President Donald Trump considers the April 7 ceasefire with Iran to be expired on Wednesday and will not be rushing into making a new deal.
“We’ve got all the time in the world,” the president said, adding that he now considers the ceasefire with Iran over “Wednesday evening Washington time” and that it’s unlikely he will extend it further if a deal is not reached.
The ceasefire began the evening of April 7 and was scheduled to last two weeks.
In that 14-day time period, the U.S. Navy began an ocean blockade in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday April 13 to put pressure on the Iranian economy and force the regime to accept a deal to end the conflict.
The Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
When asked if he would expect the fighting to resume immediately if they fail to reach an agreement, Trump told Mason, “If there’s no deal, I would certainly expect so.”
The United States agreed to a suspension of strikes on the condition that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping.
The conflict stems from President Donald Trump pre-emptively striking Iran on Feb. 28, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Israeli Defense Forces.
“I’m not going to be rushed into making a bad deal,” Trump said in the interview. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
Mason said the Wednesday expiration date Trump cited is confusing because of the 14-day countdown.
“The two week period that most people were assuming goes through tomorrow Tuesday,” Mason told newscasters in a television interview. “So, that was interesting.”
Mason added that Trump referenced the length of previous wars such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Afghanistan War.
U.S. combat against Vietnam began in 1965 and ended in 1975, while active combat in the Korean War took place from 1950 to 1953. The war in Afghanistan was the longest war in United States history, spanning 20 years from 2001 to 2021.
“He was couching this timeline or his own timeline to the fact that many other wars had gone on for a long time,” Mason said.
Vice President J.D. Vance is expected to leave today for Pakistan, however Mason said Vance may have already arrived in Islamabad.
Pakistan is serving as the primary neutral ground and intermediary.
“[Trump] gave a little bit of detail about when the talks were expected to happen,” Mason said. “He said that they were likely to be on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning…and that JD Vance was expected to leave later on in the day today, Monday, which contradicted what he said to another reporter at another news outlet earlier, where he suggested that the vice president was already en route. So the next step are these talks.”