The diplomatic push came amid contradictory signals from President Donald Trump, who oscillated between threatening military strikes against Iran and suggesting the government had moved to halt executions of protesters — creating uncertainty about U.S. intentions as markets, allies and adversaries all attempted to read the administration’s next move.
Several Middle Eastern allies of the United States urged the Trump administration Thursday to hold off on military strikes against Iran, warning that armed intervention would destabilize an already volatile region and rattle the global economy, according to an Arab diplomat familiar with the conversations.
Top officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar raised those concerns in the preceding 48 hours, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive exchanges. The same officials also pressed senior Iranian leaders to halt the violent suppression of protesters, warning that any Iranian response to a U.S. action would carry significant repercussions for Tehran.
Shifting signals from Washington
The diplomatic activity came amid sharp shifts in Trump’s public posture. He went from offering assurances to Iranian citizens that “help is on its way” — urging them to take over their country’s institutions — to declaring Wednesday that he had received information from “very important sources on the other side” that Iran had stopped killing protesters and was no longer pursuing executions.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday maintained that the administration’s options had not narrowed.
“The truth is only President Trump knows what he’s going to do and a very, very small team of advisers are read into his thinking on that,” Leavitt said. “He continues to closely monitor the situation on the ground in Iran.”
Ambassador Mike Waltz, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, said military action remained in play.
“President Trump is a man of action, not endless talk like we see at the United Nations,” Waltz said at a U.N. Security Council meeting called to discuss the Iran protests. “He has made it clear all options are on the table to stop the slaughter.”
Oil prices fell Thursday as markets appeared to register Trump’s shifting tone as a sign he was leaning away from an attack.
Protests increasingly suppressed
Iran’s nationwide protests appeared increasingly suppressed a week after authorities isolated the country from outside communications and escalated a violent response that activists say has killed at least 2,637 people.
Trump separately posted on social media about a Fox News report on a reported pause in the death sentence of Erfan Soltani, a 26-year-old shopkeeper detained alongside other protesters and accused, according to Iranian state media, of “propaganda activities against the regime.”
“This is good news. Hopefully, it will continue!” Trump wrote.
Iranian state media denied that Soltani had been condemned to death, saying he was being held in a detention facility outside Tehran. The White House later asserted that Iran had halted 800 scheduled executions, a claim it did not publicly substantiate.
Force posture and new sanctions
Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted a potential practical constraint on any U.S. military strike: no American aircraft carriers — considered a critical asset in a major operation — are currently positioned in the Middle East. The USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group were deployed to the U.S. Southern Command region as part of a counter-narcotics operation focused on Venezuela.
“It might be that they’re delaying things and using the time for getting that posture correct,” Shapiro said.
The Trump administration on Thursday also announced new sanctions against Iran. Among those designated was the secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security, whom the Treasury Department accused of being among the first officials to call for violence against protesters. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also designated 18 individuals and companies the U.S. says participated in laundering proceeds from Iranian oil sales through a shadow banking network involving the sanctioned Iranian financial institutions Bank Melli and Shahr Bank.