TRUMP SAYS US AND IRAN IN TALKS AFTER HE POSTPONES STRIKES ON POWER PLANTS

SOURCE: CNN

Trump says US held ‘productive conversations’ with Tehran, but Iran’s foreign ministry denies any dialogue with Washington.

• Trump postpones strike threat: President Donald Trump told CNN there are 15 points of agreement”between the US and Iran after talks this weekend. He announced earlier he will hold off strikes against Iranian energy sites for five days, after threatening to attack if Tehran did not allow the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
• Iran responds: Iran’s foreign ministry said there was “no dialogue”between Tehran and Washington, according to state affiliated media. Multiple nations have been passing messages between the US and Iran over the last several days to de-escalate the mounting tensions, sources have told CNN.
• Latest strikes:The number of people reported killed in Iran and Lebanon since the start of the conflict is now in the thousands. Several locations across Tehran have been targeted in the latest wave of Israeli attacks, according to Iranian state media.
• Markets react: Oil prices droppedfollowing Trump’s statement. The global oil benchmark tumbled more than 7% to trade below $99 a barrel, having climbed to $114 a barrel earlier in the day.

Stocks soared and oil prices fell after President Donald Trump on Monday said the United States would postpone further strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure, pending the outcome of negotiations.

The Dow rose 975 points, or 2.1%. The S&P 500 was 2% higher and the Nasdaq gained 2.3%. The Nasdaq had closed on the verge of correction Friday — a decline of 10% from a recent peak.

Oil prices dropped: Brent crude was down 10.1% to $100.87 per barrel after briefly falling as low as $96 per barrel. US crude fell 9.5% to $88.90 per barrel.

Stock futures jumped higher and oil was much lower immediately after Trump’s message early Monday about the military pause.

But markets retreated from some of their initial enthusiasm after the Israel Defense Forces said it was continuing strikes on Tehran, and it became unclear whether Iran agreed with Trump’s version of events.

Stocks in Europe rose, reversing earlier losses: The benchmark Stoxx 600 index was up 1.1% and Germany’s DAX index soared 1.8%.

Gold prices dropped 2%, the US dollar index moved 0.5% lower and Treasury yields fell as investors bought bonds.

US diesel and gasoline futures fell Monday alongside oil prices. Diesel futures were down 8.5% and gasoline futures fell 9%. But futures are still up 83% and 74% this year, respectively.

Even with the declines in oil prices Monday, crude prices remain roughly a third higher than they were before the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.

Americans have paid the price for the fighting in the form of higher gas prices. US gas prices rose for the 23rd straight day Monday, reaching $3.96 in the latest reading from AAA, the highest price since August of 2022.

Turkey is stepping up diplomatic efforts to end the war in Iran, with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan conducting more than a dozen calls with regional and global counterparts over the past 48 hours, according to readouts of the foreign ministry’s phone traffic.

On Sunday, Fidan held separate calls with his Iranian and Egyptian counterparts as well as US and EU officials where “steps aimed at stopping the war were discussed,” a Turkish diplomatic source said.

Fidan also held calls yesterday with the prime minister and foreign minister of Qatar, Saudi’s foreign minister as well as Pakistani officials, in which they “evaluated the ongoing efforts to bring the war to an end.”

The phone diplomacy continued today with calls to leaders in Egypt and Norway where “the discussions focused on efforts to stop the war,” the source said.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry told CNN they would not comment on Ankara’s mediation efforts at this stage.

People familiar with the talks say both Turkey and Egypt have relayed messages between parties as part of a broader push to de-escalate rising tensions around key energy infrastructure and power facilities.

US President Donald Trump has said the US and Iran held “productive conversations” over the weekend and that he will hold off military strikes against Iranian power and energy sites for five days.

The announcement saw oil prices plummet after weeks of surging costs, though Iran has denied that it has had any dialogue with Washington.

Trump also recently spoke to journalists in Palm Beach, Florida. You can catch up on what he said in our post here.

If you’re just joining us, here are the latest developments today:

Multiple nations have been passing messages between the US and Iran over the last several days in an attempt to de-escalate the mounting tensions around energy sites and power plants, people familiar with the discussions said.

The Israeli military said moments after Trump’s comments that it is conducting strikes on Iranian regime targets in the “heart of Tehran.”

Two men have been injured by shrapnel after rockets were fired towards the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, which is close to the country’s border with Lebanon, emergency services said today.

A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he welcomes “any reports of productive talks” between the US and Iran.

Starmer also said today that Britain must plan for the possibility that the war in the Middle East could last for “some time,” and warned against taking “false comfort” in the thought that the conflict could end swiftly.

Trump says he wants to end the war. But will Iran let him?

Analysis by Abbas Al Lawati

Even before the war began, Iranian officials repeatedly warned that while Trump might start a conflict with Tehran, he would not be the one to decide when it ends.

Now, Trump is striking an optimistic tone, suggesting the war may be nearing an end, even as Iran’s foreign ministry denies that any dialogue is underway.

Over the past few weeks, Iran has surprised many with the scale and persistence of its ability to disrupt the global economy, effectively shutting the world’s most important energy chokepoint while continuing to strike its neighbors and Israel despite Trump administration claims that its retaliatory capacity had been “obliterated.”

When Tehran resumed talks with Washington ahead of this war, it did so from its weakest position yet, with much of its regional leverage eroded by a two-year Israeli campaign against its proxies, and its nuclear leverage largely diminished by US and Israeli strikes on its facilities.

Now, with the effects of the war rippling across the globe, Iran appears to have significantly more leverage in talks with the US than before the conflict, and is likely to use it, banking on mounting pressure on Trump at home and abroad to bring the war to an end.

That helps explain why its demands have been so sweeping: a permanent end to the war with guarantees it will not resume, a reduction of US military presence in the region, compensation for damages, and a new “status quo” in the Strait of Hormuz that reflects Iranian interests.

Taken together, these demands suggest Tehran believes it is negotiating from a position of strength and is seeking to seize the moment to reshape the regional balance of power in its favor.

Nearly all of these demands would be a non-starter for the US and Israel, and would leave Washington’s Gulf Arab allies facing a more emboldened and hardline Iran, one that has turned a decades-long proxy conflict into open war over the past three weeks.

And even if Trump were willing to entertain such terms, it is far from clear he could bring Israel on board. For Iran, the US may be the more powerful adversary, but Israel remains the closer and more enduring threat.

Trump said earlier today he would hold off military strikes against Iranian power and energy sites for five days.

Before his latest announcement, Trump had warned that the US would hit Iran’s power plants if the critical Strait of Hormuz was not fully opened. In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) vowed to target energy facilities in regional countries hosting US bases.

But what do experts say about the legality of hitting power sites, particularly given their importance to the civilian population?

Legal expert Craig Jones, a senior lecturer at the UK’s Newcastle University, told CNN there are two key questions to consider: Does such action have a “concrete and direct” military advantage? And if so, is this advantage proportionate to the harm inflicted on civilians and the environment?

“It looks like with Trump’s threats, there isn’t a distinct military advantage to them,” Jones said, adding that they were framed more as an act of retaliation than anything else. “Retaliation, retribution is just off the table in terms of international law, it’s not legal to do that.”

Even if there were a legitimate military advantage, Jones said that doesn’t mean the action necessarily meets the “threshold for proportionality,” which requires impact on civilians to be considered.

Military advantages must be “weighed against potential negative side effects to civilians, civilian infrastructure, energy demands and the needs of the entire country,” Jones said. Other experts have expressed similar concerns to Jones amid the escalating regional violence.

Heba Morayef, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, warned earlier this month of the potential for “devastating civilian harm arising from strikes targeting energy infrastructure,” resulting in a “substantial risk such attacks would violate international humanitarian law and in some cases could amount to war crimes.”

Meanwhile, Ben Saul, UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, has condemned both US and Iranian threats to target civilian energy infrastructure. He said earlier today that such attacks, if carried out, would constitute “war crimes under international law.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that Britain must plan for the possibility that the war in the Middle East could last for “some time,” and warned against taking “false comfort” in the thought that the conflict could end swiftly.

Asked by a parliamentary committee of lawmakers whether Britain thinks the war could last for months, rather than days or weeks, Starmer said: “We’ve got to plan on the basis that it could go on for some time.”

He said all of Britain’s “focus and energy” was on a swift de-escalation of the war.

Since the war began last month, Starmer said he had told his team that “we mustn’t fall into the sort of false comfort of thinking that there will necessarily be a quick and early end to this.”

Earlier, a spokesman for Starmer said the prime minister had welcomed “any reports of productive talks” between the United States and Iran. President Donald Trump said Washington held “productive conversations” with Tehran over the weekend. Tehran has denied this.

Trump says US is talking to “top person” in Iran, as “major points of agreement” reached

By Catherine Nicholls

US President Donald Trump has just spoken to reporters in Palm Beach, Florida, where he discussed his country’s war with Iran, saying that there are “major points of agreement” with Iran following discussions over the weekend.

Catch up on here on what Trump said:

Despite Iran’s denial that it has had dialogue with the US, Trump said that his country is talking to a “top person” in Iran’s regime to try to end the war, but that this is not Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.

Trump told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that the US and Iran had reached 15 points of agreement, including that Tehran had committed to not having a nuclear weapon, something it has also said publicly in the past.

Trump downplayed a move to ease sanctions on certain Iranian oil stockpiles, suggesting it’s intended to bolster supplies amid a worsening energy crisis and that it wouldn’t “have any difference” in the war.

Even if the war with Iran ends, Trump indicated that he’d still seek $200 billion in funding for the Pentagon, saying that “it’s always nice to have.”

The president tried to distance himself from former National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent, who resigned over the Iran war, saying that he only hired Kent because he “felt badly for him.”

Trump also said the Strait of Hormuz will be “open very soon,” adding he’d like to see the vital shipping route jointly controlled by “me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is.”

CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Kit Maher, Betsy Klein, Donald Judd and Adam Cancryn contributed to this reporting.

Egypt, a key regional mediator, said today it appreciates US President Donald Trump’s decision to hold off military strikes against Iranian energy sites, while stressing the importance of “seizing this opportunity and building on it in order to prioritize dialogue.”

“Egypt values the statements made today, March 23, by U.S. President Donald Trump, in which he referred to his intensive contacts aimed at de-escalation and his intention to halt the targeting of Iranian energy facilities,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said it recognizes the “importance of seizing this opportunity and building on it in order to prioritize dialogue, stop the escalation, and ultimately bring the war to an end.”

It added that Egypt is working in close coordination with regional and international parties to “urge all concerned sides to de-escalate,” as well as to prevent the expansion of the conflict in the region.