A Cease-Fire in Iran

Fox News alert. We have a deal for now. From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. The US and Iran have both confirmed that they have agreed to a two week pause. Appears Iran has accepted President Trump's terms. Subject to the immediate opening of the straight. Just in out of Iran, a statement read on state run media, instructing all military units to follow the supreme leader's order and stop firing. Just hours before a Trump imposed deadline that could have led to a massive escalation in the war with Iran, The United States and Iran appeared to reach a temporary ceasefire. Today, chief White House correspondent David Sanger explains what led to this last minute deal and what it would take to make it stick. It's Wednesday, April 8. David Sanger, thank you so much for taping with us at 09:35PM on this Tuesday night. It's been a wild day, Rachel. I can imagine. David, it feels like the entire world has been holding its breath for the last two days as president Trump ratcheted up the threats on Iran to open the Straits Of Hormuz, which included Tuesday morning when he basically threatened to wipe out the entire country. And just hours before the 8PM deadline that the president had given Iran to make a deal, both The United States and Iran announced that they'd reached some kind of temporary ceasefire. What do we know about what they actually agreed to? Well, we've been trying to sort that out because the American accounts and the Iranian accounts, as you might imagine, don't completely match up. But what president Trump said was that Iran and The US have agreed to a fourteen day ceasefire. During that time, he said, Iran would commit to making sure that the Strait Of Hormuz would be fully reopened and that that would allow this bottleneck of ships full of oil, full of fertilizer, full of helium for semiconductor production to begin flowing again and relieve these huge shortages that have been racking the world economy. We don't know exactly when that will happen, but the American bombing of Iran stopped almost immediately. Okay. So that is what Trump agreed to, David. But you mentioned that it did not really seem like both sides were on the same page when the ceasefire was first announced. What if the Iranians said that they agreed to? Well, if you just read president Trump's announcement, you'd think that the Strait Of Hormuz was just being thrown wide open, the way it was before the war started. But if you read the statement that came out a few minutes later from Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Aragachie, who's quite experienced, has been involved in many of these negotiations over the years. He said that Iran will cease their defensive operation for a period of two weeks and that safe passage to the Strait Of Hormuz would only be possible by coordinating with …