Acting only hours before expiration of a two-week ceasefire in his war of aggression against Iran, US President Donald Trump announced an extension of the pause in the war for an indefinite period of time.

His statement on social media reads:

Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.

While Trump claimed that the extension was to allow time for negotiations, Iranian officials warned that the pause might merely be a screen for a second US attempt to decapitate the regime, following on the February 28 strikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of top aides and family members.

The decision came as an abrupt reversal by the White House. Trump had been posting declarations on social media all day Tuesday claiming that there would be no extension of the ceasefire, that US bombing of Iran would resume as early as Tuesday night, and that the US military “is raring to go.”

The extension of the ceasefire is to be accompanied by a continued US naval blockade on shipping to or from Iran, enforced in complete defiance of international law. In the latest act of piracy, US Marines seized control of an Iranian oil tanker in international waters off southeast Asia Tuesday.

In declaring that the ceasefire would continue “until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other,” Trump was recalling the genocidal language of statements leading up to the ceasefire, when he threatened to bomb every bridge and power plant in Iran, and even to destroy Iran as a civilization.

US Vice President JD Vance had been set to travel to Pakistan Tuesday to resume talks with Iran that broke off after only one day, when Iran rebuffed demands that amounted to a complete surrender on all issues and the transformation of Iran into a US semi-colony. This included direct US control of Iran’s nuclear fuel stockpile, which was largely buried by the previous US-Israeli bombing campaign last summer.

Iranian officials made it clear, however, that they were not prepared to resume the talks in Pakistan until the US halted its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump’s claim that he extended the ceasefire unilaterally at the request of Pakistan is an obvious lie, seeking to cover up both possible preparations for another full-fledged air strike on the Iranian leadership—as Tehran warned—and the need to rebuild the stockpile of advanced US weaponry.

According to a report by CNN Tuesday:

The US military has significantly depleted its stockpile of key missiles during the war with Iran and created a “near-term risk” of running out of ammunition in a future conflict should one arise in the next few years, according to experts and three people familiar with recent internal Defense Department stockpile assessments.

CNN referenced an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that provided figures for a range of weapons: 45 percent of precision strike missiles, at least 50 percent of THAAD missiles, which intercept ballistic missiles, nearly 50 percent of Patriot air defense interceptor missiles, 30 percent of Tomahawk missiles and 20 percent of SM-3, SM-6 and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles.

While sufficient supplies remain to resume the one-sided war against Iran, according to CNN,

the number of critical munitions remaining in US stockpiles is no longer sufficient to confront a near-peer adversary, like China, and it will likely take years before the inventory of those weapons returns to pre-war levels, the CSIS analysis concludes.

The Pentagon has sent out urgent requests to US weapons manufacturers, but refilling the stockpiles for a major war could take several years. Unnamed Pentagon and military officials as well as Democrats with close connections to the military-intelligence apparatus, such as Senator Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA agent and Pentagon official, have suggested that the war in Iran is degrading the US ability to fight China, which all factions in the US ruling elite regard as the main threat to US global domination.

“The Iranians do have the ability to make a lot of Shahed drones, ballistic missiles, medium range, short range and they’ve got a huge stockpile,” Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly said last month. “So at some point … this becomes a math problem and how can we resupply air defense munitions. Where are they going to come from?”

Democratic Party commentary has shifted sharply, dropping criticism of Trump’s open threats to commit war crimes, and instead warning that the main danger is that he will abandon the war too quickly, claiming victory when he has failed to accomplish the goals of US imperialism.

Speaking on the ABC program “This Week,” Democratic Representative Ro Khanna said:

The enriched uranium is still there. We have a more hardline regime there. Khamenei Jr. actually wants to develop nuclear weapons. Does anyone believe that we actually have more leverage over the Strait of Hormuz? We have less. China has more influence in Iran.

Opinion polls show that nearly two-thirds of the American people oppose the war against Iran and a staggering 59 percent regard Trump as unreliable in terms of the potential use of nuclear weapons.