Last UpdateApril 22, 2026, 12:31 PM EDT

President Donald Trump extended the U.S. ceasefire with Iran until Tehran presents a “unified proposal” for talks in Pakistan. Initial talks scheduled for Wednesday have been cancelled.

Covered by: Anders Hagstrom

WHAT TO KNOW

• President Donald Trump extended a ceasefire with Iran through Wednesday after peace talks were cancelled in Pakistan.
• The U.S. says the ceasefire will continue until Tehran presents a “unified proposal” to continue Pakistan talks.
• The U.S. is continuing its blockade on Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz and Arabian Sea throughout the ceasefire.

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4 hours ago

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Trump’s extended ceasefire with Iran will only last 3-5 days, White House official says

President Donald Trump’s extension of the ceasefire with Iran will last only for three to five days, a White House official confirmed to Fox News on Wednesday.

Trump announced the extension as the original ceasefire was set to expire Tuesday night. He said the U.S. would give Tehran more time to present a “unified proposal” under which peace talks could resume in Pakistan.

If the ceasefire ends without a deal, Trump has vowed to eliminate Iran’s energy and transportation infrastructure.

Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report.

Posted by Anders Hagstrom

2 hours ago

GOP lawmaker clashes with MS NOW host over Iran war, accuses her of spewing leftist talking points

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., clashed with MS NOW host Katy Tur on Tuesday over the war in Iran, as the lawmaker accused her of pushing leftist talking points.

Tur asked Lawler about whether the Trump administration had a real strategy for the war, suggesting the president was “more desperate” than Iran. The GOP lawmaker brought up former President Barack Obama and the conflict in Libya.

“We don’t need to go back to Barack Obama. We can stick– no, let’s stick with President Trump. No, we don’t,” Tur said. “I want to live in the moment and I don’t want to do a 10-minute detour for President Obama.”

Lawler said, “Excuse me. It’s not a detour. It’s not a detour. It’s a relevant fact, OK? We were in a seven-month war in Libya that resulted in a civil war. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi fully endorsed it, fully embraced it, said everything was great, and the president was well within his authority.”

Tur asked how the example justified the current war in Iran. She said, “I’m talking about this president who promised no foreign wars.”

“I know you just want to spew out the talking points for the left here, but the fact is this: this was a just war that the president engaged in to stop this regime from possessing a nuclear weapon, and ultimately, you can say that over the past eight weeks — in your opinion, seemingly — nothing has been done, but the fact is their leadership is gone, the ayatollah is dead, the clerics are dead, the leadership of the IRGC is dead,” Lawler responded.

He continued, “The remnants are what we are dealing with right now. And yes, if you think they’re using the Strait of Hormuz as leverage is a problem, what do you think it would have been if they actually had a nuclear weapon? What do you think they would have done using a nuclear weapon to extort the rest of the world?”

This is an excerpt from an article by Fox News Hanna Panreck.

Posted by Anders Hagstrom

3 hours ago

Dem Senator says Trump is ‘losing credibility’ by backing down from Iran threats

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., suggested Wednesday that President Donald Trump is losing credibility with Iran by making threats only to repeatedly back down.

Trump made the statement while speaking with reporters at the U.S. Capitol amid Trump’s latest extension of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire.

“This President has a tendency of threatening to bring down terror on countries that don’t see things his way, and at the last minute, he relents. I think you lose a lot of credibility once you’ve done that a number of times,” Durbin told reporters.

Posted by Anders Hagstrom

3 hours ago

Trump envoy to Turkey doubles down after backlash, pushes ‘peace through strength’ policy

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack is pushing back after backlash over remarks seen as equating Israel with Hezbollah, insisting his comments reflect “realism” and not a change in U.S. policy.

Barrack appeared to equate America’s closest ally in the Middle East with a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, suggested Turkey should soon regain access to the F-35 program despite its purchase of Russia’s S-400 system, and argued that only “powerful leadership regimes” have succeeded in the region.

In exclusive written answers to Fox News Digital’s questions, Barrack rejected accusations that he was softening the administration’s stance toward Hezbollah or Iran, and argued that President Donald Trump’s “peace through strength” approach requires a more pragmatic reading of the Middle East.

This is an excerpt from an article by Fox News’ Efrat Lachter.

Posted by Anders Hagstrom

4 hours ago

Trump says Iran talks could restart as soon as Friday

President Donald Trump says it is “possible” that peace talks with Iran could start again within as soon as Friday, the New York Post reported.

Trump issued the statement in a text message to the outlet, saying the talks could begin within the next “36 to 72 hours.”

Peace talks were expected to begin on Wednesday, but Iran’s divided leadership failed to come forward with a “unified proposal.”

Posted by Anders Hagstrom

5 hours ago

Iran threatens to hit regional power plants if US strikes escalate

Retired Admiral William McRaven joined Fox News on Wednesday and warned of Iran’s threats to attack the energy infrastructure of its Gulf neighbors if the U.S. targets Iran’s own energy infrastructure.

Iranian officials issued the threat as talks failed to kick off in Pakistan on Tuesday. McRaven warned against the U.S. escalating its military strikes, advocating instead for a temporary lifting of sanctions to encourage negotiations.

Posted by Anders Hagstrom

5 hours ago

OPINION: Why the Middle East agrees with President Trump more than America realizes

This is an excerpt from an opinion article by Majeed Gly, a Kurdish-American immigrant and president of the American Kurdish Committee.

Americans are debating whether this war was worth it. Thirteen soldiers have come home in caskets. Hundreds more carry wounds. No one takes that lightly. Least of all someone like me — who chose this country and wears its flag by choice, not by birth.

I was born on the Iranian border and raised in the shadow of its wars. I have seen firsthand what these policies do to the people of this region. I still travel across the Middle East — I was in Erbil, Riyadh and Dubai just recently. I know what people say when the cameras are off. It is not anger at America. It is relief.

But here is what the critics are missing. For millions of people across the Middle East, this war did not start on Feb. 28. It started decades ago. What changed is that a president decided to stop managing the problem and start confronting it. The people of the region noticed. I promise you — they noticed.

What most Americans never hear is what those people actually want. Not war. Not jihad. Not martyrdom. Across the Gulf, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, 140 million people are under the age of 30. They want what any young American wants: a job, a stable country and a future that is not hostage to someone else’s ideology. New leaders in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kurdistan and Syria are building toward exactly that. When I sit with young professionals in Erbil or Riyadh or Dubai, they talk about startups. They talk about AI. They talk about opportunity.

And this is not theory. Look at what happens when stability takes root. The UAE was empty desert 50 years ago. Today it is a global center of commerce where millions of people — including Americans — live, invest and build. The Kurdistan Region of Iraq, encircled by hostile forces, built one of the most open societies in the Middle East. It became the largest safe haven for persecuted Christians in the region. And despite a severe economic embargo by Iran-backed forces, Kurdistan built a stable, multibillion-dollar economy that houses nearly all U.S. forces in Iraq. People move there because it works. These places are not exceptions. They are previews of what the entire region can become.

What stops it, every time, is the same force. Iran-backed armed groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen — all taking orders from Tehran, all blocking the future the rest of the region is trying to build. For 45 years, one capital has exported instability to every corner of this region — not because Iranians want it, but because a small circle of men in power profit from it.

Posted by Anders Hagstrom

5 hours ago

Keith Kellogg urges US to ‘finish the job’ against Iran by seizing islands, strangling economy

Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg (Ret.) is urging the U.S. to “finish the job” against Iran, calling for the seizure of strategic islands, crippling its energy sector and arming insurgents inside the country after a fragile ceasefire was extended in a bid to keep negotiations alive.

“Let’s not negotiate anymore. Let’s just walk away. Let’s finish the job,” Kellogg said Tuesday on “Hannity.”

Kellogg, who previously served as a special envoy for Ukraine and Russia under the Trump administration, argued that Iran’s damaged leadership and economic collapse present an opportunity to intensify pressure rather than pursue diplomacy.

He highlighted Iran’s “fractured” command structure as a point of weakness, arguing that the U.S. should compound pressure through economic and military means to force the regime to “buckle.”

“As I say, let’s create more problems for them and try to figure this out,” Kellogg said.

“That’s why I keep going back to take something like Kharg Island or seize the islands in the Strait of Hormuz with … the ARGs that you’ve got there, and you’ve got elements of the 82nd [Airborne]. They can take Kharg Island.”

“All of a sudden, now you’re creating and compounding the problem for them [Iran] to try to solve, and I don’t think they can solve it because they don’t have the leadership left that can figure this out.”

This is an excerpt from an article by Fox News’ Taylor Penley.

Posted by Anders Hagstrom