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US President Donald Trump said Monday that Iran hasn’t yet informed the US it is cutting off talks, but suggested he had no problem waiting out Tehran until it agrees to an acceptable deal.

“I think we’ve been talking too much, if you want to know the truth. I think going silent would be very good,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.

He said the development did not mean the US would restart full-scale military operations.

“It doesn’t mean we’re going to go and start dropping bombs all over there,” he told NBC. “We’ll just go silent. We’ll keep the blockade. Blockade is a piece of steel.”

Trump, who has insisted he feels no pressure to reach a deal quickly, maintained he had leverage over Tehran.

“I think I can wait as long as they want,” he said.

Source: CNN

– Agencies

Oil prices are rising more sharply after Iranian state media reported Iran had suspended talks with the United States, dashing hopes that a deal towards ending the war could be agreed in the coming days.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, gained 6% to trade at $97.02 a barrel shortly before 10 a.m. ET. West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, climbed around 7.5% to $93.93 a barrel for delivery in July.

The latest moves come after hopes for a US-Iran deal had sent Brent crude down 19.3% in May, its biggest monthly decline since March 2020 when pandemic lockdowns began, according to Deutsche Bank analysts.

Brent is still well below the high of $114 a barrel at which it settled on April 5, but roughly 25% higher than it was just before the US and Israel attacked Iran.

“Anything under $100 (a barrel) is pricing a good outcome,” Neil Wilson, a strategist at investment bank Saxo wrote in a note.

Earlier Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, Iran suspended talks with the United States in protest over Israel’s actions in Lebanon.

“Given the continuation of the Israeli regime’s attacks in Lebanon, and considering that Lebanon had been one of the preconditions for a ceasefire — which has now been violated on all fronts, including Lebanon — the Iranian negotiating team is suspending ‘talks and exchanges of texts through mediators,’” Tasnim reported.

Iran called for the immediate halt of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon, along with the Israeli army’s full withdrawal from Lebanon, Tasnim said, adding that “until Iran’s and the resistance’s position on these matters is satisfied, there will be no negotiations.”

Tasnim added that Tehran and allied militant groups in the region have placed on their agenda the “complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the activation of other fronts,” including the Bab el-Mandeb strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have previously launched attacks on passing vessels.

Earlier on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the Israeli military to strike Beirut’s Dahieh district, the city’s southern suburb that is a Hezbollah stronghold. An Israeli official told CNN that plans to strike Beirut were coordinated with the US.

Source: CNN

– Agencies

The United States said Monday that it bombed radar and drone sites in Iran after Tehran shot down an American drone over the weekend. Iran then said it launched a strike of its own, and Kuwait reported incoming fire.

The nominal ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. has been repeatedly tested with such back-and-forth attacks, even as officials from both countries try to negotiate an end to the war. It’s not clear how close they are to a deal — and there is always the risk that an attack could derail those talks.

In the meantime, Iran has maintained its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy supplies and driving up the price of fuel around the world, with far-reaching consequences.

Fighting has also escalated between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, despite their nominal ceasefire. Israel has extended its occupation deep into Lebanon, and Hezbollah — which joined the war in support of its main backer, Iran — continues to launch drones into Israel.

US military attacks Iran

The U.S. military’s Central Command said it carried out the strikes in Iran on Saturday and Sunday around the city of Geruk and on Qeshm Island.

“The measured and deliberate strikes occurred ... in response to aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a U.S. MQ-1 drone that was operating over international waters,” Central Command said.

“U.S. fighter aircraft swiftly responded by eliminating Iranian air defenses, a ground control station, and two one-way attack drones that posed clear threats to ships transiting regional waters.”

Kuwait reports incoming fire

Kuwait said its air defenses opened fire early Monday morning to intercept incoming drone and missile fire.

Around the same time, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it responded to an American attack without saying where, likely referring to the attack on Kuwait. In a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency, the Guard said that U.S. forces had targeted a telecommunications tower.

Kuwait is home to U.S. Army Central, the Mideast forward command for the Army. While the U.S. Air Force no longer flies the MQ-1 Predator, the U.S. Army still does.

Iranian state television later shared footage of the ballistic missile launch, including a close-up showing a sticker on its body depicting a bruised U.S. President Donald Trump overlaid on a “closed” Strait of Hormuz with the caption: “Until the last American soldier leaves the region.”

Attacks rattle ceasefire talks

The attacks represent the latest escalation between the U.S. and Iran. Over the weekend, the U.S. fired a missile into the engine room of a Gambia-flagged cargo ship trying to break its blockade of Iranian ports.

A trickle of ships has made it out of the strait, through which a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas once passed, but pressure continues on global energy supplies, as well as on chemical fertilizer. That has led to fears of food shortages. The Gulf region produces 30% of globally traded chemical fertilizers.

Trump met with advisers on Friday but has yet to decide on whether to move ahead with a deal to extend the ceasefire and reopen the strait. Iran has said the deal had not been finalized.

The U.S. and Israel launched the war with strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. Trump has offered shifting goals for the conflict, although preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon is among them. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though it has enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance suggested last week that negotiators are trying to strike general terms on Iran’s nuclear program, with the specifics to be hammered out in the ensuing talks.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei on Monday again accused the U.S. of “constantly” changing its positions.

“From the beginning, we knew — and we continue to know — that we are negotiating in an atmosphere of mistrust,” Baghaei told journalists.

Trump expressed optimism about the talks in a post on his Truth Social platform early Monday in Washington.

“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us,” he wrote. “Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end — It always does!”

Source: AP

--Agencies 

United States President Donald Trump said he had secured guarantees from Iran that it would not develop nuclear weapons, as reports emerged he had sent a tougher peace proposal back to Tehran.

Any tweaks to the proposal could prolong even further an agreement to formally end the Middle East war and open the Strait of Hormuz maritime route after weeks of efforts to secure a deal despite fractious rhetoric and the occasional flare-up of armed conflict.

The New York Times and Axios media outlets reported on Saturday (May 30) that Trump had sent back a new framework to be considered by Iran with "tougher" terms, though it was not immediately clear what that entailed.

Trump has said his priorities for any deal include stopping Iran from any nuclear weapon development and re-opening the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.

"The one guarantee that I have to have is that there will be no nuclear weapons. They've agreed to that, and it was very interesting," he told his daughter-in-law Lara Trump in an interview broadcast on her Fox News programme on Saturday night.

But Tehran has previously cast doubt on Trump's assertions and the parties appeared far apart on their key priorities.

Iran has said it requires the release of US$12 billion in frozen assets before it moves to substantive talks on issues such as its nuclear programme and called earlier Trump comments that its enriched uranium - a precursor for nuclear weapons - would be destroyed "baseless", according to Iranian media.

Tehran has also insisted that Lebanon must be included in any end to the war despite ongoing fighting, with Beirut accusing Israel of a "scorched-earth policy" as its forces advanced and carried out further airstrikes it says target Iran-backed group Hezbollah.

After Trump and US officials earlier said they were on the brink of striking a deal, he struck a less urgent tone and hinted at renewed military action in the Fox interview.

"I'm in no hurry," he said. “Slowly but surely we're getting, I think, what we want and if we don't get what we want, we're going to end in a different way.”

FLARE-UPS

That echoed comments from Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, who said at a defence summit in Asia on Saturday that Washington was "more than capable" of restarting the war if necessary.

Though daily strikes throughout Iran and the Gulf have stopped since Tehran and Washington struck a temporary ceasefire in April followed by historic talks hosted by Pakistan, bursts of armed conflict have continued.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards had shot down a US military drone "about to enter Iranian territorial waters to conduct hostile operations", Iran's state broadcaster IRIB reported, an incident that has not been confirmed by the US.

Earlier in the week, the worst fighting since the fragile ceasefire broke out when US forces carried out strikes on the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, countered by retaliatory fire from Iran.

Nevertheless, diplomacy has continued with Trump under pressure to reach an agreement that would lift US and Iranian competing blockades around the Strait of Hormuz that have choked international oil supplies and threatened the global economy with rising prices.

After Trump said on social media that Tehran would charge "no tolls" on ships passing through the strait once the blockades were lifted under any deal, Iranian news agency Fars cited sources saying “no such clause appears in the text of the agreement.”

Iran's ISNA news agency on Saturday cited lawmaker Alireza Salimi as saying a plan "to implement Iran's management and sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz will soon be approved by parliament".

EXPANDED LEBANON OPERATIONS

Israel's military issued evacuation warnings for more villages in south Lebanon on Saturday, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces had pushed more than 30km into the country.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam accused Israel of pursuing a "scorched-earth policy and collective punishment", and called for "a swift and real ceasefire".

Israel's military confirmed it was expanding its ground offensive in a statement released early on Sunday, saying "a significant number" of its forces had advanced past the Litani river and were carrying out expanded operations against Hezbollah in the Beaufort Ridge and Wadi al-Saluki area.

A truce between Israel and Hezbollah began on Apr 17 but has never been observed, with both sides accusing each other of violating it.

In early March, Tehran-backed Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran's supreme leader in US-Israeli strikes, prompting Israel to carry out near-daily air raids in Lebanon and launch a ground invasion.

Israel and Lebanon began direct talks in April, with a fourth round expected in the coming week.

Source: AFP

– Agencies

A tanker reported an external explosion off Oman’s coast on Tuesday afternoon, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO).

The explosion, 60 nautical miles off the capital city of Muscat, was on the side aft — an area located towards the rear of the vessel — and close to the waterline, the agency said in a statement.

The UKMTO statement added that the vessel and its crew are safe and that the tanker reported that “some bunker fuel” was discharged into the sea.

Authorities are investigating the incident, it said.

Source: CNN

– Agencies