giving up control of it, right? Correct.
- [05:34]
Damian Poletta
There's no sign that Iran in perpetuity has any plans to give up its control or its ability to kind of manage what goes through the Strait of Hormuz. They have not agreed to that, and I can't imagine they ever will. Cuz that's their leverage. They can just shut it down if they don't think things are going well. And it's not easy, as we've learned, for the US to just, you know, bomb it and reopen it. So Iran wants to be able to kind of charge a toll. They want to make money off the Strait of Hormuz. That could drive up costs for everyone around the world because you're having to pay higher prices. So the whole dynamic has changed now. And Iran realizes they have leverage in places they didn't before. Somehow a version of the regime still exists. And they might use this two weeks to try to come up with things that they kind of demand on behalf of the United States.
- [06:20]
Jessica Mendoza
The U.S. and Iran used intermediaries to negotiate the ceasefire. Pakistan's Prime Minister was a key mediator in brokering the deal. How did this plan come together? I mean, can you tell me about Pakistan's role in this?
- [06:34]
Damian Poletta
Great question. I was kind of asking my team that Tuesday morning. How did Pakistan, of all places, get in the middle of this? President Trump has a good relationship with Pakistan. Pakistan is trusted by the Iranians. So somehow they became the intermediary that was very involved in shuttling proposals back and forth. And we'll find out in the next two weeks, or maybe even sooner than that, whether they're good at appeasing both sides and kind of keeping that, continuing that trust. Because like I said, there's a long history of bad blood between these two countries, the US And Iran.
- [07:08]
Jessica Mendoza
After the ceasefire was announced, both the US And Iran declared victory.
- [07:13]
Damian Poletta
Operation Epic Fury was a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield. A capital V military victory.
- [07:24]
Jessica Mendoza
That's Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at a press conference this morning.
- [07:28]
Damian Poletta
What's clear, what the Iranian, the new Iranian regime knows is they'll never have a nuclear weapon or the capability to get a path to one as far as the new regime.
- [07:37]
Jessica Mendoza
So Damian, you heard the Defense Secretary in his press conference this morning. Is this a decisive victory for the us?
- [07:44]
Damian Poletta
Time will tell. I mean, they did destroy a lot of military sites. A lot of Iranian leadership has been killed. And in that respect, the US Felt like it hit Iran in a way that the country had never been hit before, but some version of its regime did survive. And they did find a way to just have this choke point in the Strait of Hormuz that allowed them to force Trump into a ceasefire. From their perspective, one of the things
- [08:13]
Jessica Mendoza
that Hegseth said was that what the US has done is that it has slowed Iran's capability to make nukes for a very long time, if not permanently. Is that true? I mean, they still have uranium, right?
- [08:26]
Damian Poletta
They still have uranium. It's unclear what's buried under tons of rubble in the sites that the US hit really hard previously in 2025. I think this is one of those things. I mean, understanding the Iranian nuclear capacity and ambitions is a challenge that has faced Democratic administrations and Republican administrations. And then there's. And the intelligence community have different opinions and there's politicians in the US who have different vantage points. There's still uranium existing. Now. It might be buried under tons of rubble. I have to imagine. It's hard to get, but we don't have all the information. And this is the most classified of classified kind of things.
- [09:03]
Jessica Mendoza
And Iran is also claiming victory on its side, despite all of the military losses it's sustained. So what is it that they're saying?
- [09:10]
Damian Poletta
So in the months leading up to this whole thing, remember there was these protests in Iran that made it look like the regime could be in trouble. And so we go through this, you know, past five or six weeks, Iran's almost brought to its knees, but they find out if they choke off the Strait of Hormuz, they can still kind of hold off and arrest the whole global economy. They've shown that they still have some power, even with kind of a busted up military and a broken regime. And so for them, they can show that they are still internationally relevant and that they still have this new way to control global trade. They're able, with gas prices soaring, they're able to find ways to make more revenue. So they're still there. There's a version of their regime that exists.
- [09:52]
Jessica Mendoza
What could make the ceasefire fall apart in the next two weeks?
- [09:57]
Damian Poletta
I mean, it's the Middle east, so most ceasefires do fall apart. There's a lot of characters and actors with a lot of weapons, with a lot of motives. How does Israel act in the next two weeks? How did the Iranian proxies act in the next two weeks? Is there a centralized Iranian government where one leader can tell the other parts to stop, put down your weapons? I don't know. We haven't really been tested that way in terms of the new global dynamic. So I think there's a lot of things that could go wrong.
- [10:28]
Jessica Mendoza
Across the Middle east, battles rage on. The ceasefire agreement doesn't impact Israel's ongoing conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israeli military said it carried out strikes on More than 100 targets in Lebanon on Wednesday. And Iran has continued to fire missiles and drones at neighboring countries. Not to mention there are tens of thousands of US Troops in the region and there are no immediate plans to pull them back after the break. The ramifications of Trump's strategy. In the lead up to the ceasefire, Trump made several threats against Iran. It started on Easter Sunday when he said the US Would bomb civilian infrastructure, power plants and bridges. And it escalated on Tuesday when he posted on social media that, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight if Iran didn't agree to a deal by his 8pm deadline.
- [11:35]
Damian Poletta
Well, it's a real challenge in terms of following the reporting because there's been many times in his second term when whether it's tariffs or other foreign policy matters, he'll threaten something and then oftentimes look for an off ramp right at the last minute. So his critics call this the taco. Trump always chickens out. And their theory is the market shouldn't get too worried because he's not going to end up doing something that's going to have dramatic impacts on, you know, the stock prices or gas prices. But there are times when he does it, when he does go into Venezuela, when he does bomb Iran. And so he always does have this element of keeping people, everyone off guard and on their toes. And so here we were again.
- [12:18]
Jessica Mendoza
So was this taco, you know, Trump chickening out or was it a negotiating tactic that succeeded?
- [12:24]
Damian Poletta
Great question, and you'll get a different answer based on who you ask. So in the White House's view, and in the view of President Trump's supporters, you have to speak the Iranians language, right? You have to threaten to destroy their civilization because that's the language they speak. They're always threatening to destroy Israel or death the United States. So if you want to get their attention, you have to speak their language. So that's what he did on Tuesday morning. He said he would destroy their civilization. It caused panic, you know, through Washington and New York and all global capitals, and even got people in the Republican Party to say he's gone too far. But in their view, it finally got Iran to reopen the straighter Hormuz. Now, we haven't seen them reopen it yet, but that's what allegedly has been agreed to. So on the other Hand, he's done this so many times, or he's threatened incredibly painful things, unilateral things, whether it's this wiping out a civilization of 93 million people, or, you know, unilaterally imposing tariffs and this and that, where he'll back out at the last minute. And there's a risk for him that people become so desensitized and accustomed to him backing out at the last minute that they stop taking these threats seriously, and that takes away his leverage.
- [13:45]
Jessica Mendoza
You know, Trump's war effort hasn't been very popular in the U.S. there was a Pew survey conducted at the end of March that found that only 35% of Americans were either very or somewhat confident in Trump's decision making on Iran. How does this ceasefire affect that?
- [14:01]
Damian Poletta
President Trump, he was in a situation where he has major domestic political problems that this war caused, that gas prices were going up. There's a view that gas prices might still keep going up. That's politically disastrous and not to mention what it means for the economy. And then we have a sense within the Republican Party that they're very split over this. He ran on focusing on the domestic issues, not getting caught in forever war abroad. And then here he is in this mission in Iran that didn't have an easy end date. And so his party was sort of cracking apart. A lot of conservative talk show hosts were splintering. And so he still has to repair that. This ceasefire, two weeks, whatever it's, however it's going to last, it's not going to solve all his problems, but it might be a start.
- [14:46]
Jessica Mendoza
Will the ceasefire halt the gas price spikes that we've been seeing?
- [14:49]
Damian Poletta
I don't believe it will because there's still just so much uncertainty about the way that oil is going to move around the world. And so I would have to think, especially if the Iranians now think they can charge a carrier fee or a gate fee on the barrels. So I would assume that gas prices are going to stay high and, in fact, continue going up. It's going to depend on different parts of the country. But as we get closer to Memorial Day, I can see a scenario where this might be a really expensive summer for Americans, and that can change consumer behavior, that can change all kinds of things. But unless there's, like, a permanent solution here that reopens the Strait and actually expands somehow refining capacity, we could be in for a very expensive summer and fall, which is the last thing Republicans need heading into the midterms in November.
- [15:42]
Jessica Mendoza
What happens if the US And Iran can't get to a full or permanent peace plan in the next two weeks. Are we just back to where we started?
- [15:51]
Damian Poletta
My prediction is that in the next two weeks there will be signs that we're about to go sideways again. There will be threats, there will be new ultimatums. The most likely scenario is that this two week thing will be extended again. You know, they'll make progress in the talk. Maybe they agree on two of the things, but let's keep trying. We're talking and so, you know, they just keep punting it out two weeks at a time. In the world of diplomacy, that kind of works. That's how things work. We're not really in a world of diplomacy right now. We're in a world of military action on all sides. And so there's a chance, too, if gas prices start coming down and the stock market goes back up, President Trump might think we inflicted a lot of damage on them. You know, we kind of made our point. Their, their nuclear ambitions are set back. We can move on. But if he feels like the, you know, Iran's, you know, shooting rockets and drones and straight arm moves and they didn't learn their lesson in his viewpoint, then it's possible that they might have to go back in with the military. So we'll know more soon, but I imagine there's going to be lots of twists and turns here.
- [17:07]
Jessica Mendoza
That's all for today. Wednesday, April 8. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every Weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
- [17:26]
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