In its Truth Social network, it postponed “five days” carrying out attacks on power plants or energy infrastructure with which it had threatened Iran if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened before Monday night.
He later told reporters that the United States and Iran found “important points of agreement” during negotiations carried out, he said, with a senior Iranian official.
“We are dealing with the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader” of the country, Trump said. It is not about Mojtaba Khamenei, who according to him is “unavailable.”
“We negotiate with people who I consider reasonable, solid (…) They are respected and perhaps one of them is the one we are looking for,” he said without giving names.
The regime change
Donald Trump assured that a “regime change” is underway in Iran, where he says he seeks a relationship similar to the one he established with the new Venezuelan leaders after the capture of the then drug ruler Nicolás Maduro.
“Look at Venezuela, how well it is working. Everything is going so well, with the oil, and the relationship with the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez. “Maybe we’ll find someone like that in Iran,” Trump said.
Quoted by the official Irna agency, the Iranian Foreign Ministry “denied that negotiations or conversations had taken place with the United States during the last 24 days.”
A senior Israeli official told the Axios platform that American emissaries Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, had spoken with the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, one of the most reluctant of the ayatollah regime. But that information has not been confirmed.
Trump explained his demands to reporters: “We don’t want enrichment (of uranium by Iran), but we also want the enriched uranium” that Iran has hidden.
If the dialogue fails “we will simply continue bombing happily,” he threatened.
Trump’s announcements injected optimism into the markets.
After days of rising, oil prices fell sharply, although a barrel of Brent is trading around $100.
The infrastructures
In more than three weeks of war in the Middle East, neither the United States nor Iran had publicly mentioned negotiations.
On Saturday, Trump gave Tehran 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or, failing that, threatened to “annihilate” the Iranian electricity grid, made up of more than 90 plants, some of them in the Gulf.
Since the start of the war, Iran has de facto blocked this key route for the global supply of hydrocarbons in retaliation for the Israeli-American attacks.
In response to the ultimatum, Iran had threatened to completely close the strait, mine the Gulf and target “all energy, information technology and water desalination infrastructure belonging to the United States.”
The Iranian press published lists of potential targets in the Middle East.
The Mizan Online site, an organ of the judiciary, released an infographic with Israel’s two main power plants, Orot Rabin and Rutenberg.
Another, published by the Mehr agency and titled “Say goodbye to electricity!”, presented targets in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies.
Energy crisis?
The director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, estimated that the world has “lost 11 million barrels per day, that is, more than the two major oil crises combined” of the 1970s.
The transit of goods through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen by 95% since the start of the war, according to the analysis company Kpler.
Only a small number of cargo ships and oil tankers have managed to cross this route, through which 20% of world hydrocarbon production previously passed.
In addition, energy facilities in the countries of the region are under fire from Iran.
While the United States says it is exploring a way out, Israel, its ally, announced on Sunday that it is preparing for “several more weeks of fighting against Iran and Hezbollah,” a pro-Iranian Lebanese movement.
On Monday the Israeli army announced to carry out “a broad wave of attacks” in Tehranwhere Iranian agencies reported explosions in several sectors.
