Trump told reporters the negotiations would begin Monday afternoon, without elaborating. He said he had called off a planned strike on Iran after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Iran itself asked him to hold back.
"We were all set to go", he said, adding that the requests came because "they think there's a deal" — "a deal on Hormuz" and, eventually, "on the nuclear".
Iranian state media rejected any suggestion Tehran had asked the U.S. to call off an attack. Foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said his country was instead in talks with Oman over a temporary route for ships through the Strait of Hormuz, describing it as an arrangement that would fall "neither" along a northern nor a southern path and would respect both nations' sovereignty and security.
Baghaei cautioned that such a deal would not amount to reopening the strait, insisting the situation would "in no way return to the status it was before February 28th", the day the war began, as long as U.S. "aggression" continued. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was separately quoted by state agency IRNA as saying the Oman talks were in their "final stages".
Trump gave no fixed deadline for a broader agreement, saying only that Washington was "ready whenever" and would prefer a deal to further conflict. He had written on social media a day earlier that Tehran and other regional states sought time to reach an accord that would fully reopen the strait and end Iran's nuclear threat, warning Iran to move quickly.
The exchange came amid reports that Israel and the U.S. were weighing a major strike on Iranian energy infrastructure, and after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged Trump by phone to de-escalate, warning that further strikes could trigger Iranian retaliation against Gulf oil facilities, Axios reported.
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Source: Polish Radio, PAP, The Guardian