WASHINGTON (AP) – Several of the United States’ Middle East allies have called on the Trump administration to refrain from attacking Iran, citing a mortal wound to the government. crackdown on protesterssaid an Arab diplomat familiar with the matter.
Government officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have expressed concerns in the past 48 hours that a U.S. military intervention would shake up the global economy and destabilize an already volatile region, said a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.
Oil prices fell on Thursday Because the market seemed to be paying attention, President Donald Trump’s The change in tone signals the president is distancing himself from attacking Iran, after days of fierce threats against Tehran over Iran’s brutal crackdown.
Nevertheless, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt insisted Thursday that “all options remain on the table” for President Trump in negotiations with Iran.
“The truth is that only President Trump knows what he’s going to do, and a very small team of advisors is reading his thoughts on it,” Levitt said. It added: “He continues to closely monitor the situation on the ground in Iran.”
of nationwide protests Challenging Iran’s theocracy seemed to be suffocating more and more Thursday, a week after authorities cut off the country from the rest of the world and escalated a bloody crackdown that activists say has left at least 2,637 people dead.
The delicate diplomacy by Arab officials comes during a period of rhetorical whiplash from President Trump.
In just one day, President Trump gave the following assurances to the Iranian people: “Help is on the way.” And on Wednesday, Iran suddenly declared that it had received information from “a very important source on the other side,” prompting it to take over its own institutions. stopped killing protesters And the execution could not proceed.
Arab officials also called on Iranian officials to immediately end the violent crackdown on protesters. The diplomat warned that any reaction by Iran to US actions against the United States or other targets in the region would have serious consequences for Iran.
Asked at a White House briefing about reports that allies are asking President Trump to postpone airstrikes, Levitt did not directly address the issue.
Ambassador Mike Walz, the US special envoy to the United Nations, said military action remained an option.
“President Trump is a man of action, not a man of endless talk, as we see at the United Nations,” Walz said in remarks at a U.N. Security Council meeting discussing the Iran protests. “He made it clear that all options were on the table to stop the genocide.”
But after days of threatening a possible U.S. attack on Iran, President Trump himself appears to be signaling that he may back away from that possibility.
On social media, he highlighted a Fox News headline about a suspended death sentence for an Iranian store owner. Erfan Soltani, 26 years old.
Iranian state media denied Soltani’s death sentence. Iranian judicial authorities said Soltani was being held in a detention center on the outskirts of the capital.
He, along with other protesters, is accused of “propaganda against the regime,” state media said.
“This is good news and I hope this continues,” Trump said in his post about the reported moratorium on executions of store owners. The White House later claimed that Iran had halted 800 scheduled executions.
President Trump is known for his deliberate ambiguity about his intentions to maintain an element of surprise.
Last June, as President Trump was considering whether to follow Israel in carrying out an attack on Iran, Levitt read the message. She told reporters that Trump would decide whether to attack Iran “within the next two weeks” and said it came “directly from the president.”
Less than two days later, President Trump ordered a B-2 bomber to attack At Iran’s important nuclear facilities.
Jeremy Shapiro, director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said President Trump may have decided to forego the strike because of concerns about the current posture of U.S. forces in the Middle East.
After the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford and its strike group were deployed to the U.S. Southern Command region as part of a large-scale counternarcotics operation focused on Venezuela, there are currently no U.S. aircraft carriers in the region, which are considered key assets in major military operations.
“They may be putting things off and taking the time to straighten out,” Shapiro said.
Trump administration also on Thursday announced new sanctions Against Iran.
Thursday’s sanctions also include the secretary of the Supreme Council for National Security, whom the Treasury Department accuses of being one of the first officials to call for violence against protesters in Iran.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has also named 18 people and companies that the United States alleges were involved in laundering money from the sale of Iranian oil to foreign markets as part of the shadow banking network of sanctioned Iranian financial institutions Bank Meri and Shar Bank.
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Associated Press writer Fatima Hussein contributed reporting.