Backstory to the two-week ceasefire announced last evening:

Officials in the U.S. and Israel learned of an intriguing development on Monday with President Trump's ultimatum looming, Axios' Barak Ravid, Dave Lawler and Marc Caputo write.

• Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had instructed his negotiators, for the first time since the war began, to move toward a deal, according to an Israeli official, a regional official and a third source with knowledge.

The big picture: As Trump was publicly threatening total annihilation, there were signs of diplomatic momentum behind the scenes — though even sources close to Trump didn't know which outcome to expect right up until a ceasefire was announced.

• U.S. forces in the Middle East and officials in the Pentagon spent those closing hours preparing for a massive bombing campaign on Iranian infrastructure, and trying to figure out where Trump was leaning. "We had no idea what was going to happen. It was wild," a defense official said.
• Allies in the region were bracing for Iranian retaliation on an unprecedented scale. Inside Iran, some civilians were fleeing their homes in an attempt to avoid the brunt of the strikes.
• This account of the diplomacy that staved off that escalation, for now, is based on conversations with 11 sources with knowledge of the talks.

⏱️ By Monday night, Pakistani mediators had U.S. approval for an updated proposal for a two-week ceasefire. The sources said it was then up to Khamenei, actively involved in the process the past two days, to decide.

• The involvement of the new supreme leader was necessarily clandestine and laborious. Facing an active threat of assassination by Israel, Khamenei has been communicating primarily via runners passing notes.

Two sources said Khamenei giving the negotiators his blessing to cut a deal was the "breakthrough."

• All major decisions the past two days went through Khamenei. "Without his green light, there wouldn't have been a deal," the regional source said.

How it happened: It was clear by yesterday morning that progress was being made, but that didn't stop Trump from making his most harrowing threat: "A whole civilization will die tonight."

• By around noon ET yesterday, there was a general understanding that the parties were converging on a two-week ceasefire.
• At 6:32 p.m. ET, Trump announced "a double sided CEASEFIRE!"

🔭 What to watch: It remains to be seen to what degree Iran will allow shipping to resume or how steadfast Netanyahu will be in his adherence to the ceasefire.

• A senior Israeli official told Axios that Netanyahu had received assurances the U.S. would insist in peace talks that Iran give up its nuclear material, cease enrichment, and abandon its ballistic missile threat.

Vice President JD Vance is likely to lead the U.S. delegation at talks planned for Friday in Pakistan — easily the most consequential assignment of his political career.

• There are still major gaps between the U.S. and Iranian visions for a deal, leaving the very real possibility the war will resume.

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Anthropic has begun a tightly controlled release of Mythos, the first AI model that officials believe is capable of bringing down a Fortune 100 company, crippling swaths of the internet or penetrating vital national defense systems, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

• Why it matters: This is the scary phase of AI — a model deemed so powerful that its full release into the wild could unleash untold catastrophe. So only carefully vetted companies and organizations, about 40 so far, are getting access.

Based on our conversations with government and private-sector officials briefed on Mythos, this isn't hyperbole. It's reality.

• Some inside the government fear that most leaders are oblivious to the sudden danger from terrorists or hostile powers.
• "D.C. governs by crisis," said a source briefed on Mythos. "Until this is a crisis, and gets the attention and resources it deserves, cyber is kind of a backwater."

🖼️ The big picture: Think of Mythos as a generational leap beyond Anthropic's existing models.

• It's an AI capable of not just identifying weaknesses in security systems, but exploiting them with autonomous, never-before-seen precision.
• It plans and executes attack sequences on its own, moving across systems without waiting for human direction.

😮 Mind-blowing disclosure: In announcing the tightly confined release of Mythos yesterday, Anthropic disclosed that during testing, the model broke out of its "sandbox" testing environment and built a "moderately sophisticated multi-step exploit" to get the run of the internet, when it was supposed to have access only to certain services.

• "The researcher found out about this success by receiving an unexpected email from the model while eating a sandwich in a park," Anthropic revealed.

Beyond Mythos' fearsome cybersecurity powers, the model is leaps and bounds better at coding, far superior as a negotiating tool — and is even a much more gifted poet than its predecessors.

• Anthropic's Logan Graham — a former Rhodes Scholar who leads the Frontier Red Team, which stress-tests new models — told us the industry needs to rethink future releases of all AI models given the new and coming capabilities.

⚠️ So imagine Mythos-level power in the hands of the Iranian regime in the middle of a hot war or Russia's military as it tries to decimate Ukraine.

• That's the chief reason the government and AI companies are racing so fast toward a technology so powerful and potentially dangerous. These officials fear that China, armed with superior AI, could present an existential threat to U.S. dominance.
• "An enemy could reach out and touch us in a way they can't or won't with kinetic [battlefield] operations," a source close to the Pentagon told us. "For most Americans, the Iran war is 'over there.' With a cyberattack, it's right here."

State of play: The new model, Claude Mythos Preview, is now in the hands of roughly 40 organizations that build or maintain critical software and infrastructure. Anthropic is providing limited access to Mythos as a way of giving America's defenders a head start, before similar capabilities become available across the industry over the next year.

• Anthropic also unveiled Project Glasswing, designed to encourage companies to share their learnings as they put Mythos Preview to work on cyber defense. Launch partners include Amazon Web Services, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorgan Chase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Palo Alto Networks.
• Anthropic has briefed several government agencies about Mythos, despite the company's legal war with the Pentagon after being blacklisted for demanding restrictions on military use of Claude.

🇨🇳 Between the lines: Other AI companies will soon catch up to Mythos — not just here, but in China and elsewhere.

• A Chinese state-sponsored group already used an earlier Claude model to target roughly 30 organizations in a coordinated attack before Anthropic detected it.

The bottom line: The time is fast approaching for all of corporate America and all of government to be prepared to guard against hackers with superhuman powers.

• The window to get ahead of this is closing fast. Most in power aren't remotely ready.

Share this column ... Go deeper: Anthropic withholds Mythos from the public due to hacking risks.

The architects of MAGA's media empire are in open revolt against President Trump, disgusted by his threat to destroy Iran's "whole civilization," Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

Why it matters: At the start of Trump's second term, his coalition of podcasters, streamers and activists was unified, powerful and certain. They had just delivered him the White House and believed he would deliver for them.

• Now the movement's most powerful voices are working to keep Trump in check if not bring him down outright, accusing him of betraying the "America First" promises that built the movement.

🔬 Zoom in: Each defection, taken alone, could be dismissed. Together, they could represent an existential threat to MAGA:

• Tucker Carlson delivered a 43-minute monologue Monday framing Trump's Iran rhetoric as morally corrupt and even "evil." He expressed personal outrage at Trump's Easter post threatening to bring "hell" to Iran.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene, once among Trump's most devoted GOP allies in Congress, called his rhetoric "evil and madness" yesterday and demanded his removal via the 25th Amendment.
• Candace Owens, another disillusioned Trump loyalist with millions of podcast followers, called the president a "genocidal lunatic."

Between the lines: The revolt extends beyond MAGA purists, to the constellation of podcasters, comedians and "manosphere" influencers who helped Trump with younger, less ideological voters in 2024 including Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Tim Dillon and Sneako.

🐘 Reality check: The criticisms above are almost entirely from MAGA's elite influencer class — people with large platforms and strong opinions.

• Rank-and-file Republican voters tell a different story: Roughly two-thirds of Republicans still express confidence in Trump's handling of Iran, even as broader public trust has eroded, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll.

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Gas prices could start dropping in the next two days, GasBuddy head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan said last night.

• Why it matters: Average U.S. gas prices have climbed more than 70 cents over the past month due to the Iran conflict but are set to reverse course following the ceasefire, Axios' Chuck McCutcheon writes.

AAA's national average for gas today is $4.16 a gallon.

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President Trump's super PAC plans to begin unloading its massive war chest around Memorial Day, seven weeks from now — boosting Republicans heading into treacherous midterms, Axios' Alex Isenstadt has learned.

• Why it matters: Trump is cratering in the polls, but his operation has one of the biggest political bank accounts in history.

🐊 The president is aggressively hitting up donors and hosting $1 million-a-plate fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago.

• Democrats have nothing comparable. The RNC has outraised the DNC by 7-to-1.

Keep reading.

Republican Clay Fuller won Marjorie Taylor Greene's former U.S. House seat in Georgia, turning back a Democratic challenge with the help of President Trump's endorsement despite uneasiness over the war in Iran.

• In a deep-red district that Greene won by 29 points and Trump carried by almost 37 points two years ago, Fuller won the special election by 12 points, marking the biggest swing toward Democrats of any U.S. House race since Trump began his second term, The New York Times noted.
• Between the lines: The result added to a string of special elections where Democrats performed better than expected. More from AP.

🧀 In a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Democratic-backed Chris Taylor won by 20 points, growing the liberal majority to 5–2 there.

• Taylor, who focused her campaign on abortion rights, handily defeated Republican-backed Maria Lazar in the fourth straight victory for liberal court candidates dating back to 2020. Liberals are now guaranteed to hold a majority on the court until at least 2030. Keep reading.

On the upcoming episode of "The Axios Show," Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour argues prediction markets shouldn't be regulated as gambling because they don't prey on bad players the way sportsbooks do.

• The latter "is essentially a product that is designed for customers to lose," Mansour told Axios' Dan Primack.

Why it matters: Kalshi's ability to operate nationwide depends on the CFTC continuing to treat prediction markets as a distinct category from gambling.

• Watch the clip.

The 2026 box office is off to the strongest start since COVID, raising hopes in Hollywood that theatrical moviegoing has staying power in the streaming era, Sara and Kerry Flynn write.

• Why it matters: Success at the box office gives the industry more leverage to preserve theaters' exclusive windows before films move to streaming.

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