President Donald Trump said Washington is taking a restrained approach to talks with Tehran while maintaining military and economic pressure, as Iran faces inflation, a continuing naval blockade and demands for sanctions relief before formal negotiations resume.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
President Donald Trump said Sunday that the United States is maintaining only limited contact with Iran while allowing economic pressure and a continuing naval blockade to weigh on Tehran following weeks of direct military confrontation.
“We are low keying it,” Trump told Axios when asked about negotiations with Iran. “We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”
Trump said Iran’s economy “is in very bad shape” and argued that the government does not have sufficient money to pay its military personnel, attributing part of the pressure to the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports.
“It will work out. It always works out,” Trump said of the conflict and diplomatic efforts. “It’s like a chess game.”
The comments follow a period in which the U.S. military carried out strikes against Iran every day for approximately two consecutive weeks. Trump later announced a halt to those attacks and said the pause would create an opportunity for further negotiations.
Although the strikes have stopped for now, the naval blockade remains in place.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said over the weekend that 53 commercial ships traveling to or from Iran had been redirected. CENTCOM also said two ships were disabled and another two were boarded.
The pause in direct fighting has coincided with a decline in global oil prices.
West Texas Intermediate crude fell from a recent high of about $92 per barrel on July 23 to approximately $78 on Sunday afternoon. Brent crude, the primary benchmark used outside the United States, declined from around $100 per barrel on July 23 to roughly $83.
U.S. gasoline prices have also eased. The national average for regular gasoline was about $4.01 per gallon Sunday, down approximately 8 cents from $4.09 a week earlier, according to the American Automobile Association.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Sunday that an agreement concerning the strait between the two countries was in the “final stages,” while repeating that Iran would not reopen it unless additional conditions were satisfied.
Araqchi also said Iran and the United States are not currently engaged in direct negotiations. He said Tehran would not begin formal talks while Washington remained in breach of an interim agreement signed in June, although messages continue to pass between the two governments through intermediaries.
The United States began airstrikes against Iran in late February. Trump and other U.S. officials have said the military campaign is intended to prevent the Iranian government from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, secretary of Iran’s top national security body, has outlined a broader set of demands Tehran wants addressed.
Those conditions include an end to U.S. threats against Iran, a halt to military actions directed at Iran and its Lebanese, Palestinian, Yemeni and Iraqi allies, an end to the blockade, the lifting of sanctions and the release of Iranian assets.
Iran’s ultimate political authority rests with top leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared publicly since his father and predecessor was killed in an airstrike on Feb. 28, the first day of U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran.
Vice President JD Vance cautioned Saturday that the confrontation remains unresolved despite the current pause in attacks.
The conflict “is not over,” Vance said, adding that “we’re in the middle of the game, and we’re applying a whole host of tools” against Tehran.
Vance said there are elements within Iran’s leadership that want the confrontation brought to an end.
“They want this thing to be over,” he said. “The question is whether they’re able, their system is able, to give the things that are necessary for us to be happy, for us to feel like we’ve gotten what we need out of this particular engagement.”
For now, Trump is signaling that Washington intends to keep pressure on Tehran while limiting the scope of direct diplomacy, leaving the conflict in a suspended phase between active military operations and a formal negotiated settlement.
Original article
Comments