Trump Backs Down on Iran, and an A.I. ‘Reckoning’

Hi, I'm Solana Pine. I'm the director of video at The New York Times. For years, my team has made videos that bring you closer to big news moments. Videos by Times journalists that have the expertise to help you understand what's going on. Now, we're bringing those videos to you in the Watch tab in the New York Times app. It's a dedicated video feed where you know you can trust what you're seeing. All the videos there are free for anyone to watch. You don't have to be a subscriber. Download the New York Times app to start watching. From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Wednesday, April 8th. Here's what we're covering. At 8.06 a.m. yesterday morning, President Trump issued an apocalyptic threat to Iran, saying he was prepared to order widespread attacks against civilian infrastructure and that a whole civilization will die. Just over 10 hours later, he backed down from that threat, announcing on social media that the U.S. and Iran have reached a two-week ceasefire deal. The idea is that negotiators will spend that time trying to finalize a permanent peace agreement. The breakthrough came after a frantic diplomatic effort by Pakistan, which had been urging Trump not to carry out the devastating attacks and pushing Iran to accept the proposal which Pakistan had drafted. According to the terms of the deal, Iran will let ships carrying oil, gas, and other goods through the Strait of Hormuz. During those two weeks, all fighting is supposed to stop. Though, as of this morning, there have been a number of strikes reported across the Persian Gulf, raising questions about whether news of the deal has reached all corners of Iran's decentralized military. Israel, which has been carrying out strikes on Iran alongside the U.S., said it also supports the agreement, but explicitly noted that the ceasefire doesn't apply to Lebanon, where it has been attacking the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia and trying to seize territory. When it comes to Trump, who called yesterday, quote, a big day for world peace, the whole head spinning situation appears to be the latest example of a kind of playbook that he has come to rely on, of making increasingly drastic threats before securing some kind of deal that he can claim as a victory. If this ceasefire essentially becomes permanent with no change, then the White House will have accomplished virtually none of its major goals. Times White House correspondent David Sanger says that while the war has dealt crushing blows to Iran's leadership in military, the major points of tension between Iran and the U.S. remain. The country is still run by a military and theocratic group of elites who have terrorized their own population. They still have their nuclear material. They still have missile supplies and drones. And most importantly, I think they still have a sense that they were able to stand up to the United States and Israel and resist against a much larger invading force. David has more on the last minute ceasefire on today's episode of The Daily. Meanwhile, the Times has learned new details about President Trump's decision to go to war in the first place. My colleagues Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan conducted extensive interviews on the condition of anonymity to get the inside story of the closed door meetings and internal White House discussions that led up to Trump's go order. They found three key things. First, there was a crucial meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February. Netanyahu flew to Washington and sat down with Trump and his team in the situation room at the White House, and he pitched Trump on war. He laid out what he portrayed as a near certain plan for victory. The whole thing would take a couple weeks. Retaliation would be minimal, and the Strait of Hormuz would stay open. Netanyahu and his team said that Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, would also spark an uprising inside Iran as a final blow to take down the regime. Sounds good to me, Trump said. The next step was for US analysts to assess the plan Israel had presented, which they scrambled to do overnight. They reported back that parts of the pitch were achievable. They could kill the supreme leader and cripple Iran's ability to threaten neighboring countries. But other parts, like sparking an uprising and crushing the regime entirely, were farcical, as the CIA director put it, or as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, quote, it's bullshit. Lastly, the president had to make a decision, and my colleagues found that he was basically operating in an echo chamber with not a lot of pushback. Trump was riding high off the quick operation in Venezuela, thinking Iran would go the same. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was for it, saying, we're going to have to take care of the Iranians eventually, so we might as well do it now. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Cain, persistently flagged risks, but also repeatedly said it wasn't his job to tell the president what to do. In Trump's inner circle, Vice President J.D. Vance was the only one to make a forceful case against the war. Though he ultimately told Trump, you know I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I'll support you. The next day, Trump gave the final order. You can find Maggie and Jonathan's full reporting in the Times app or at nytimes.com. And one last update on the war, which has shaken the global economy. Markets surged in response to yesterday's ceasefire agreement, and the price of oil dropped sharply, as investors are cautiously optimistic that oil and gas will start moving through the Strait of Hormuz again. Still, gas prices and jet fuel costs are unlikely to return to pre-war levels anytime soon, since at least 10% of the world's oil supply has been cut off, and it will take time to reopen shuttered wells and repair damaged refineries in the Persian Gulf. In Silicon Valley, major tech companies have been rushing to release the latest and greatest AI models, promising each one is more accurate, more capable, more useful than the last. Yesterday, Anthropic announced it has a new one, but claimed that it's too powerful to be released to the public. It turns out the model, known as Claude Mythos Preview, is really good at finding security vulnerabilities in software. In theory, that's great. It can help developers identify and patch weak points in their systems. But that means it could also be used to identify and exploit those same weak points. Anthropic claims the model has already identified thousands of bugs and vulnerabilities, including in every major operating system and browser. For that reason, Anthropic says it's only giving the model to a limited group of tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft, so that they can shore up their defenses. Now, claims about a wildly powerful new AI model from an AI company should be taken with a grain of salt. But Anthropic is saying this could be a reckoning for the whole tech industry, and researchers who've been given access to the model have called it a significant risk. The head of one cybersecurity firm said, quote, Imagine a horde of agents methodically cataloging every weakness in your technology infrastructure constantly. And finally, 20 years ago, California farmers took a big bet on pistachios, planting acres and acres of the little green nuts. It was considered a niche product back then. It had been around, but it wasn't a huge business in the US. The world's supply pretty much came from Iran, which yeah, I'll get to that. For a while, it wasn't clear the bet would pay off. One pistachio farm executive said there was a market for the nuts as a salty snack, but that was kind of it. Just a one-trick pony. For the kernels, the ones out of the hard shells, he said you couldn't even give them away. But then, oh my God, this is the best Dubai chocolate I've ever had. Pistachios started having a moment. Whoa, look at the ends of the cow. Beautiful. That is Dubai chocolate, which is filled with pistachio cream went viral around 2023. Wellness trends have also hyped the nut as a protein rich food. Those factors led to a 60% upswing in global pistachio imports. Today, there are six times as many acres of pistachio orchards in California than there were in the early 2000s. Meanwhile, Iran has lost its pistachio dominance, and that was even before the war started, which is snarled shipping. All of this has turned the US into the world's largest producer and exporter with California as the pistachio king. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.