Regional mediators are pressing the US and Iran to agree on a 45-day ceasefire as a deadline set by President Donald Trump expires Tuesday evening, four US, Israeli, and regional sources told Axios.
The proposed pause would serve as the first phase of a two-stage agreement, with permanent end-of-war terms negotiated during the ceasefire window. Mediators said the window could be extended if talks require more time.
Trump set the Tuesday 8 p.m. ET deadline in a Truth Social post Sunday, extending his original 10-day ultimatum by roughly 20 hours.
He told Axios a deal remains possible but warned: “If they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there.”
Negotiations are running through Pakistani, Egyptian, and Turkish intermediaries, as well as direct text exchanges between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
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Araghchi, though, has yet to verify or address this update. He previously posted that Iran’s position on the negotiations has been ‘misrepresented” by the US media. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the Axios report.
The White House and the State Department did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment, and the White House also declined to comment to Axios.
The reliance on Witkoff and Kushner — both real estate executives with no prior diplomatic experience — to lead the negotiations has drawn sharp criticism. Trump opted against including nuclear technical experts in the pre-war talks in Geneva, a decision arms control analysts and former diplomats said left the US negotiating team ill-equipped for the complexity of the talks.
Iran has since declared it will no longer engage with either envoy, demanding that Vice President JD Vance lead any future diplomacy instead.
The talks center on two unresolved issues: the status of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Mediators are seeking partial steps from Tehran on both fronts in a first-phase deal, but Iranian officials have told intermediaries they will not fully concede either point in exchange for only a 45-day pause, two sources said.
Araghchi also previously said that what they “care about are the terms of a conclusive and lasting END to the illegal war that is imposed” on Iran.
Iranian officials also raised concerns about a repeat of the Gaza and Lebanon ceasefires — pauses that did not prevent subsequent US and Israeli strikes. Publicly, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy declared Sunday that conditions in the strait would “never return” to what they were before the war.
Sources said a joint US-Israeli bombing plan targeting Iran’s energy infrastructure is fully prepared. Mediators have told Iranian officials the next 48 hours are the last opportunity to prevent a large-scale military escalation — one that could also trigger Iranian retaliatory strikes on Gulf states’ energy and water facilities.
According to the Axios report, the sources described the chances of reaching a partial deal within 48 hours as slim. No other source has verified that there are ongoing talks to begin with. Critics are labeling the report as another ploy to calm the markets as they open on Monday.
Tehran has said that it will “not accept deadlines or pressure to make a decision.”
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