‘One last chance’: The times Trump threatened Iran, said deal imminent
Al Jazeera · LC · trust 55/100
play Live Sign up Show navigation menu Navigation menu News Show more news sections Africa Asia US & Canada Latin America Europe Asia Pacific Middle East Explained Sport Opinion Video More Show more sections Features Economy Human Rights Climate Crisis Investigations Interactives In Pictures Science & Technology Podcasts Travel Sponsored Content play Live Click here to search search Sign up Navigation menu caret-left US-Israel war on Iran Strait of Hormuz What is Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain? Why have strikes resumed? Bodies of Evidence caret-right EXPLAINER Features | US-Israel war on Iran ‘One last chance’: The times Trump threatened Iran, said deal imminent The US president has claimed Iran is ‘desperate’ to do a deal or given Tehran a ‘last chance’ on multiple occasions.
x whatsapp-stroke copylink google Add Al Jazeera on Google info US President Donald Trump gestures as he holds an umbrella after disembarking Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, in Maryland, US, on August 2, 2026 [Daniel Heuer/Reuters] By Yashraj Sharma Published On 4 Aug 2026 4 Aug 2026 Just over one month into the war on Iran, US President Donald Trump made an apocalyptic threat that raised the alarm in Washington and Middle Eastern capitals alike, attached to a tight deadline.
If Iran didn’t immediately reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz, Trump warned on April 7, “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”.
Tehran didn’t blink. And with two hours to the deadline, Trump walked back the threat and instead announced a two-week ceasefire, brokered by Islamabad.
Since then, the US president has repeated this pattern multiple times. It goes like this: Trump ups the ante, shaking up the markets, and then dials it back down at the 11th hour, apparently hoping this strategy will influence negotiations.
On Monday, Trump again insisted that negotiations were close to ending the war – and, yet again, gave “duplicitous” Iran “ one last chance ” to make a deal or suffer catastrophic strikes.
For its part, Tehran denies any ongoing talks with the US, saying it is only talking to Oman about how to manage the Hormuz strait, the closure of which has caused oil prices to soar amid havoc in energy markets around the world.
The war is now in its 23rd week, with no end to hostilities in sight, and both Washington and Tehran are more entangled than before, with additional variables in the conflict that could determine its direction.
So, how many times has Trump given Iran “one last chance” to make a deal or suffer the consequences, before walking his threat back? And how many times have we heard from the US president that a deal is just around the corner?
There have been several times since February 28, when the US and Israel launched their first joint attacks on Iran, that Trump has threatened an attack but did not follow through.
Less than a month into the war, Trump threatened Tehran over its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, saying the US would strike Iran’s power plants if the critical waterway was not reopened. Two days later, he postponed the strikes for five days, citing “progress” in talks.
As the delayed deadline neared on March 26, Trump delayed the strikes again, this time for 10 days, claiming that Tehran requested it.
Then came the April 7 threat that a whole “civilisation will die”, before Trump called off those strikes and announced a two-week ceasefire, to give Iran a chance to reach a peace deal.
No deal emerged. And then, after threatening to strike Iran “harder”, and in the final hours of the ceasefire, on April 21, Trump announced an indefinite ceasefire, saying Pakistani mediators had asked him to do so.
With those talks making no progress, Trump returned to his threats to strike Iran on May 17, saying “nothing will be left” of Iran if Tehran did not make a deal with the US.
But the next day, Trump again told reporters that he had decided to “put it off for a little while, hopefully maybe forever, but possibly for a little while, because we’ve had very big discussions with Iran”.
By May 27, US strikes were back on after negotiations faltered, once again.
On June 11, after two days of back-and-forth strikes, Trump threatened the US would take “total control” of Iran’s oil and gas industries. But then, a few hours later, he posted on social media, claiming there had been a breakthrough in negotiations and called off the attacks.
On June 17, the US and Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), announcing a ceasefire and a 60-day period to complete negotiations for a lasting peace. Within days, that had fallen apart over the glaring gaps in the two sides’ positions over the contents of the MoU, triggered mainly by who had control of the Strait of Hormuz – and both sides returned to tit-for-tat, widening strikes.
On July 27, Trump halted the strikes , claiming the “perimeters of a deal” had been agreed to, but noting that Washington “is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II”.
On Monday this week, Trump told reporters again that negotiations were close to ending the war and that this was Iran’s “last chance before decapitation”. The US has not followed up on this latest threat yet.
Iran denies it is talking to the US, although it may be holding indirect talks via mediators, analysts say.
Trump has insisted that Iran is “desperate” to cut a deal, or that a deal is imminent, multiple times since the start of the war.
Two days after launching the first attacks on Tehran on February 28, which the US initially appeared to believe would be a quick operation, Trump seemingly conceded it might take a bit longer when he said at the White House: “We projected four to five weeks [to end Iran war], but we can go far longer than that.”
The US president changed tack again on March 9, when he told CBS that “the war is very complete, pretty much”, and that the US…
Read the original at Al Jazeera →
Open in TruthVane →