Delete mails that have been received before the date given by the user using powershell

Question

I am unable to delete mails that have been received before the date given by the user. The code I used is,

$date = Read-Host "Enter the date (dd/mm/yyyy)"
Search-Mailbox -Identity "[email protected]" -SearchQuery { received<=$date} -DeleteContent -Force

Its showing error as, The KQL parser threw an exception.

• CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [], ParserException
• FullyQualifiedErrorId : [Server=DM4PR12MB5360,RequestId=297f7526-fe64-43ec-916b-cbd2e3c19cb1,TimeStamp=21-02-2022 08:29:53] [FailureCategory=Cmdlet-ParserException] 5E9AB73F
• PSComputerName : outlook.office365.com

But when I directly use the date without storing it in variable like below it works.

Search-Mailbox -Identity "[email protected]" -SearchQuery { received<=17-02-2022} -DeleteContent -Force

Can anyone tell why its working when I am directly using the date in cmdlet and not working when stored in variable and used.

Thank you!