Hours after a ceasefire to end the six-week Iran war was unveiled in Islamabad, the Sunday talk-show circuit became a contest over who deserves credit and what the United States should demand next, with senior administration officials touting President Donald Trump’s role and Democrats warning against declaring victory before the guns fall silent.

The ceasefire, announced shortly before dawn Eastern time in a joint statement by Pakistani, Saudi and Egyptian mediators, is scheduled to take effect at 00:00 GMT on April 15. It calls for a halt to hostilities between Iran and Israel, a freeze on Houthi launches, a phased withdrawal of forward-deployed U.S. naval assets from the Strait of Hormuz, and a prisoner exchange to follow within days. American casualties since the war began in early March stand at roughly 350, the highest U.S. losses in a Middle East confrontation in more than a decade.

Secretary of State Margaret Whitfield, appearing on three programs back to back, called the agreement “a moment of clarity for American strength,” crediting what she described as “the President’s willingness to use overwhelming force and then close the deal.” Whitfield said the framework reflected “principles the President personally insisted on” — verifiable monitoring at the Strait, a written Iranian commitment on uranium enrichment ceilings, and the return of remains of fallen service members.

“Six weeks ago, the critics said this administration would stumble into a wider war. Today, they’re going to have to explain why they doubted him,” Whitfield said on “Meet the Press.” Pressed on whether Tehran had made binding nuclear concessions, she said the language was “tighter than anything achieved by the previous administration” but declined to read the relevant clause aloud, citing operational sensitivities.

Democratic lawmakers offered a more measured response. Senator Theresa Holloway of Michigan, the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on “Face the Nation” that she welcomed any pause in fighting but warned that “a ceasefire announcement is not a ceasefire — April 15 is the test, and so is April 30.” Holloway pointed to ambiguity in the published framework over the Houthi component and over the future of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, where one rocket attack on a U.S. logistics node was reported as recently as Friday.

“The President wants a parade. I want a verification regime,” Holloway said. “Those aren’t the same thing, and the families of 350 Americans deserve the second one.”

Republican defense hawks, who had spent much of the past month pressing the White House for a more decisive military endgame, offered cautious support tempered by demands. Senator Walter Briggs of Tennessee, who has been one of the administration’s sharpest in-party critics, said on ABC’s “This Week” that he would back the framework “if and only if” Iran’s enrichment cap is independently monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency on a continuous basis. “I’ll give the President his win, but I’m going to read the paperwork first,” Briggs said.

The Sunday programs also picked up the political subtext of the announcement, which arrives roughly seven months before the midterm elections and against a backdrop of softening polls for the administration on economic management. White House Chief of Staff Brendan Cole, in a rare television appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” argued that the war’s end would allow the administration to “pivot back to American prosperity,” citing Brent crude’s drop from its $125 peak toward the $108 range after the OPEC+ production hike on April 1.

Cole was less expansive on questions about the war’s domestic costs. Asked whether the White House would support an independent commission to review intelligence failures that preceded the early-March escalation, he said the administration was “focused forward” and that any such review “should not become a political instrument.” That line drew immediate pushback from Representative Marisol Vega of California, who told CNN’s “State of the Union” that an independent commission was “non-negotiable” for House Democrats and that she expected hearings to begin before Memorial Day.

The ceasefire announcement also intersected with the ongoing fight over the Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez artificial intelligence moratorium bill, which cleared the Senate on April 7 and is now in House Ways and Means. Senator Bernard Sanders, appearing remotely on “State of the Union,” said he hoped the easing of the war would “free up oxygen” for the bill’s House passage but acknowledged “the lobbying against it has been ferocious.” Republican Whip Daniel Kessler said separately that the war’s end “doesn’t change the math” on the moratorium and that the bill remained, in his view, “dead in committee.”

Outside the studios, the administration began stitching together a political rollout for the week ahead. Senior officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the President is expected to address the nation from the East Room on Monday evening, followed by a Tuesday visit to Dover Air Force Base to meet with families of fallen service members. A bipartisan congressional delegation is also being assembled to travel to Doha for the prisoner exchange anticipated by the end of next week.

Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst with the Carnegie Middle East program, said in an interview that the U.S. political narrative would harden quickly in either direction depending on what happens between now and the April 15 effective date. “If Tehran fires a final volley and Israel hits one more site, both leaders can sell it at home as a closing flourish,” Hassan said. “If anything bigger goes wrong, the framework wobbles, and Washington’s argument about who won this thing collapses overnight.”

Aides on both sides of the aisle said they expected the next 72 hours to be dominated by jockeying over the ceasefire’s enforcement language, the timing of a possible joint address to Congress, and the shape of any post-war supplemental spending request. Officials at the State Department said additional details on the monitoring regime, including the size and composition of the UN observer contingent for the Strait of Hormuz, would be released later in the week.