President Donald Trump said Friday that Iran had asked to continue talks with the United States but he was clear that, as far as he’s concerned, the ceasefire between the two countries is finished.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said Tehran had requested further negotiations and that Washington had agreed to keep talking. He was equally clear about where things stood on the ceasefire itself.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has asked us to continue ‘talks.’ We have agreed to do so, but the United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the Cease Fire is OVER! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
He signed off as “President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Trump didn’t say what form the talks might take, or add any further detail on the ceasefire he was referring to.
Tensions escalated after Strait of Hormuz attacks
This follows US strikes on Iranian targets, carried out in retaliation for attacks on three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. Washington blamed Iran; Tehran called the allegations “questionable.”
Iran has said in the past that only ships using its approved route through the strait can be considered safe. But vessel-tracking data showed the ships hit Tuesday were sailing closer to the Omani coast, not along Iran’s designated corridor.
Iran responded by hitting dozens of US military facilities in Kuwait and Bahrain the latter home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also claimed it shot down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone, though that claim hasn’t been independently confirmed.
Where this leaves things
It’s the kind of back-and-forth that’s made the situation hard to read. Both sides have kept up limited retaliatory strikes for weeks now, even as Trump has repeated, more than once, that the ceasefire is dead. This is his clearest version of that yet but talks are apparently continuing anyway, which says something about how much weight to put on “over” at this stage.
The latest flare-up comes just days after US and Iranian officials sat down for indirect talks in Qatar over Tehran’s nuclear programme a reminder of how fragile the diplomacy underneath all this actually is.
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