WASHINGTON — Hours after the joint statement from Islamabad announced a halt to hostilities between Iran and the U.S.-Israel coalition, Defense Department officials on Sunday confirmed that three ongoing combat deployments had been administratively reclassified as "sustained presence postures" and were therefore unaffected by the ceasefire, the cessation of which they were not, in the formal sense, ceasing.

The reclassifications, completed in a flurry of late-afternoon paperwork at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, were described in a brief department statement as "routine doctrinal hygiene" undertaken "in the spirit of the ceasefire and in furtherance of it."

"The Department of Defense fully and enthusiastically supports the ceasefire announced today," Pentagon press secretary Diane Ortega said in remarks delivered shortly after 4 p.m. "We are pleased to report that the three deployments in question have been renamed, and that the new names are entirely consistent with a posture of peace."

Under the new designations, the carrier strike group operating in the eastern Mediterranean, previously listed in planning documents as "Combat Force Atlas," will be known going forward as "Maritime Stability Footprint Atlas." The Marine expeditionary unit in the northern Persian Gulf, formerly "Strike Element Bravo," has been reclassified as "Forward Reassurance Element Bravo." And the air wing rotation at the al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which the Pentagon had described in a Saturday briefing as "actively prosecuting targets," will now be referred to as "available to reassure regional partners through demonstrated overflight."

None of the units involved are physically moving, officials confirmed. Their rules of engagement remain under review.

"The ceasefire is real, it is meaningful, and we are honoring it in full," said Gen. Marcus Holloway, the four-star general assigned to the Joint Staff's Directorate for Strategy, Plans, and Policy, who briefed reporters in a Pentagon hallway after a separate event. "The deployments are no longer combat deployments. They have, with the stroke of a pen, become the other thing."

Pressed on what the other thing was, Holloway said the department had been "deliberately patient with terminology" in order to avoid prejudicing future operational requirements.

"What I can tell you is that they are not combat deployments," Holloway said. "What they are, exactly, is something we will be in a position to announce at the moment of announcing it."

The renamings come amid widespread relief at the Islamabad framework, which was finalized by mediators from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt and is scheduled to take effect at 00:00 GMT on Wednesday. President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post late Sunday afternoon, called the agreement "the greatest peace ever achieved, in many ways unprecedented in the history of peace," and credited his administration's "tremendous patience and tremendous strength" for the outcome. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a separate statement, said Israel would honor the agreement "in the manner appropriate to Israel."

At a press gaggle outside the West Wing, National Security Adviser Sarah Coltrane said the administration was "delighted" by the ceasefire and confirmed that the Pentagon's reclassification effort had been undertaken "with our full encouragement and at no point our specific direction."

"There is no daylight between the White House and the Department of Defense on this," Coltrane said. "Both institutions agree that the deployments are no longer combat deployments, and both institutions look forward to learning, in due course, what kind of deployments they have become."

Within the Pentagon, the work of renaming has reportedly accelerated since Friday evening, when civilian officials at OSD-Policy began circulating a draft glossary intended to provide combatant commanders with "ceasefire-aligned language" for operations that, in most other respects, will continue. According to a Defense Department official familiar with the document, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the glossary has not been formally released, "strike package" has been replaced with "deliberate posture demonstration," and "kinetic activity" is now classified as "intentional kinetic restraint, as expressed."

The same official said the term "deterrence" had been retained, on the grounds that "deterrence has always meant whatever it had to mean, and the ceasefire does not alter that."

At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, a CENTCOM spokesperson, Capt. Olivia Reyes, told reporters in a brief afternoon call that subordinate units had been instructed to "carry out the ceasefire in a manner consistent with continued readiness, continued vigilance, and continued performance of all assigned missions, none of which are combat missions any longer."

Asked whether any aircraft had returned to the United States as a result of the agreement, Reyes said that question would be addressed "at a future briefing, by a future briefer, on a future timeline."

Reaction on Capitol Hill was supportive across both parties, with lawmakers praising the ceasefire while declining to characterize its operational implications. Sen. Rebecca Lawley, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that the agreement was "the right outcome, achieved by the right means," and added that she looked forward to receiving "a fulsome accounting of what the United States is now doing instead of what it was doing yesterday."

A spokesperson for the House Armed Services Committee said members were "encouraged by the ceasefire and reassured by the Pentagon's clarifying steps," and noted that no adjustment to defense appropriations was anticipated, since "the underlying activity has not, in any operationally meaningful sense, changed."

Among analysts, the reclassification effort drew mixed reviews. Jacob Lessig, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic Threshold Studies who studies civil-military terminology, said the Pentagon's approach reflected "an admirable commitment to peace as a category of paperwork."

"What we are seeing today," Lessig said, "is a ceasefire honored in the strongest possible way: not by stopping anything, but by no longer calling it what it was."

Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst, said allied governments in the Gulf had been briefed on the new designations through standard channels and had received them "with the careful neutrality appropriate to a friend."

Ortega, in her closing remarks at the Pentagon, said additional reclassifications would likely follow in the coming days as planners worked through the full inventory of ongoing operations. She declined to estimate how many designations remained to be updated, citing a desire to "let the ceasefire breathe."

Officials said a comprehensive list of the renamed deployments would be made available to Congress and the public "at the moment such availability is determined to support the broader objectives of the agreement."