WASHINGTON — A day after the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire, the truce showed signs of strain Wednesday as Iranian leaders accused Americans of violating the agreement and reports emerged that Tehran had moved to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
The developments tested President Trump’s ability to parlay a fragile pause in fighting into a lasting peace deal with a country he has spent weeks threatening to destroy, and raised questions about whether the Trump administration had the diplomatic leverage to hold the deal together.
The White House sought to project confidence about the ceasefire, but the fragile deal grew shakier after Israel carried out its largest attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon since the conflict began. Iran said the strikes by the U.S. ally amounted to a breach of the ceasefire terms, even as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu maintained that Lebanon was not subject to the agreement.
“The big issue seems to be that the two sides can’t agree on what the agreement is,” said Michael Rubin, an expert on Iran at the American Enterprise Institute. At best, he said, the two sides had secured a “tactical pause.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States must choose between a ceasefire or “continued war via Israel.
“It cannot have both,” Araghchi wrote on X. “The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”
Whether Iran will draw a red line over Lebanon could become a key question. The Wednesday back-and-forth represented “threshold-testing” of Iran and whether it will be willing to reengage the United States in conflict over the issue, said Ross Harrison, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
The parties’ prospects for reaching an agreement — and what Trump’s options become for declaring success — will depend on how the ceasefire goes in the coming days, Harrison said.
“There’s some room here … if [the Iranians] see that negotiations are real and not a pretext for further attacks,” he said. “A lot of what the United States can get depends on what the United States is willing to give — not just in terms of the points of their plan, but also in terms of the signaling that they too have an interest in de-escalating.”
Reports that Iran had moved to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway whose opening was central to the truce negotiations, further complicated the ceasefire.
“Any vessel trying to travel into the sea … will be targeted and destroyed,” the Iranian navy told shipping vessels, Fars News reported. The news agency is aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
At a news briefing Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was aware of reports that the Strait of Hormuz had been closed, a move she called both “completely unacceptable” and “false.” She added that the president expects the waterway will be “reopened immediately, quickly and safely” during the ceasefire.
Leavitt sidestepped questions about who currently controls the oil route.
Earlier in the day, at a Pentagon briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that “commerce will flow” through the strait, but did not say whether U.S. warships would be escorting vessels through the waterway. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, who stood next to Hegseth, was asked whether the strait was open. He said: “I believe so.”
Hegseth emphasized that Iran should keep its end of the bargain or face the consequences.
He said the U.S. military plans to maintain a presence in the region to ensure Iranian compliance, saying American troops are ready to “go on offense and restart operations at a moment’s notice” if the truce broke down.
“We’ll be hanging around,” Hegseth said. “We are going to make sure Iran complies with this ceasefire and then ultimately comes to the table and makes a deal.”
The warning came as several Persian Gulf nations reported Iranian missile and drone attacks on their territories despite the ceasefire. Kuwait said its air defenses intercepted drones, while Bahrain reported that an Iranian attack has sparked a fire at one of its facilities.
Hegseth downplayed the continued Iranian attacks in the region, saying that “it takes time sometimes” for ceasefires to take hold, but advised Iran to “find a way to get a carrier pigeon to their troops in remote locations” and ensure compliance moving forward.
Israel, meanwhile, carried out its largest strike against Hezbollah since the militant group began launching rockets in solidarity with Iran last month. Lebanese health authorities said hundreds were killed and wounded in the Israeli strikes.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have maintained that Lebanon is not subject to the ceasefire agreement. Leavitt reiterated that stance, telling reporters that “Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire” and that it had been relayed to all parties.
Asked whether Trump would want to add Lebanon to the agreement in the future, Leavitt said that the matter “will continue to be discussed but that “at this point in time they are not included.”
More than a dozen European heads of state called on “all sides” to cease fire, including in Lebanon. In a Wednesday statement, they urged the parties to move quickly in diplomatic talks.
“The goal must now be to negotiate a swift and lasting end to the war within the coming days,” they said in the statement, which was signed by French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, along with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi as well as other European leaders.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped broker the ceasefire, wrote on X that ceasefire violations had been reported at “a few places across the conflict zone” and urged all parties to exercise restraint. He did not detail the violations but said the attacks “undermine the spirit of the peace process.”
The situation in the Strait of Hormuz underscores how much remains uncertain about the agreement between the United States and Iran. The full terms of the ceasefire have not been publicly disclosed, and Trump wrote on his social media website that the “only group of meaningful ‘POINTS’ that are acceptable to the United States” will be discussed behind closed doors.
Trump also seemed to take issue with the 10-point peace plan that Iran publicly released Wednesday. He said that there are terms being floated by people who have “absolutely nothing to do” with the negotiations between the United States and Iran. He said that “in many cases, they are total Fraudsters, Charlatans, and WORSE.”
Leavitt declined to offer details about the working proposal being negotiated, saying the talks will take place privately. Both Leavitt and Hegseth, however, mentioned that the U.S. wants to ensure Iran does not have stockpiles of enriched uranium, the fissile material that is key in developing nuclear weapons.
“This is on the top of the priority list for the president and his negotiating team as they head into the next round of discussions,” Leavitt said.
Hegseth told reporters earlier in the day that Iran may “hand it over.” If they don’t, he said, “we will take it out, or if we have to do something else ourselves like we did [with] Midnight Hammer or something like that, we reserve that opportunity.” He was referring to the 12-day war against Iran in June.
Leavitt reiterated that administration officials “hope it will be through diplomacy,” but left open the possibility that the uranium could be retrieved through ground operations.
There is probably negotiating room over enrichment, said Harrison of the Middle East Institue, while Iran may be less flexible on the Strait of Hormuz. The United States needs a resolution more quickly than Iran, he added.
“Time is their friend, not a friend of Donald Trump’s,” Harrison said.