Trump weighs plea for Iran deadline extension

US President Donald Trump was looking at a request on Tuesday from mediator Pakistan to extend his Iran attacks deadline by two weeks – hours after warning that “a whole civilization will die” if Tehran fails to make a deal.

But as the clock ticked towards Trump’s 8:00 PM (midnight GMT) deadline, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif appeared to offer an off-ramp.

“To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks,” Sharif said on X, saying that efforts to resolve the crisis were moving “steadily, strongly and powerfully.”

Sharif said he had also asked Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz shipping channel for the same two-week period.

The White House said Trump – who has threatened massive attacks against Iran’s power plants and bridges to take the country back into the “Stone Age” – was looking at the Pakistani request.

“The President has been made been aware of the proposal, and a response will come,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Trump, who has previously pushed back the deadline on a number of occasions, separately said that the United States was in “heated negotiations” but declined to say how they were going.

Since February 28 the United States and its ally Israel have leveled Iranian military targets, killed the country’s top leadership and devastated parts of its infrastructure.

Early Tuesday Trump issued one of his most glaring threats of the war.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Vice President JD Vance offered his own threatening assessment of what may follow, warning Tehran that US forces have tools they “so far haven’t decided to use” against the Islamic Republic.

Iran has rejected US pressure, with state media reporting authorities are insisting that instead of a ceasefire it wants a full end to the war.