US President Donald Trump said on Monday he had given orders to postpone for five days the attacks he had threatened against Iranian power plants, and said the US was in talks with Tehran about ending the US-Israeli war on Iran.
However, Iranian parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, mooted to be the leader representing the country in contacts with the US, posted on social media that no talks had been held.
As reciprocal airstrikes continued, financial markets had broadly welcomed the reports of efforts to negotiate an end to the war. Even after Qalibaf’s comments, the Brent crude oil benchmark was down around 8% to about $103 a barrel.
Iran has effectively closed the key Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows.
Trump announced early in the US morning on his Truth Social platform that there had been “very good and productive” talks between the US and Iran over the past two days about a “complete and total resolution of hostilities in the Middle East”.
‘Strong talks’ — Trump
He later told reporters that his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had been negotiating with Iran before the war, had discussions with a top Iranian official into the evening on Sunday, and would continue on Monday.
“We have had very, very strong talks. We’ll see where they lead. We have major points of agreement, I would say, almost all points of agreement.”
“All I’m saying is, we are in the throes of a real possibility of making a deal,” he told reporters before departing Florida for Memphis.
He declined to say who the US was speaking to in Iran, but said it was not Mojtaba Khamenei, who was wounded in the Israeli attack at the beginning of the war that killed his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Washington.
“We’re dealing with the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader,” Trump said.
An unnamed Israeli official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters that the increasingly influential Qalibaf was representing Iran and that talks on ending the war could be held in Islamabad as soon as this week.
A reporter for the US news outlet Axios also said mediating countries, which he named as Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, were trying to convene an Iranian-US meeting in Islamabad this week, including Witkoff, Kushner and Vice President JD Vance.
Trump said he had spoken to Israel, which he said would be “very happy with what we have”.
Although Khamenei holds the ultimate authority in Iran, and the foreign ministry led past negotiations with the US, Iran experts say the realities of wartime decision-making have effectively shifted control to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which now exerts decisive influence over key areas, including foreign policy.
A source briefed on Israel’s war plans said Washington had kept it informed of its contacts with Tehran, and that Israel would probably follow Washington in suspending any targeting of Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on talks or on Washington’s decision to suspend strikes on some targets.
Global markets rose sharply, with US stocks up more than 2%.
On Saturday, Trump had warned that Iranian power plants would be destroyed if Tehran failed to “fully open” the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping within 48 hours. Trump had set a deadline of around 1:44am South African time on Monday.
The IRGC threatened retaliation, saying it would attack Israel’s power plants and those supplying US bases if Trump followed through with his threat.
Markets and economies in turmoil
Iranian media reported that they had attacked targets in Israel and US bases in the region on Monday.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in the war that the US and Israel launched on 28 February, which has upended markets, driven up fuel costs, accelerated global inflation fears and convulsed the Western defence alliance.
However, the threat of strikes on Gulf electricity grids raised fears of mass disruption to desalination for drinking water, and further rattled oil markets.
While attacks on power plants could hurt Iran, they could be catastrophic for its Gulf neighbours, which consume around five times as much power per capita.
Electricity makes their gleaming desert cities habitable, in part by powering the desalination plants that produce 100% of the water consumed in Bahrain and Qatar. Such plants use seawater to meet more than 80% of drinking water needs in the United Arab Emirates, and 50% of the water supply in Saudi Arabia.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said the energy crisis resulting from the war was worse than the two oil shocks of the 1970s and the gas shortage connected to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine put together.
Iran’s Defence Council escalated its threatened retaliation on Monday, before Trump’s delay, saying Tehran would cut all Gulf routes by laying sea mines if Trump followed through, state media reported.
The Israeli military said early on Monday it had begun its latest broad wave of strikes on infrastructure in Tehran.
Iranian news agencies said six people had been killed and 43 injured in strikes on residential buildings in the western city of Khorramabad.
The Iranian Red Crescent posted a video of a residential building in affluent northern Tehran with most of its facade destroyed and emergency staff rescuing someone on a stretcher from the upper floors.
Across the Gulf, the Saudi defence ministry said two ballistic missiles had been launched towards Riyadh. One was intercepted while the other fell in an uninhabited area. DM