Washington — President Trump said early Monday that he is postponing airstrikes on Iran’s power plants after “very good and productive conversations” over the last two days about reopening the Strait of Hormuz. However, Iran’s foreign ministry denied any such talks.
“I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions,” Mr. Trump posted on social media.
An Iranian source told state media, however, that there has been no direct or indirect communication with the U.S.
In a statement, Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied the claims made by Mr. Trump regarding negotiations taking place between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic.
Speaking to reporters on Monday morning, Mr. Trump suggested that was incorrect.
“Well they’re going to have to get themselves better public relations people,” Mr. Trump said. “We have had very, very strong talks. We’ll see where they lead. We have points, major points of agreement, I would say almost all points of agreement. Perhaps that hasn’t been conveyed. The communication, as you know, has been blown to pieces.”
The president would not say who his administration is speaking to in Iran, only saying it was a “top” person but not the supreme leader. Mr. Trump added that Iran contacted the U.S., saying, “So they called, I didn’t call. They called. They want to make a deal.”
Mr. Trump declined to identify who the U.S. was speaking to, “because I don’t want him to be killed.”
Mr. Trump’s comments on Monday are an about-face from a social media post over the weekend in which he declared that if Iran didn’t open the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. would “hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”
Retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, former national security adviser in the first Trump administration and a CBS News contributor, says the Iranian regime is “fragmented right now” and that the foreign ministry “probably doesn’t know” who is talking to either “interlocutors or to the U.S. directly.”
“I think we’re going to see a lot of this kind of confusing reporting because the Iranians are so fragmented from these strikes,” McMaster said.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday that Mr. Trump was keeping all options on the table for potential strikes.
“To the extent we’re degrading their military capability and their defense industrial base, all options should be on the table, and the president’s made that very clear,” Waltz said.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told Politico last week that an attack on energy infrastructure from either side could constitute a war crime. Waltz responded on Sunday that “when you have a regime that has its grips in so much critical infrastructure that’s using it to further, not only the repression of its own people, to attack its neighbors and in contravention of U.N. sanctions, to march towards a nuclear weapon, then that makes those legitimate targets.”
The Strait of Hormuz, the key waterway that, before the Iran war, had enabled the flow of 20% of the world’s oil shipments, has been effectively closed since the war began. Iran said over the weekend that the Strait would be “completely closed” if Mr. Trump carried out his threats on nuclear power plants.
Oil and gas prices both fell immediately on Monday morning upon Mr. Trump’s announcement on talks.
