When an Italian journalist was arrested in Iran in December, her boyfriend back home feared she might linger in prison for years. So, amid talk that Iran and Italy were negotiating a prisoner swap that involved the United States, he says, he decided to try to get a message to someone who might be in a position to help.

His name was Elon Musk.

Not only was Mr. Musk close to President-elect Donald J. Trump, a month before the journalist was detained, the tech billionaire had a secret meeting with the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations.

Last week, the journalist, Cecilia Sala, 29, was released from prison in Iran, and days later an Iranian engineer whom Italy had detained on an American extradition request was also freed. The engineer was accused of providing material for drones used in an Iranian-backed militia attack on a U.S. military base that killed three American servicemen.

Mr. Musk helped secure the release of Ms. Sala by reaching out to Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., Amir Saeid Iravani, according to two Iranian officials, one a senior diplomat at the Foreign Ministry, who are both familiar with the terms of the prisoner exchange. They asked that their names not be published because they were discussing a sensitive issue.

Neither Mr. Musk nor representatives of the Trump transition responded to repeated requests for comment.

How Mr. Musk, an increasingly active if uncredentialed player on the world stage since the Trump victory, came to take up the journalist’s cause remains unclear. He is close with Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who traveled to Mar-a-Lago, the Trump estate in Florida where Mr. Musk has been a regular, and met with the president-elect on Jan 4.

Ms. Meloni said at a news conference last week that Ms. Sala’s release was the result of a “complex work of diplomatic triangulation with Iran, and obviously also with the United States of America.” Her office and the Italian Foreign Ministry declined to comment for this article.

A senior Biden administration official said the American government had not been consulted about the negotiations, had not been given advance word about the releases, and disapproved of the deal. John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said that the deal had been “an Italian decision from soup to nuts.”

At the news conference, Ms. Meloni said she did not know what part if any Mr. Musk had played in Ms. Sala’s release. “If he had a role, I am not aware of it,” she said.

The ambiguity highlights the unusual role Mr. Musk has been playing as he sits at Mr. Trump’s side, backing far-right parties in Europe even as he continues to promote his business interests abroad. Italy, for example, is currently exploring a potential deal with Mr. Musk’s SpaceX to provide secure communications for government and military officials through Starlink. And Ms. Meloni has been one of Mr. Musk’s ever-present European allies, hosting him at her party’s conference in 2023 and attending a gala with him last October.

By the time of Ms. Meloni’s trip to Mar-a-Lago, Ms. Sala’s boyfriend, Daniele Raineri, had already sought out Mr. Musk’s help through an intermediary, he said. In an interview, Mr. Raineri said that he had thought of him because he had read that there was “a channel between Musk and the Iranian diplomats, and that Musk also works in close contact with Trump.”

Mr. Raineri, who is also a journalist, said he fired off a message on Dec. 29 to an Italian computer expert and associate of Mr. Musk’s to ask if he could bring Ms. Sala’s case to the billionaire’s attention and seek his help.

The computer expert, Andrea Stroppa, said in an interview that Mr. Musk had acknowledged the request, but that he did not know whether he had become involved in the case.

In November, weeks before Ms. Sala was arrested, Mr. Musk met for more than an hour with the Iranian ambassador at the Iranian’s residence in Manhattan to discuss defusing tensions between Tehran and Washington as a new administration prepared to take power.

The Iranian officials interviewed for this article said that Mr. Musk contacted the ambassador again shortly after Prime Minister Meloni visited Mar-a-Lago.

The prisoner exchange between Iran and Italy then unfolded rapidly. Iran released Ms. Sala on Jan. 8, and four days later, Italy freed the Iranian engineer, Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi.

Mr. Abedini had been detained at the request of the U.S. Justice Department. A federal court in Massachusetts accused him of procuring drone technology for Iran that was used in the attack on the American base, which was in Jordan, in January 2024. The two Iranian officials said that when Mr. Musk spoke with the ambassador, he requested that Iran release Ms. Sala and reassured him that the United States would not pressure Italy to extradite the Iranian engineer.

Iran’s mission to the U.N. declined to comment on the recent engagement between Mr. Musk and the ambassador. In a statement, it said the two detainees had been released as a result of “bilateral cooperation and coordinated efforts of the political and intelligence sectors of Iran and Italy.”

All sides are being circumspect in public about what transpired, but to many observers the speedy release of the prisoners following the meeting between Mr. Trump and Ms. Meloni suggested that the topic had been discussed and a resolution was reached.

“The most likely reconstruction is that she got a signal of understanding from Trump that the incoming administration would not raise huge problems if it released Abedini,” said Ferdinando Nelli Feroci, a former Italian diplomat.

Italy detained Mr. Abedini in mid-December as he was transiting through Milan’s airport. Three days later, agents from the intelligence wing of the Revolutionary Guard raided Ms. Sala’s hotel room in Tehran and threw her into solitary confinement at Evin prison. She had traveled to Iran on a journalist visa.

A member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and the two Iranian officials said the journalist had been arrested to pressure Italy to release Mr. Abedini. Iran has made the detention of foreign and dual nationals a centerpiece of its foreign policy for nearly five decades.

“It doesn’t matter who you are,” Shahin Modarres, a Rome-based expert on Iran and international security, said in a telephone interview. “You can be a journalist, a diplomat, a tourist.” He said, “What matters is if Iran thinks it can use you as leverage.”

Ms. Sala said in an interview that she had been held in a cell with no mattress and had slept on the floor with one blanket on top and another below. For weeks, she was denied her glasses, and throughout her detention she did not see a human face. She could hear the sound of other inmates crying and vomiting, she said, and was blindfolded and interrogated for hours nearly every day, she said.

What she feared the most, she said, was “that I would go insane.”

Mr. Raineri, her boyfriend, said that on Jan. 2, Ms. Meloni told Ms. Sala’s mother that within the next 48 hours there would be an important development.

Mr. Stroppa, the programmer, dropped hints on his account on X. He posted a portrayal of Mr. Trump, Ms. Meloni and Mr. Musk in ancient Roman attire on the day the prime minister visited Mar-a-Lago. And on the day Ms. Sala was released, he posted an AI-generated photo of Mr. Musk eating spaghetti with an Italian flag emoji.

Ms. Sala said she understood that Italy’s government did what it had to do to free her. “And whoever it was they needed to talk to, they talked to,” she said.

Ryan Mac and Mattathias Schwartz contributed reporting.

After they win elections and move into the White House, plenty of presidents at some point eventually break a campaign promise. Donald J. Trump will not even wait that long. He will break an important campaign promise the moment he takes the oath of office.

While stumping for a return to power in the fall, Mr. Trump repeatedly made a sensational if implausible pledge with profound geopolitical consequences: He would broker an end to the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. And not just in 24 hours — he would do so before being sworn in as president.

“Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after we win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Mr. Trump vowed in a June rally. “I will get it settled before I even become president,” he said during his televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September. “I will settle Russia-Ukraine while I’m president-elect,” he said again during a podcast in October.

This was no offhand comment, no one-off that he did not repeat. It was a staple of his public argument when it came to the biggest land war in Europe since the fall of Nazi Germany. Yet he not only has failed to keep his promise; he has also made no known serious effort to resolve the war since his election in November, and the fighting will still be raging even after noon on Monday when President-elect Trump becomes President Trump again.

“Wars can’t be settled by bombast,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview. “And the missing link in his thinking is the failure to understand that Ukrainians will reach the settlement only if they are at the negotiating table from a position of strength. He’s in effect undermined their position, and that’s one reason why he hasn’t reached a solution before his inauguration.”

Mr. Trump, of course, is no stranger to hyperbole. The brash assertion that he could easily, expeditiously and single-handedly halt the war with the proverbial snap of his fingers was in keeping with the longstanding I-alone-can-fix-it image that Mr. Trump likes to present to the public.

But time and again over nearly a decade in national politics, rhetoric has run into reality and grandiose promises have fallen by the wayside. And while other presidents paid a price when they broke a promise (ask George H.W. Bush about reading his lips on taxes), Mr. Trump just plows forward without evident consequence.

He did not, for instance, fully build his much-heralded border wall, much less force Mexico to pay for it. He did not wipe out the federal budget deficit or shrink the national trade deficit. He did not forge a permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which he said would be “not as difficult as people have thought over the years.” He did not repeal and replace Obamacare. He did not boost economic growth to “4, 5 and even 6 percent.”

During this transition to a second term, Mr. Trump did help force a temporary halt in the fighting in Gaza that took effect on Sunday, dispatching an envoy to press Israel to agree to the longstanding cease-fire President Biden had first put on the table. While the deal was hashed out by Mr. Biden’s team, Mr. Trump’s pressure played a critical role in finally getting it enacted, a major success for the incoming president.

But Ukraine in many ways is a far more daunting challenge for Mr. Trump because he will be starting from scratch. Unlike Gaza, there is no existing peace plan from his predecessor, with all the intricate logistics, timetables and formulas already worked out, for Mr. Trump to simply adopt and push across the finish line.

Just this month, Keith Kellogg, the new president’s designated special envoy for the Ukraine war, postponed plans to travel to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and other European cities to begin exploring the situation until after the inauguration. He told Fox News that he hoped to resolve it within 100 days, which would be 100 times as long as Mr. Trump originally promised even if successful.

“It was an absurd promise,” said Kathryn Stoner, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. “The only person who can actually end the war in 24 hours is Vladimir Putin, but he could have done it years ago. Any negotiation is going to take more than 24 hours regardless of when Trump starts the clock.”

Michael Kimmage, the author of the book “Collisions,” about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the newly named director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, said that Mr. Trump’s campaign promises were always delivered “very freely” and perhaps were more about sending signals than being interpreted precisely.

“His goals with this language may be as follows: to put the government on notice that his approach to Russia and to the war will be different from Biden’s, that his key objective is to end the war and not for Ukraine to win” and “that he will be in charge and not the deep state that entrenches the U.S. in forever wars.”

Those signals have left murky how Mr. Trump imagines he will get to an agreement, but given his longstanding affinity for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, his hostility toward Ukraine and his resistance to U.S. military aid to Kyiv, analysts expect any settlement he seeks to be favorable to Moscow. Vice President-elect JD Vance has suggested letting Russia keep the 20 percent of Ukraine it has illegally seized through aggression and forcing Ukraine to accept neutrality rather than alignment with the West, a framework echoing Russian priorities.

Asked by email why Mr. Trump had not fulfilled his campaign promise to end the war before his inauguration, Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, did not respond directly, but instead repeated that he will make it “a top priority in his second term.”

Since his November election, Mr. Trump met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and has spoken about meeting with Mr. Putin after his inauguration.

Representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, who is set to become Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, stressed on Sunday that ending the Ukraine conflict remained a top priority for the new president, calling the war “literally a meat grinder of people” akin to World War I trench warfare “with World War III escalation consequences.”

But the thinking Mr. Waltz described during an appearance on “Face the Nation” on CBS sounded like the formula for a process that could take a while: “The key pieces of it: Number one, who do we get to the table? Number two, how do we drive them to the table? And then three, what are the frameworks of a deal?”

“President Trump is clear: This war has to stop,” Mr. Waltz added. “Everyone, I think, should be on board with that.”

Even if everyone is on board with that goal — and there is room for doubt — the possible terms remain thorny. Even assuming NATO membership is not in the cards, Ukraine wants serious security guarantees from the United States and Europe, especially if it is forced to give up its territory, something that Russia would object to.

Then there are questions of reparations and consequences. Who would pay to rebuild Ukraine’s devastated cities and countryside? What would happen to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Mr. Putin and other Russian figures for alleged war crimes? Would the United States and Europe ease sanctions imposed after the 2022 full-scale invasion, and if so on what conditions? Who would police a line of de-confliction and what would happen if any cease-fire is violated?

Mr. Trump has not publicly addressed such questions in any depth, leaving many to guess. He has, however, expressed distress at the continuing casualties in Ukraine and an urgency to find the answers, whatever they may be.

“Part of the point — and this may shed a bit of light on his administration’s eventual course of action — may be not to have a script and therefore to speak in ways that obscure rather than reveal what the actual script is,” Mr. Kimmage said. “The less we know what he is up to, the more he can improvise.”

The sounds of celebration replaced those of explosions in the Gaza Strip on Sunday as a fragile cease-fire came into effect after 470 days of war, allowing some hostages to return home to Israel, Palestinians imprisoned in Israel to be released, and displaced Gazans to search for what was left of their homes.

Under the terms of the laboriously reached deal, fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas militants stopped at 11:15 a.m., raising hopes for a more lasting end to a war that has plunged the Middle East into fear and uncertainty.

The first hostages — three women seized when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — were released shortly afterward, and, with the danger diminished, stepped-up aid deliveries began making their way in the opposite direction, crossing border checkpoints. Early Monday morning, the Israelis said they had released 90 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel.

Joyous Palestinians honked car horns and blasted music in the central Gaza city of Deir al Balah, where children ran around in the streets. Israelis celebrated, too, as the hostages began returning, with anxious families anticipating the release of still more.

But underlying the relief was the knowledge that this phase of the cease-fire is to last just 42 days and free only some of the hostages, and that big diplomatic hurdles lie ahead if it is to be extended. Israel and Hamas reached the deal in part by putting off their most intractable disputes until a nebulous “second phase” that neither side is sure it will reach.

Almost as soon as the bombs stopped falling, masked gunmen and uniformed Hamas police officers came out of hiding and showed themselves on the streets of Gaza. The show of force was unmistakable, demonstrating that even after an overwhelming Israeli military campaign bent on destroying Hamas, the militant group remains the dominant Palestinian power in Gaza.

On Saturday night, as the cease-fire neared, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reminded enemies and allies alike that the first phase of the deal was temporary and that Israel could still go back to fighting if the talks on the next stage of the cease-fire broke down.

“We retain the right to return to the war, if necessary, with the backing of the United States,” Mr. Netanyahu, whose coalition has been sharply divided by the cease-fire deal, said in a televised address.

Still, whatever the anxieties over the next weeks and months, on Sunday there were moments of joy.

One of the freed hostages, Emily Damari, could be seen smiling and leaning out the open window of a van as she was transported to Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv. Ms. Damari had last been seen free 15 months ago, when she was kidnapped from her home at a kibbutz in southern Israel. She had been shot in the hand, and was driven away in her own car, a militant at the wheel.

A picture of Ms. Damari released by the Israeli military on Sunday showed her still smiling, though missing two middle fingers from her left hand. All three hostages later reunited with their relatives, who wept and gripped them tightly after over a year apart, according to footage released by the Israeli government. Their parents, siblings and friends had fought an international campaign for their freedom.

Under terms of the deal, Hamas is to gradually free 33 hostages, and in exchange Israel is to release more than 1,000 Palestinians being held Israeli prisons, including some serving life sentences for brutal attacks against Israelis. Ninety of them — all women and minors — were to be freed on Sunday.

Friends of the three hostages released on Sunday danced, sang, and waved Israeli flags in the air as they gathered at a hospital’s helipad. Gal Kubani, 28, a friend of Ms. Damari’s, said she was “overjoyed” by news of her release and “proud of Emily for surviving this madness.”

In Gaza, the celebration was tempered by grief. More than 46,000 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli military campaign, according to Gazan health officials, who don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. Vast swaths of the enclave lie in ruins, and many displaced people have no homes to which to return.,

Soon after the fighting stopped, waves of displaced Palestinians began heading north, anxious to see whether any parts of their homes still stood.

Many people said they were determined to start to reclaim the lives they had once known, despite the huge amount of destruction across the enclave. “The joy of returning home is overwhelming, but it’s mixed with sadness,” said Ahed al-Okka, 52, a construction worker from Gaza City.

For others like Suhaila Dawaas, a displaced Gazan who said she had lost eight relatives in the war, grief overshadowed any hope for the future. Her home was mostly destroyed, although she hoped to find a few reminders of the life her family once had in the rubble.

“I can’t say I’m happy about this truce,” said Ms. Dawaas, a 55-year-old mother of eight. “What is left for us after everything? After the endless losses, the destruction, the pain?”

Drone videos taken over Gaza showed people fanning out across a wasteland. Gaza’s dense neighborhoods had been reduced to pancaked slabs of concrete, the roads turned to dust. With an untold number of bodies still trapped under the rubble, members of the Gaza Civil Emergency Service set to work.

The war began after Hamas invaded southern Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people, Israel says, and capturing 250 hostages. Some 100 hostages are still in Gaza, though around a third are believed to be dead.

Israel and Hamas have both preserved some of their bargaining chips. At the end of the first phase of the truce, Hamas will still have around two-thirds of the hostages. And Israel will still occupy parts of Gaza, and hold major prisoners, including Marwan Barghouti, a militant leader and iconic Palestinian political figure.

On Sunday, United Nations trucks carrying humanitarian supplies began entering Gaza just 15 minutes after the cease-fire took effect, according to Jonathan Whittall, the head of the U.N. humanitarian office for the Palestinian territories. Months of lawlessness and restrictions on humanitarian deliveries had reduced aid to a trickle.

Two convoys carrying ready-to-eat food parcels and wheat flour arrived in the enclave on Sunday, one through the Kerem Shalom crossing in southeastern Gaza, and another at a crossing in the north, according to Martin Penner, a spokesman for the United Nations’ World Food Program. The cease-fire deal calls for 600 trucks to be allowed to bring aid to Gazans daily, although it was not clear how the supplies would be distributed.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the mood was anxious as families and friends waited for the first of 90 Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israel’s Ofer prison. Some in the crowed wondered if the releases would actually happen.

“The people are too exhausted, and their feelings are mixed with sorrow over Gaza,” said Zuhair Yousef, a taxi driver. “So we are waiting until the last minute.”

The cease-fire has already opened deep fissures within Prime Minister Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, resigned in protest from the cabinet and withdrew his Jewish Power party from the coalition on Sunday. The Religious Zionism party, led by Bezalel Smotrich, has suggested it could do the same unless Mr. Netanyahu continues the war after the initial truce.If it does so, Mr. Netanyahu’s government would hold fewer than half of the seats in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, which could eventually force the government to fall and force new elections.

Teams of diplomats representing both President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump played a major role in brokering the cease-fire, and both men took credit for it on Mr. Biden’s penultimate day in office.

In remarks in South Carolina, Mr. Biden defended his unwavering support for Israel, over the advice of some who had warned him that it could draw the U.S. into a wider war. “Abandoning the course I was on would not have led us to the cease-fire we’re seeing today,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Adam Rasgon, Natan Odenheimer, Ephrat Livni, Johnatan Reiss, Gabby Sobelman, Myra Noveck, Vivian Yee, Fatima AbdulKarim and Yan Zhuang.

The start of a truce in Gaza

Several Israeli hostages were released from captivity in Gaza yesterday and were reunited with their families, the Israeli military said, as a 42-day cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas went into effect. Follow our live coverage.

The first hostages released were three women: Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher. Israel was expected to release 90 Palestinian prisoners, all women or minors, in exchange for the hostages. The truce prompted celebrations in Gaza, relief for families of Israeli captives and Palestinian prisoners, and hope for an end to a devastating 15-month war.

Israeli officers said their forces had begun to withdraw from parts of Gaza. Hamas sought to reassert control, with masked gunmen taking to the streets in several cities.

The start of the initial six-week phase yesterday was delayed by almost three hours, with Israel saying it had not formally received the names of the first three hostages to be released. During the delay, the Israeli military continued striking targets in Gaza.

Hostages and prisoners: Hamas is expected to stagger the release of 33 hostages — of the roughly 100 it still holds — during the first phase of the cease-fire; a “vast majority” of the 33 are still alive, an Israeli military spokesman said. In exchange, Israel is expected to begin releasing more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

What’s next: Israel and Hamas reached the cease-fire agreement in part by putting off their greatest disputes until a nebulous “second phase” that neither side is sure it will reach. During the first phase, 600 trucks will be allowed to bring aid to Gazans daily. Israel will still occupy parts of Gaza and hold high-profile prisoners.

TikTok briefly disappeared from U.S. phones

TikTok began to reappear yesterday, mere hours after the social media platform had been removed from major app stores and had gone dark for U.S. users. The shift came after President-elect Donald Trump said yesterday on his platform Truth Social that he would issue an executive order to stall a federal ban.

A unanimous Supreme Court decision on Friday upheld a law that called for the app’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app by Sunday or face a ban over national security concerns around its Chinese ties.

In his post on Sunday, Trump floated the idea that he “would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture,” but did not provide further details.

Background: Trump’s promise of an executive order caps a whirlwind of decisions concerning TikTok. He tried to orchestrate a sale of the app to American companies in 2020, and later tried to ban TikTok before reversing course last March. He then enjoyed success on the platform during the election.

Impact: If Trump issued an executive order, it would constitute an attempt to temporarily neuter a law that passed with broad bipartisan support in Congress, and his action could face a legal challenge. TikTok has said in legal filings that even a temporary disappearance could kneecap it.

The Trump transition was already underway

Donald Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery yesterday for the first time since last summer, one of a series of stops on the eve of his presidential inauguration. He also held a rally at an indoor arena, his first such event in Washington since Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riot. Read our coverage here.

Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and an early supporter of Trump, hosted a party at his home in Washington on Saturday, with guests that included Vice President-elect JD Vance, Mark Zuckerberg and several other tech titans, including Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI. The powerful attendees illustrated Silicon Valley’s trend toward the right.

Joe Biden, on his final day as president, pardoned five activists and public servants. He offered a posthumous grant of clemency to the civil rights leader Marcus Garvey, who mobilized the Black nationalist movement and was convicted of mail fraud in 1923.

In the weeks leading up to the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, migrants headed north through Mexico on foot as part of small caravans, hoping to somehow reach the U.S. border before Jan. 20 in anticipation of a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

The journey can be treacherous — the weather oscillates between extremes, and cartels in the region have been known to kidnap and kill travelers. A Times photographer followed along on some of their treks. Read about them here.

Lives lived: Zilia Sánchez was a Cuban-born minimalist painter who was in her 80s when she began to find serious acclaim outside the Caribbean. She is dead at 98.

CONVERSATION STARTERS

• In with the new: In trendy Mexico City neighborhoods, boutique hotels are reviving historic buildings.

• Writing in Africa: A robust publishing ecosystem has grown in Africa, transforming the literary landscape there and expanding the range of stories being told about the continent.

• Age as industry: Whatever the maximum human life span may be, people — particularly men — appear increasingly determined to find it.

The modern sex scene

The contenders for this year’s Oscar nominations are full of sex. “Anora” revolves around a sex worker, “Babygirl” focuses on a woman exploring her desires and “Nosferatu” centers on lust.

But their steamy scenes don’t always showcase the eroticism of cinema past, and come with an asterisk: The directors are using the moments to explore complex power dynamics between characters. Here are fives scenes that do this particularly well.

Lynchian visuals: The director David Lynch, who died last week, developed such a distinct style that “Lynchian” became a go-to term for onscreen surrealism. Watch five scenes that define his vision.