The United States and Iran have issued mutual threats on Monday, April 20, 2026, two days before the end of the two-week ceasefire period, as uncertainty surrounds a possible resumption of talks between the two countries in Pakistan.
On Tuesday, American President Donald Trump accused Iran of having “violated the ceasefire multiple times,” in a post on his Truth Social network, while the holding of a new round of negotiations in Islamabad remained uncertain. There has been no confirmation from the US side that President J.D. Vance would go to Pakistan. On the Iranian side, the state television indicated that “no delegation” was going there, specifying that Tehran was waiting for a “change in behavior” from the United States.
As the end of the ceasefire drawn up on April 8 approaches after over a month of war, resulting in thousands of deaths in the Middle East and shaking the global economy, Donald Trump reemerged late on Monday, focusing on a major point of contention: the Iranian nuclear issue.
“Operation Midnight Hammer” (the American strikes of June 2025) “led to the complete and total annihilation of nuclear dust sites” (enriched uranium stock) in Iran. “That’s why unearthing it will be a long and difficult process,” wrote the American president on Truth Social. Despite having promised on Friday that Iranian uranium would be handed over to the United States “soon,” asserting that Iran had agreed to return it, Tehran denied this again on Monday, denying any intention to acquire a nuclear bomb and defending its right to civilian nuclear power.
This adjustment from Donald Trump comes shortly after he assured Bloomberg that the ultimatum for the ceasefire between the two belligerents would expire “Wednesday evening, Washington time,” and that an extension was “very improbable.” The ceasefire was theoretically scheduled to end Tuesday night to Wednesday in Tehran time. “We do not accept negotiating under threat, and in the past two weeks, we have been preparing to play new cards on the ground,” stated Parliament President Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in a X interview.
“If American demands are not met before the ceasefire deadline, ‘many bombs will explode,'” warned Donald Trump on PBS. “The AGREEMENT we reach with Iran will be FAR BETTER than the nuclear agreement with Iran concluded in 2015,” assured Donald Trump on Truth Social. However, he reaffirmed his intention to maintain the blockade on Iranian ports “until there is a DEAL” with Tehran, asserting that Iran is losing “500 million dollars a day, a figure unsustainable for them, even in the short term.”
“At least twenty-six ships from the Iranian ghost fleet have bypassed the American blockade” since it was put in place last week, as reported by the maritime data company Lloyd’s List Intelligence on Monday.
“The losers are the Iranian people,” declared a 30-year-old biologist who chose to remain anonymous for security reasons in Tehran. Saghar, a 39-year-old, paints a “terrible” picture of the country, which has seen several thousand deaths in the Israeli-American strikes: “There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The economic situation is horrible. They (the authorities) arrest people for no reason. Executions are multiplying.”
New direct discussions between Lebanon and Israel in Washington on Thursday
On the Lebanese front, new direct discussions between Israel and Lebanon will take place on Thursday in Washington, as announced by American diplomacy.
A fragile ten-day ceasefire came into effect last Friday between Israel and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, whom both parties have accused of violating.
The fifteen members of the UN Security Council condemned the attack that killed a French peacekeeper in Lebanon on Saturday, calling for the responsible parties to “be brought to justice promptly.” French President Emmanuel Macron and the UN hold Hezbollah accountable.
A new official report stated 2,387 deaths in six weeks of war with Israel.
