President Trump on Tuesday night paused Project Freedom, the day-old U.S. Navy operation escorting commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, saying Pakistani-brokered negotiations had made enough headway to attempt a single-document agreement to end the more than two-month war with Iran. The blockade of Iranian ports stays in place, the president said, and on Wednesday morning he warned that bombing would resume at a higher level and intensity than before if Tehran walks away.

The whiplash reversal — coming hours after Pentagon leaders had described Project Freedom as a success and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the preceding Operation Epic Fury was "concluded" — is the first concrete sign in weeks that the standoff over the world's most important oil chokepoint may be moving toward an off-ramp rather than a wider war. About 1,500 vessels and 22,500 mariners remain trapped inside the Persian Gulf, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said Tuesday, and the closure has driven U.S. pump prices to their highest level since 2022 and pushed food prices across Central and Eastern Africa up by as much as 50 percent, according to the World Food Program.

What the president said

In a Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump tied the pause to "the request of Pakistan and other Countries" and to "Great Progress" toward what he called "a Complete and Final Agreement with Representatives of Iran." He wrote that Project Freedom would be paused "for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed," but that the U.S. blockade would "remain in full force and effect."

Thirteen hours later, Trump sharpened the threat. "Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption, the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran," he wrote Wednesday. "If they don't agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before."

The administration has not disclosed the contents of what it says Iran has agreed to. Trump said over the weekend that he had received a 14-point Iranian proposal but suggested Tehran "have not yet paid a big enough price."

What the pause undoes

Project Freedom launched Monday, a day after the Sunday rollout. U.S. Navy destroyers, warplanes, helicopters and drones formed what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called a "red, white and blue dome" over a corridor cleared of Iranian mines. By Tuesday only two U.S.-flagged ships had transited, and industry representatives told NPR the route remained too dangerous without either Iranian cooperation or a permanent peace.

The day's fighting was sharp. Iranian forces fired missiles, drones and small boats at two U.S. Navy destroyers in the strait; Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, said the Navy sank six Iranian small boats in response. Iran denied the boat losses and claimed missiles had struck a U.S. warship, an assertion U.S. officials rejected. The United Arab Emirates reported a second straight day of Iranian drone and missile attacks, including on Fujairah, the country's only major export terminal that bypasses the strait.

On the diplomatic track

Pakistan's prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said Wednesday that Trump's pause would "go a long way towards advancing regional peace, stability and reconciliation" and credited the president for "courageous leadership." Islamabad has shuttled between Washington and Tehran for weeks. China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, met his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi in Beijing and said a "comprehensive ceasefire is urgently needed," Araghchi's first trip to China since the war began Feb. 28. Araghchi told Iranian state media that Tehran would accept only "a fair and comprehensive agreement."

The U.S. and Gulf allies, separately, circulated a draft U.N. resolution Tuesday that would threaten Iran with sanctions if it does not halt attacks on shipping, abandon what Rubio called "illegal tolls" and disclose the location of mines.

The opposing read

Iran has not publicly accepted any framework. Hours before Trump announced the pause, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that ships transiting the strait without Tehran's coordination would be "categorically dealt with," and Iran's chief negotiator and parliament speaker, Mohammad Ghalibaf, posted on X that the U.S. had violated the ceasefire and that Iran had "not even begun yet." On Wednesday the IRGC issued a statement thanking captains and shipowners "for complying with Iran's Strait of Hormuz regulations" — a claim of authority over the same waters Washington says it is reopening.

Gulf governments have privately voiced concern, Semafor reported Wednesday, that Trump's eagerness to exit the conflict may cause him to overlook Iranian aggression, and the president's own Wednesday warning that bombing would resume if Iran balks underscores how thin the diplomatic margin is.

What to watch

With Project Freedom suspended and the blockade still in force, the next read on whether the memo can be turned into a signed agreement will come from Tehran, which had not responded publicly to Trump's twin posts as of Wednesday morning. The U.N. Security Council vote on the U.S.-Gulf resolution is expected within days.