President Donald Trump said on Monday the United States was having “good talks” with Iran and there was a chance of a deal over their conflict, but he warned that U.S. strikes would resume if the negotiations failed to deliver.
Despite Trump’s optimism, Tehran appeared to quickly test the pause in the U.S. military campaign, with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq reporting drone attacks on Monday.
Washington abruptly suspended a two-week campaign of air strikes on Iran on Saturday in Donald Trump’s latest strategic U-turn in the five-month-old conflict.
“We’re having good talks,” he said. “I think there’s a good chance that something could happen, and if it does, good, if it doesn’t, we go back to doing what we were doing two days ago.”
At a campaign rally in Michigan later on Monday, Donald Trump said of Iran: “You can’t bribe them. You’ve got to beat them, and we’ll beat the hell out of them. But we’ll see how it turns out. Right now, there are very friendly negotiations going on.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said on Monday that messages were still being passed between the sides through mediators and Iran had not forsaken diplomacy, but reports that it requested negotiations were “fabricated.”
“This is not in our DNA,” he said.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Sunday that Iran would halt its own attacks as long as Trump’s self-imposed ceasefire continued.
Iran’s central military command later on Monday accused the U.S. of threatening vessels and oil tankers in its territorial waters and of “attempting to implement an illegal maritime blockade”, which it said “constitutes an escalation of the conflict in the region.”
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Saudi Arabia said it shot down drones aimed at petroleum targets, including in Riyadh. It said they had been launched from Iraq by Iran-backed armed groups, and it reserved the right to respond.
Separately, Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen said they had targeted the East-West Pipeline carrying oil to Saudi Arabia’s main Red Sea port of Yanbu in retaliation for Saudi drone incursions.
Tehran also said it remained in control of the contested Strait of Hormuz, the key waterway for global energy supplies, which Trump has demanded vessels be able to pass through freely.