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After President Donald Trump said the U.S. and Iran would hold new talks Monday, Tehran is pushing back, saying there are no direct negotiations with Washington underway.
In his weekly news conference early Monday morning, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said, “We are not negotiating with the United States at this time.”
He said Iran is holding talks with Oman about the Strait of Hormuz but added that under “No circumstances” will the waterway return to its pre-war status.
Trump says there are ‘perimeters of a deal’
The comments come after Trump announced Sunday night he called off new strikes because he believes the two sides are closing in on what he called the “perimeters of a deal,” including reopening shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
“I was asked to by Saudi Arabia, by UAE, by Qatar, and by Iran. We were all set to go, just about at this time right now, and it would have been a massive attack,” Trump said. “We were all set to go, but when the allies ask to call it off, you gotta sort of say, well, let’s see. And the reason they asked is, I think, there’s a deal. There’s a deal on Hormuz, and then there will be a deal on the nuclear, or you might call it the denuclearization of Iran.”
He told reporters negotiations were set for Monday, but added the U.S. is “ready to go” whenever it wants to resume strikes.
He made similar comments on Truth Social.
Meanwhile, CNN reports U.S. Central Command has asked troops for “new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” even as the White House says it is giving diplomacy more time.
An officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch reportedly made the comments in a message sent to a broad group of military analysts Wednesday, CNN reports.
Renewed scrutiny
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a member of the armed services and intelligence committees, says the administration has no clear strategy.
“Here’s a guy who got us into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline,” Kelly said. “He’s got a secretary of defense that doesn’t know how to manage this war, who decided a good metric at the beginning was just to drop as many munitions as he could on as many targets, and now we’ve got a munitions shortage. Big surprise. So they’re flailing. They’re stuck. They’re responsible for this. And the president is the one that has to try to figure out a way out of this.”
Kelly also voiced concerns about the Pentagon’s request for $67 billion to fund the war.
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