A jubilant President Donald Trump has promised a new “Golden Age of the Middle East” after a last-minute ceasefire agreement was forged with Iran to postpone the latest wave of devastating airstrikes he had threatened.
The president had given the regime in Tehran a Tuesday evening deadline to come to terms, after which he warned he would unleash “hell” by eradicating the country’s power plants and bridges, a prospect that has now been suspended for at least two weeks, providing oil is allowed to resume passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
“A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! Likewise, so has everyone else!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
“The United States of America will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz. There will be lots of positive action! Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process.
“We’ll be loading up with supplies of all kinds, and just ‘hangin’ around’ in order to make sure that everything goes well. I feel confident that it will. Just like we are experiencing in the U.S., this could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!!”
The marked change in tone comes after the president had ratcheted up the tension after five weeks of war by resorting to increasingly wild rhetoric, including issuing an expletive-laden ultimatum on Easter Sunday and declaring Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back”.
Trump previously used exactly the same “golden age” phrase in relation to Gaza when he addressed the Israeli Knesset in October, celebrating the implementation of a ceasefire agreement in Israel’s war against Hamas and the return of the surviving hostages taken in the October 7 attacks.
“As the dust settles, the smoke fades, the debris is removed, and the ashes clear from the air, the day breaks on a region transformed – and a beautiful and much brighter future appears suddenly within our reach,” he told the country’s parliament in Jerusalem.
“It will be the golden age of Israel, and the golden age of the Middle East.”
Trump also promised the same for the United States when he returned to office in January 2025, declaring in his inaugural address at the Capitol: “The golden age of America begins right now.”
Since then though, his approval ratings have struggled, with the majority of Americans routinely telling pollsters they remain concerned about inflation, affordability, and the cost of living, key issues Trump was elected to address.
Instead, the president’s war with Iran has only served to exacerbate those anxieties, as the effective closure of the strait caused global fuel prices to spike – given that approximately one-fifth of the world’s oil passes through it – creating problems for Americans on gas station forecourts across the country.
The new ceasefire announcement has provided relief on that front, with oil prices dropping steeply. U.S. crude fell more than $16 overnight to $96 a barrel and Brent crude came down around $15 to $94, although that is still higher than pre-war levels.
It was reported earlier Tuesday that the conflict is costing the U.S. an estimated $500 million per day to conduct, with as much as $31 billion spent so far on hostilities against Iran, underlining the scale of the expense involved to taxpayers.
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