US president Donald Trump zigzagged from claims of diplomatic progress to renewed threats of destruction on Monday as he sought to pressure Iran to make a deal to end the month-long war.
Trump said in a Truth Social post that there had been “great progress” in talks with Iran but warned that if they failed to produce an agreement, he would order the bombardment of Iranian power plants, oil infrastructure and potentially desalination plants.
The US president has repeatedly threatened such attacks in recent weeks, only to back down, as the global economy reels from the risk to energy supplies.
Despite Trump’s claim that the United States is in talks with “a new, and more reasonable, regime” in Iran, however, there has been little apparent progress in the negotiations.
Iran has denied holding substantive talks with the US and has rejected the Trump administration’s conditions as unreasonable.
The war has raged on, drawing in much of the Middle East, sending oil and gas prices skyrocketing and fracturing Trump’s political support at home.
As Trump strains to find an end to a conflict he originally mused would last four to five weeks, he has alternately narrowed his aims – arguing on Sunday that “regime change” in Iran had already been achieved – and raised the prospect of escalation, ordering thousands more US troops to the Middle East, including marines and special operations forces.
Trump said Iran had agreed to allow 20 more oil cargo ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran’s de facto blockade has all but closed a vital route for oil, gas and fertiliser shipments.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said Iran was “not at all happy that people in other countries are facing difficulties due to fuel and food prices”, and urged those countries to press Israel and the US to end their attacks on Iran.
On Monday, two Chinese-owned commercial vessels transited the waterway, according to MarineTraffic, a ship-tracking platform. The crossings offered an initial indication that Iran could be relaxing its stranglehold over the strait, the platform said.
But a short time later, Trump renewed his threats to bombard Iran’s “Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island,” from which Iran exports the majority of its oil, if talks on ending the war failed.
Meanwhile, foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey convened Sunday in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, for further discussions aimed at ending the war. The US, Israel and Iran were not part of the talks, and it was unclear whether any progress was made.
In Lebanon, Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he had ordered his forces to increase the territory they control in southern Lebanon, adding to fears among many Lebanese of a long-term military occupation of the area.
Lebanon’s president has denounced Israel’s campaign there against Hizbullah, the Iran-backed militia.
Two United Nations peacekeepers were killed in southern Lebanon on Monday when their convoy was “struck by an explosion of undetermined origin,” according to a UN report seen by The New York Times.
Several hundred special operations personnel have arrived in the region at the weekend. This is on top of thousands of US marines who came on Friday aboard an amphibious assault ship, the first of two contingents, the US military has said.
Reuters has reported that the Pentagon has been considering military options that could include ground forces, although Trump has not approved any of those plans, according to multiple news outlets.
In an interview with Financial Times published on Sunday, Trump said he wanted to “take the oil in Iran” and could seize the export hub of Kharg Island. Taking control of Kharg would require ground troops.
– This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Additional reporting: Reuters
