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US President Donald Trump has agreed to suspend his planned bombing of Iran for two weeks, following his threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran did not comply with his demands.

On Tuesday evening, within hours of the planned attack, Trump took to his platform Truth Social to announce he had reversed course.

Shortly after Trump’s message, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi confirmed that a tentative agreement had been reached.

Experts say the two-week postponement raises critical questions, including whether Israel would abide by the ceasefire Trump has agreed to. There are also lingering concerns about whether Israel would end its strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as Iran’s other regional allies, despite breaking similar agreements in the past.

“Trump needed an exit, and he took it,” Trita Parsi, vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera, adding that “the next two weeks are going to be crucial.”

“I think you have the potential of becoming a genuine diplomatic opening, but we’re not quite there yet,” Parsi said.

“Even if talks fail, I have a hard time seeing Trump going back into this war in the manner that he has done so far, because the Iranians would still have the ability to close the strait and put a tremendous amount of pressure on Trump and on the global economy.”

Parsi also said that it is absolutely possible for the US to rein in Israel’s attacks in the region, but it may come with a political cost for Trump and his Republican allies. “ We haven’t seen Trump being able to sustain that pressure on the Israelis,” he said. Still, Parsi explained that Israel may not want to take the risk of defying Trump’s wishes, only to end up facing Iran alone.

“I don’t think that these Israelis actually can sustain themselves in a war with Iran without active American support. And if they’re doing it against American wishes, then, obviously, they would take a huge risk of seeing potentially the United States stay out of that war,” he said.

“The Israelis facing Iran alone is not a scenario that they want to be in,” he added.