One of the countries in the region, the United Arab Emirates, joined Qatar and Saudi Arabia in appeals to Trump, according to several people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held separate calls with his Turkish, Qatari and Iraqi counterparts, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Telegram early Saturday.<\/p>\n
Araghchi also spoke with United Nations Secretary General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres regarding \u201cthe latest state of the ongoing diplomatic process aimed at ending the war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier Friday, the favored interlocutor between the US and Iran, Pakistan\u2019s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, arrived in Tehran.<\/p>\n
Munir was welcomed by Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, according to the military\u2019s press wing. He is expected to take part in discussions that will cover US-Iran negotiations, said a Pakistani security official familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isn\u2019t public.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there had been \u201cslight progress\u201d in negotiations. \u201cI don\u2019t want to exaggerate it, but there\u2019s been a little bit of movement, and that\u2019s good,\u201d he told the media at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Sweden on Friday.<\/p>\n
Trump told reporters at the White House that Iran was \u201cdying to make a deal.\u201d The president has threatened further attacks on the Islamic Republic if it doesn\u2019t agree to terms acceptable to the US.<\/p>\n
Since the ceasefire went into effect six weeks ago, Trump has veered between assurances that a peace accord was almost at hand and threats of new aerial assaults.<\/p>\n
At the same time, opposition to the war has heightened among Americans upset about the sharp rise in gasoline prices as the conflict disrupts global energy markets. Those anxieties, reflected in several polls, have resonated on Capitol Hill, months before midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the Republican-led Senate signaled mounting opposition to continuing the war with a procedural vote. On Thursday, the party\u2019s leaders abruptly canceled a vote on the conflict as GOP absences threatened an embarrassing defeat for the president.<\/p>\n
Yet Senator Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, cautioned that Trump was being \u201cill-advised to pursue a deal that would not be worth the paper it is written on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur commander-in-chief needs to allow America\u2019s skilled armed forces to finish the destruction of Iran\u2019s conventional military capabilities and reopen the strait,\u201d Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, said in a statement on Friday.<\/p>\n
He was referring to the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial passageway for global energy supplies that, along with Iran\u2019s nuclear program, have been major obstacles in the diplomacy.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s ambassador to France, Mohammad Amin-Nejad, told Bloomberg on Wednesday that his country was discussing with Oman some form of permanent toll system in the strait, which the US calls unacceptable.<\/p>\n
Rubio said that would set a precedent for other areas of the world and that no country should accept the imposition of tolls in Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Aside from Hormuz, the US has repeatedly demanded Tehran hand over its enriched uranium and commit to ending enrichment for at least a decade. Iranian leaders have publicly rejected that, citing a right to the process under international agreements.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s more related to the Iran war:<\/p>\n
Japan, one of Asia\u2019s largest importers of energy from the Middle East, flagged the impending arrival of its first oil shipment from the Persian Gulf since the war began.Iran claimed 35 ships crossed Hormuz in the past day after obtaining permission, ISNA reports citing an IRGC statement.Iran has destroyed more than two dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by US forces since the war began, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. That represents 20% of the Pentagon\u2019s prewar inventory for the hard-to-replace unmanned system.<\/p>\n
–With assistance from Jeff Mason, Tooba Khan, Fiona MacDonald, John Harney, Erik Wasson and Arsalan Shahla.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the countries in the region, the United Arab Emirates, joined Qatar and Saudi Arabia in appeals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[12474,177,12475,5084,34,12468,938,42970,42971,42972,201,5085,973,12473,8055,36],"class_list":["post-127263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-bestof","tag-conflict","tag-essential","tag-horizontal","tag-iran","tag-lebanon-country","tag-lifestyle","tag-lifestyles","tag-moving-up","tag-nabatieh-governorate","tag-photography","tag-smoke","tag-southern-lebanon","tag-topix","tag-village","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116622938768658030","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}