Trump postpones strikes against Iran power plants due to "productive" talks with Tehran

You're with BBC News. Just a reminder, in the past few moments, Donald Trump, President of the United States, has posted on his Truth Social platform these words, saying, I am pleased to report that the United States of America and the country of Iran have had, over the past two days, very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. He said, based on the tenor and tone of these in-depth, detailed and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, 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. So it's not clear whether or not that comes into effect immediately. And it comes, obviously, as the deadline, Donald Trump's 48-hour deadline, which he issued on Saturday night to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. His threat to Iran was that if they don't do that, then the US would obliterate Iranian power plants, starting with the biggest one first, and that deadline looming due to end UK time this evening, later on this evening, because he issued that on Saturday evening, a 48-hour deadline. So it does seem, from these words, as though now that is on hold, as he said that they have held constructive conversations around a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. He called them very good and productive, and has now said that he has called on the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure. Well, Iran has said that it is committed to reciprocal retaliation. This is prior to these comments, after vowing to launch an immediate and devastating response to any attack on its power plants and energy infrastructure. Ogonche Habib Azad is from the BBC's Persian service. We were going to talk to you about those Iranian comments, but just had these comments in from Donald Trump in the past few moments. So no doubt we can expect something from Iran very soon, but not yet. We haven't heard anything yet. But one thing that is really interesting is that I heard the news from someone inside the country that's connected to satellite internet Starlink, and he just sent me the news, and he reacted to it as well. This is his reaction. He's a young man in his 20s in Iran, and amid the internet outage, he has managed to connect. He said that my view is that the bottom line is that it's going to cost the Iranian people a lot, whether the remains or goes, and they realise that they're on their last breath, and they're going to increase the cost to Iranian people as much as they can. This was a view of a young Iranian man in Tehran just now that I've got the reaction of him. And I have been hearing lots of reactions since yesterday to Trump's threat that he's going to attack energy infrastructure in Iran. People were anxious. They were worried about what's going to happen next. And they were saying, some of them, that this is not going to help Iranian people. This is an attack. This will be an attack if it's happening on what belongs to the people, some even who supported the bombings on Iran, which there are some still inside who support the bombings. They were saying this is not correct, and they were changing their views. At the same time, some that I've been talking to, they just want an end to this war. People in Iran have been receiving threatening messages by the authorities not to go out and protest against the establishment. We saw that there were deadly protests in January. There are security checkpoints everywhere, as I've been told. And also, pro-establishment crowds come out every night to rally for the establishment. Meanwhile, the sense in the country is that it has a supreme leader that we have not heard or seen on Iranian media since his succession in early March. The country is a huge one, and it's very difficult to get a sense, isn't it, of exactly how people are feeling. You've given us a snapshot there. Is your sense from anybody that you are managing to be in contact with that there are cracks in the regime? As you say, nobody's seen from the new supreme leader. The Iranian regime appears defiant at the moment. Is there a sense that this could be impacting on them, this war? We don't know. I mean, obviously, it has had an impact on them. But the voices that I'm getting, they're from those that the main priority is the internet, and they want to stay connected. And also, their opinion on Iran's supreme leader is kind of nuanced because they don't know who he is. He has been described as a man in the shadows. He has been described as someone who has massive influence over Iran's revolutionary guard corps. But we don't know much about him yet. All we have seen so far are written messages by him, read by a presenter on Iran's state TV. And we don't know how he's going to navigate. But from the messages, it's apparent that he's following the guidelines and the same line of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the first day of strikes on Iran. And his father was Iran's supreme leader for years. And we saw him and recorded messages and recorded videos. But we are not seeing anything from Moshe Khamenei yet. How is the war affecting everyday life in Iran when it comes to food? Obviously, people can't move around. Iran is a big country. But the targets, are they very specific? Or is it impacting everybody across the country? That's a very difficult question to answer, because of the internet outage, we don't see much about what's going on inside. The photos, videos coming out of the country are limited. And also, Iran's state TV doesn't show much of the strikes on the country. We might just see them reacting to one strike in the country, but we don't see any photos or videos of it. And with the internet limitation and the threats by the authorities that are saying no one should send information to outside and they're going to be prosecuted. So that has caused a fear among people to send information to foreign-based outlets like BBC Persian. Yeah, and this idea of the US targeting Iranian power plants at the beginning of this war, the notion was that they wanted to target the military assets to be able to degrade missile sites. And the idea was that they wanted to keep the infrastructure in place if the regime did fall so that there would still be a working economy. So this threat to destroy the infrastructure would have affected ordinary people. It would have affected everyone in the country. Even those who are connected via Starlink, their motors are connected to electricity. So if that goes blank, we are not going to hear even those voices of those against establishment. Not just that, it's going to impact every single aspect of daily lives in Iran. So far they don't have internet, but at the same time, it's going to impact everything. It's going to impact water as well, not just electricity, because everything runs with electricity inside Iran. And that has been the sentiment also about the strikes. What we are seeing the most are strikes on Tehran. We don't see much from other provinces, what's happening there and because of the limit on the internet. So the glimpses that we are getting from Iran are very, very, very limited as I've been just repeating this. Yeah, it's very difficult, isn't it, to draw up a wider picture of what's actually happening. But in terms of the scale of the military assets that the government has, they have resources that are huge, even just in terms of numbers. When you look at the IRGC, the Besieged Militia, the police and the army. That as well. And they have said for every person that has been killed, they have got a replacement. And for that replacement, they have got another replacement. And we know that there are hundreds of thousands of people supporting Besieged, or they're members of Besieged, which is Iran's paramilitary force. And that has been the case so far. We don't know how much they can go on with this momentum, because they have lost so many military commanders, but they have replaced them. Maybe we don't see the names of the replacements, because Iranian media have tried to keep it controlled and strict. But we know that they're getting replaced and replaced. We are not seeing like a comparison with the IRGC and the government. It seems like less have been taken down from the government. But that's not an assessment that I can make, because we see that Iranian outposts are very shy sometimes to report on the deaths of people. They sometimes delay it as well. That has been the case so far. Ghanche, thank you very much. Let's just update our viewers on the situation when it comes to oil, because as soon as Donald Trump released that statement on Truth Social, the price of oil, which was around $114 a barrel, has now gone down to $97 a barrel. So instant market reaction to that, the FTSE 100 is also now up 0.5%. Do stay with us, here on BBC News for all the latest.