Trump’s New Deadline Looms With Mediators Pushing for Truce

US allies are reportedly pressing for a last-minute deal with Iran, as President Donald Trump extended his deadline to Tuesday for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, keeping markets on edge over whether a breakthrough can be reached.

Axios reported that Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey are pushing to secure a potential ceasefire — lasting about 45 days — to head off threatened US strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure and retaliation by the Islamic Republic against countries in the region.

Fighting continued, with Israel, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates reporting Iranian attacks overnight into Monday. Israel struck Iran’s biggest petrochemical facility, which is responsible for 50% of the petrochemical production in the country, Defense Minister Israel Katz said.

In an expletive-laced post on Sunday, Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants and blow up “everything over there,” before announcing what appeared to be a new Tuesday 8 p.m. deadline, without offering details. The move adds to a series of extensions since he began issuing similar ultimatums on March 21 to force Iran to reopen the strategic waterway.

The repeated delays come as Trump points to ongoing negotiations between his envoys and Iran’s leadership, which he has yet to identify, aimed at ending the war triggered by US and Israeli attacks in late February.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei acknowledged the exchange of messages with the US, but reiterated Tehran is seeking a definitive end to the war instead of a mere pause, according to Shargh newspaper. Cited by state TV Baghaei said agreeing to a short-term detente without no guarantees that the cycle won’t be repeated is something “no rational person would do.”

The fighting has left thousands dead, most of them in Iran and Lebanon, and brought vessel traffic through Hormuz — through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas exports normally flow — to a near standstill.

Signs of last-ditch efforts to secure a ceasefire helped investors cautiously return to equities, with S&P 500 futures adding 0.3% in thin trading after the Easter holiday and crude oil declining. Many European markets are closed.

Tehran continued striking energy targets in Persian Gulf neighbors, including Kuwait’s oil headquarters and a major petrochemicals plant in Abu Dhabi over the weekend. The UAE issued multiple alerts overnight, while Kuwait said its air defenses intercepted missile and drone attacks.

The Israel Defense Forces said Iran launched four waves of missiles since midnight, with emergency services saying they recovered two bodies from a home struck earlier in Haifa.

Majid Khademi, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Intelligence Organization, was killed in a US-Israeli strike, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said.

Fifteen ships have passed through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran’s permission in the past 24 hours, the semi-official Fars news agency reported, adding that’s still about 90% lower than before the start of the conflict. It didn’t elaborate on the ownership or destination of the vessels.

Two tankers carrying Qatari liquefied natural gas appear to have abandoned an effort to exit the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz — delaying what would have been the first exports to buyers outside of the region since the war started.

In the US, average national retail gasoline prices have topped $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022. Crossing that critical psychological threshold brings political risk to the Trump administration and Republicans, as consumers grow increasingly concerned over the cost of living ahead of November’s midterms.

Trump said he plans a news conference at 1 p.m. on Monday.

But it won’t be easy for any side to end the conflict. Both the US and Iran have rejected each other’s demands, while Israel has made clear it wants to inflict further damage to Tehran’s military capabilities.

If negotiations were to result in a “very dramatic delay” in Iran’s nuclear program and the removal of the enriched uranium “then of course those would be good outcomes,” Israeli security cabinet minister Zeev Elkin told Kan radio on Monday. “But it doesn’t look like the Iranians are there.”

Israel assesses that Iran still has more than 1,000 missiles capable of reaching its territory, while Hezbollah’s arsenal in Lebanon includes as many as 10,000 shorter-range rockets, according to military briefings cited by Israeli media over the weekend. The Israeli military is waging a parallel war in Lebanon against Iran-aligned Hezbollah.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in the conflict, almost three-quarters of them in Iran, according to government organizations and the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. More than 1,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, and dozens of others died across Gulf Arab states and in Israel.

The US over the weekend rescued an airman from Iran in an operation that involved dozens of aircraft over a mountainous area in the Islamic Republic.

The mission followed the downing of a US military aircraft and spanned two days, involving hundreds of special operations troops, with US aircraft dropping bombs and firing on Iranian convoys to keep them away from the aviator’s hiding area, the New York Times reported.

House Intelligence Chairman Rick Crawford, an Arkansas Republican, said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures that the US sustained no casualties but destroyed “a couple” of aircraft on the ground in Iran to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.

The downing of US aircraft pierced the aura of invincibility Trump has sought to project.

Oil prices have been disrupted by the conflict and soaring costs for products such as jet fuel and diesel are threatening a renewed wave of inflation. OPEC+ members raised their production quotas for May, in a symbolic move as the war constrains output and shipments from several of the alliance’s largest members.

Saudi Arabia raised the price of its main oil grade to Asia to a record high premium, seeking a spread of $19.50 over regional benchmarks for refiners in Asia.

Iran announced Saturday that Iraq would be exempt from its shipping restrictions in the strait, allowing for as much as 3 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil cargoes. An Iraqi official struck a cautious note, saying volumes would depend on whether shipping companies are willing to risk entering the strait.

The Suezmax Ocean Thunder, an oil tanker that loaded its cargo at Iraq’s Basrah terminal in early March, exited the strait en route to Malaysia, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Such vessels can carry about 1 million barrels of crude.